Slashdot Mirror
Students Skip College Music Services
WSJdpatton writes "College students don't turn down much that's free. But when it comes to online music, even free hasn't been enough to persuade many students to use the digital download services colleges and universities are providing." I know that the Ctrax service offered by my current school — Temple University — and many others (it's "available to all college students with a '.edu' email address") has an ugly, awkward interface. Worse, the free (gratis) part is an expiring, "tethered" collection of music for those who use it; downloads to keep are fee-per-track.
Found another psycho to coach the bball team yet?
Well its all a sorry state of affairs really isn't it? Here they are, these nice people giving the kids at college some free music and it is thrown back in their face. It is a sad day when the young generation, who are probably going to be up to the hilt with debt after their course finishes, turn down these nice companies' free music because its cool to hate any kind of DRM.
One Temple university student was quoted as saying "Like it is so shady man, I mean here we have all these free grooves that musicians create, and the man wants to put DRM on it, like its so republican man"
Maybe one day these misguided young rebels will not look a gift horse in the mouth and accept that DRM is the only way for online music to progress and that ripping off the hard working artists is all "groovy" as they put it but does not put bread and butter on anyone's table.
I for one shall be writing to the Dean of Temple University to express my dismay at the disdainfulness displayed by the students to this extreme generosity.
So in other words all the yelling by Slashdotters about how there needs to be a new embrace of technology in the realm of music distribution was a filthy lie from a bunch of dirty, cheapass little thieves who are now using the "awkward" nature of the first round of this new marketing method as an excuse to keep stealing.
Fact: nobody's using it because they still have to pay for material if they want to keep it, so they're still stealing it, and nothing short of just making all music free is ever going to satisfy these crooks.
Bring on the lawsuits, I say. I think the RIAA should sue downloaders too, not just uploaders, until they're so poor they can't even afford to attend school. Then, in theory, the people who are smart enough not to buy crap music still won't, all you theives won't be able to afford it anyway, and maybe then things will actually change so honest, working people who would buy music if there were any good music will finally get some good music to buy.
How lucky. My CAPTCHA word is "sincere". As in "Nobody here was sincere when they claimed that they would buy music if it took on a more affordable, easier to use marketing model".
Fine, go ahead and argue whatever quibbling semantics make you feel sufficiently self-righteous to ignore the inconvenient fact that it's still wrong.