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Dell and Napster Going Directly to Colleges
An Anonymous Reader writes "Forbes is reporting on the teaming of Dell and Napster to provide music directly to college campuses. The solution will alleviate network bottlenecks caused by illegal music downloads will enable colleges to use Dell blade servers on campus to store music from Napster's library locally. This will allow network processing speed to remain fast while hundreds of students simultaneously download digital music." From the article: "Campuses were 'shrinking the [available] bandwidth on the network to discourage' illegal downloading, says John Mullen, vice president of Dell's higher education business. He says schools want a way to minimize the impact of music downloads on their networks and encourage students to shift toward legal downloads."
It looks like this could be competition for Ruckus Network, which provides a file-sharing service to [some] universities and colleges.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
What makes you think that universities could be considered for Common Carrier status. I think maybe you should go look up what Cammon Carrier means in the telecommunications industry. Since neither ISP's nor Cable networks are considered common carriers I think a private network like a University would have no chance. Just so you know, you can't claim common carrier, it's a classification that the FCC bestows on you and it comes with massive regulation.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Supposedly, they let us download as many files as we want, except they'll expire in a few months when the 'free trial subscribtion' ends. There were even talks of having this program paid for by our tuition but luckily that got squashed.
'Services' like this are not going to work; people are just not as dumb as the RIAA and the gooneys that work for them believe they are, IMHO.
Yes, tis true. We are the future!
Mod this up!
The grandparent post has no idea what he is talking about, and I can't believe that it has +5 Insightful.
College networks are private networks and are not Common Carriers. It is like saying people who work for Ford abusing their Internet previleges, but saying that Ford has no part in it whatsoever. There is a reason why all corporations have policies on what you can do with their networks.
+5 Insightful my ass.
In my experience, although "music downloads" sap up a lot of bandwidth on campus networks, I would have to say that more and more the problem is becoming worm/virus/zombie-infested computers coming in from a summer of broadband connections.
I don't know if your experience is from the perspective of a network administrator, but mine is, so I'll elaborate: they both suck.
Yes, you can packet shape music and movie downloads, but they keep downloading, and they don't stop.
Viruses actually have a semblance of restraint and try to go undetected. File sharers don't seem to care. Viruses can be stopped by blocking port 25 egress, almost without trouble at all. File sharers have to be spotted, then throttled, spotted, throttled, etc. If they use non-standard ports or non-standard transfer mechanisms, you can only try to put a cap on their bandwidth; and it can't be too low, or they complain.
I guess I wouldn't be so quick to talk about viruses and worms being a huge bandwidth problem. But what would I know, I'm only someone who handles it on a day-to-day basis.
As I have said numerous times before but I'll say it again.
ISP's are considered by the FCC to be ESP's (Enhanced Service Providers). They are NOT subject to the same regulations as Telecom Common Carriers, they are not regulated under Title II, and they are exempt from the access charges of long distance carriers ("Access charges" are fees collected by the local telephone companies for the origination or termination of any interstate or foreign telecommunication).
All in all ISPs are end users of the telephone network, like you and me, and while they are not entirely responsible for the content which crosses their network, they may be required to monitor and turn over the names of their customers who engage in illegal activity which is something that common carriers are protected from.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.