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Napster Strikes Deal With GWU
ParticleMan911 writes "In an attempt to thwart illegal music downloads, GWU has struck a deal with Napster to allow every student living on campus a free subscription to Napster's streaming audio service. Every one of the 700,000 songs on Napster will be available to stream on each students' computer. GWU is not disclosing how much the streaming service, available to all users at $9.95/Month, is costing them, but the first year trial of the service has been donated by an anonymous donor. Will this method help get rid of illegal music downloads, or simply be a handy tool to use while your real mp3s are downloading?"
Given the availability of various stream ripping software (not sure if something is currently available for Napster particularly, didn't see any in a quick search) it would seem reasonable to expect that the Napster streams could become your real mp3s. Surely something could do the DirectSound dumping (as other programs already do) and then slap on the MP3 tags based on text grabbed from Napster's Windows handles.
Q
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Or simply will they "take orders" from outsiders???
Of course this won't help.
The university will not continue to purchase licenses once the "free donor" leaves. Other universities will not follow their lead.
It's pretty simply - eventually, we will all be tied to an IP adress the same way we're tied to a street address, a telephone number, a license plate, and a credit card number. We will "own" that IP address through the use of our login / password so that we can be tracked just as we are in every other aspect of life.
Go walk around a college campus. Count the the people with iPods. OK, now tell me if this is really going to solve the 'problem.' They'd be better of getting a discount rate for students at the iTMS.
While some technically savvy students (read: /.ers) will continue to use other means to get DRM-free mp3's and movies, most college students would be content to listen to their favorite music off the Napster streaming service. Once the administration tells them it is okay and even probably helps them install the software the ease of use trumps everything else for the average college student.
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How on earth does this contribute to the academic experience? Or are universities just turning into semi-adult daycare with toys and music and diversions to keep the MTV generation from having to actually THINK for a change?
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In my dorm, everybody put their music into iTunes and turned on sharing so we had some 70,000+ tracks available for streaming on the network. In that kind of environment, I don't think a paid streaming service like the one GWU plans on offering will be appreciated.
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In addition, I think a fair number of students use p2p applications to find songs they can't find elsewhere -- live cuts, unknown bands and other miscellaneous tracks they can't find anywhere else. The GWU officials may misunderstand the very demographic they try to serve.
Then there's the problem of alternative platforms. From the Napster website: "PC only, Windows XP/2000, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 or higher, Windows Media Player 7.1 or higher..." No thanks. I'll take my Powerbook and find music elsewhere.
Add to that the lack of ability to burn songs to CD and the ease of most p2p networks, as well as simply ripping CDs, and I think that GWU is burning its money.
Others have pointed to the availability of stream ripping software, and I suspect that such software will quickly become widespread and popular. I'm sure students, particularly the Comp Sci ones, will find ways around the system.
Streaming doesn't solve this problem, it just exacerbates it. Would you prefer a kid downloading 100 MP3s in 2 hours or streaming those MP3s for 5 hours?
Is this supposed to cover the university's ass? I don't see how. If they make the kids sign agreements not to use the connection to break laws, they've effectively absolved themselves from any liability. And without forcing kids into DRM-hell.
So what problem does this solve, exactly? The problem of finding money for pay increases.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Any technology that uses encryption to "manage" (read: remove) rights of the purchaser requires that the purchaser somewhere have the key in order to use the content provided.
This is the failing of DRM as a concept. Since the person you're trying to prevent from using content illegally needs to have the key in order to use the content legally, eventually someone's going to figure out how to get the key out and use it to extract the content so it can be used by the consumer in any way they see fit.
Software companies have been fighting "piracy" since the advent of the Apple II and Commodore 64 home computers - trying to do stupid stuff to fool software designed to copy diskettes into thinking the disk was bad. They've been fighting this battle for 20+ years, and the "problem" hasn't gone away.
Guess what, it isn't going to go away until content providers choose to sell content at prices that are reasonable by the consumer's standard. I'm perfectly willing to pay $15 for a game that has a week's worth of play time in it. I'm not willing to pay upwards of $60 for that same game. Similarly, when CDs first came out, the industry said they'd be cheaper than tapes because the cost of duplication was less. Guess what - the prices were fixed higher and so people started looking for ways to duplicate the discs.
When you let the market determine what's a fair price, theft goes down. That's a basic economic principle.
Because 90% of those you ask would say no.
-Ted
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Is it inherently fair that poor white students have to pay for poor black students to attend school?