Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

UC System Chooses Mindawn Download Service

Posted by timothy on from the extracting-money-from-a-captive-audience dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In hopes of stemming the tide of students freely sharing copyrighted multimedia files over their campus networks, the University of California (UC) system has selected an online music and video service that supports Windows, Mac OS, and Linux to provide downloadable music and video for its approximately 200,000 student population. Unlike iTunes (which only supports Mac OS X and Windows) and Napster (which is Windows-only), Mindawn works with Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. In addition, instead of providing downloads that are degraded by what is known as "lossy compression," downloads from Mindawn are offered in both Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats." (Vorbis files are lossy too, though my tin ears can't always tell.)

2 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Top Tracks by nherc · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Here are the Top Track from Mindawn:
    • All The Water of This World - Aaron English
    • The Sense - John Luttrell
    • Waterfall Carnival - Frogg Cafe
    • Journey to Farpoint - John Luttrell
    • Consider the Lilies - JoAnn Gordon
    • Quest for the Heartland - Ricocher
    • All This Time - Frogg Cafe
    • You're Not Alone - JoAnn Gordon
    • Windy Day - John Luttrell
    • Full Moon - Chrome Shift
    Compare this to ITunes:
    • Pon de Replay (Radio Edit) - Rihanna
    • Feel Good Inc. (Album Crossfade) - Gorillaz
    • These Boots Are Made for Walkin'... - Jessica Simpson
    • Don't Cha (featuring Busta Rhymes)... - The Pussycat Dolls & Busta Rhymes
    • Best of You - Foo Fighters
    • Don't Phunk With My Heart - Black Eyed Peas
    • Sugar, We're Goin Down - Fall Out Boy
    • Behind These Hazel Eyes - Kelly Clarkson
    • Beverly Hills - Weezer
    • Lose Control (Featuring Ciara & Fa... - Missy Elliott
    Now how is this going to reduce piracy?

    It just sounds like they are throwing a bone to the RIAA in that they are AT LEAST making an attempt at offering an alternative to P2P perhaps trying to shield themselves from direct litigation on the REALLY, REALLY cheap.

    --
    'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
  2. i hope this works by pintomp3 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    though it's a bit optimistic, i hope the students really take the their selection. i like the grass-rootsy feel of supporting open-source drm-free codecs and non-RIAA content. it's like organic music. perhaps this will open the door for a larger audience to ween themselves off of the riaa koolaid. most of you are complaining it doesn't have enough "popular" music. maybe this can change what is "popular". longshot, but post like "it's not itunes, it sucks" and "it doesn't have britney spears, it sucks" is not going to help us break riaa monopoly. for all the M$ bashing that goes on here, it's amazing to read "everyone uses ipod/itunes, just use that". i would have expected more support for ogg and flac than for itunes on an open source friendly site.