University Sponsored Music Services? 276
Amy's Robot writes "The president of Penn State University is urging colleges to start their own digital music services. The schools would pay the licensing fees, and pass the charges on to their students. His logic is that paying for the school's service is an incentive not to use an "illegal" service. Supposedly, there will be some pilot programs this fall, but it seems like there are a lot of obstacles to overcome before then."
Isnt this what iTunes.com is? (Score:4, Interesting)
kc
Think of the selection! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:We pass the savings on to you! (Score:2, Interesting)
So they upgraded to a 10mbit DS3 (and had that at least until now). nearly 20k students and a 10mbit Internet connection. That's just ridiculous.
So, instead of hogging the Internet bandwith with morons downloading porn AND music off the net, conserve the external bandwith for music and let them trade on the internal fiber network... Sounds like a plan to me.
'pay' and 'free' are two totally different things (Score:2, Interesting)
This idea is stupid (Score:2, Interesting)
The RIAA will only be happy when we are charged for being alive, because obviously, 100% of the people who pirate music are alive.
As a student of Penn State ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Is that enough sarcasm for you? Is music piracy an issue on campus? Absolutely. Will group licensing music solve that problem? Not a chance. Why? One reason is the university has very diverse tastes and it would never be able to appeal to them all.
For example, the university has a concert every year called Moving On. There is almost always flack surrounding it as the university can't appeal to everyone's tastes. I don't think licensed university music will do any better when people who have grown up with Kazaa and Napster are used to clicking away to whatever they want.
Personally I think the university should continue to do what it is doing and continue measures to curb piracy as it wishes. But licensing music will not curb the piracy problem.
That's my $.02.
Actually... (Score:4, Interesting)
If the college worked it right, and the students didn't have to pay a huge amount of money, I think most students that were living in the dorms would like this. And if the college is worried about students eating up all the bandwidth on the campus, just make the mp3 servers only available to the dorms, not the rest of the network, that is simple to do. As for administrating the server and all, students could that with faculity oversight to keep the cost down.
I would have rather paid the college that I went to for a service like this rather than paying $125 to Student Government every semester. At least I would have gotten my money's worth of music.
marching bands / orchestras (Score:2, Interesting)
If some colleges are able to strike a deal with the music organizations, then it would probably be in the music industry's best interests to make identical programs available to colleges throughout the US.
Even if a school cannot strike a deal with the larger organizations, or simply chooses not to do so, they should still organize a way to make any school-specific media available. Recordings of the marching band, or if a college has its own orchestras, jazz ensembles, theatre performances, etc... Any media that can be shared over the network but is produced at the school itself, with permission of the students and teachers, should be made available. This could also be an excellent way to feature independent artists; the smaller labels could negotiate directly with the colleges. Maybe this could be organized around an artist's tours...new music being made available on the college network prior to an artist's appearance in town or at a university venue...
Scams (Score:4, Interesting)
The Rochester Institute of Technology [rit.edu](which I currently attend), for example, lets practically anyone with the motor skills to fill out an application in. They charge them their $26 000 or so for their first year, and then they fail half of them. You see, RIT happens to have an attrition rate over 50%.
Now, that $26 000 certainly isn't spent on the freshman taking English 101 and "Intro to VB." It's spent on the upperclassmen. The failures end up subsidizing the upperclassmen, and everything's great.
I'm just ranting. Ignore me.
Off-campus? (Score:1, Interesting)
We just had a 14% tuition hike this year. I bet parents are going to love this.
(And to all thos people saying that a university shouldn't go into business it's already happened. Big time collegiate athletics turned universities into quasi-corporations years ago. Though I agree it's pretty shady and shouldn't be done.)
Why not? (Score:2, Interesting)
I like the idea (Score:3, Interesting)
There are practical obstacles and I can see that
So firstly they have to make it an optional fee not hidden in tuition fees. Secondly, they must find ways to block campus p2p, so one subscriber cannot spill the goods. Perhaps smart routers that block p2p ports, and tcp with such headers etc? of ALL known p2p programs?
In theory I support it anyway.
Selection would probably still suck... (Score:2, Interesting)
But students are skint. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:God, tuition is high enough (Score:2, Interesting)
Salaries remain the #1 expenditure item in most institutions' Education & General budget. At my institution, salaries account for 75-80% of the total education & general budget, with approximately half the budget going to instructors' salaries. Instructional supplies & equipment add another 10-15% to the total, so instruction alone accounts for about 60-65% of the budget. (Operation of libraries, physical plant & student services offices aren't included in this amount.)
We already assess a "technology fee." Revenues are used to fund new computer labs, upgrades for existing labs, network infrastructure, and other expenses directly attributable to instruction. These monies aren't used for administrative functions. If we were to implement a music-for-pay system, it would most likely have to be tacked onto dorm fees, since commuter students are much less likely to be running Kazaa in an open lab (although some undoubtedly do). However, I do not foresee my institution going to such a service.
This past fall term, we actually had to shut off internet access to our dorms to free up enough bandwidth to make some mandatory state and federal file transfers and to allow access to our administrative system by admissions & financial aid offices during regular working hours. It's difficult to explain to a student that their financial aid check is late because they hogged the bandwidth while stealing movies!
I would view the pay-for-music service as a way of controlling bandwidth more than a money-maker or a legal response to the copyright issue.
No thanks. (Score:1, Interesting)
Find another plan... (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Download music for free
2) Distribute music to others
So, these kids could then legally fill up gigs and gigs of MP3s until they feel all warm and cuddly inside, but how will this stop them from sharing it with others? All it takes is a few students to have Kazaa running in the background, and piracy still reigns on campus.
It sounds as if the president of the college wants to try and wash his hands clean of all liability, but I doubt that this will stop the RIAA from wanting to tar and feather him.
Re:not sure.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with this, based on my experience at Rutgers, is that the software is not always the newest version, and you must run a program in the background to verify licences. Also, when one goes home for the weekend/break/etc., the program will not start because the Keyserver will only verify you if you are physically in a dorm.
Why run crippled Photoshop 6 and a Keyserver client when I can have no restrictions Photoshop 7 in an hour?
Canada (Score:3, Interesting)
The only reason I stayed was for the full ride. (Remember kids. Take your PSAT. It may seem like it doesn't matter, but National Merit Scholar Finalists get $$$ ^_^ )
University gas stations and grocery stores next? (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be like a university president reacting to incidents of grocery store shoplifting by mandating that every student buy his groceries through the university. It's not reasonable, and it's yet another business that a university has no business being engaged in.
From a legal standpoint, universities might have the responsibility to make a reasonable effort to make sure that their networks aren't being used illegally, but turning to this solution appears to be a step in the wrong direction -- and it adds yet another cost to those who want to attend college. Of course, I feel the same way about athletic fees and activity fees that college students are forced to pay without wanting to.
library? (Score:3, Interesting)
At my alma mater [lawrence.edu] (which has a pretty good music school), the library has all sorts of recordings. Okay, for the music students, much of it's classical, but a bunch of it isn't. Like checking out books, you're allowed to make copies for scholarly reasons, but not personal reasons. The honor system was, I'm very sure, broken all the time, but it's one idea.
Oh wait... nobody uses that silly physical library anymore...
the university (Score:3, Interesting)
Too many people now think that the university is nothing but a holding tank before they reach the real world, and the only thing that makes the holding tank bearable is having as much entertainment as possible.
If you spent more time at college being entertained then you did getting educated, you shouldn't have gone. College is not for everybody. It shouldn't be an option for hedonistic entertainment freaks.
It's a Novel Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup, just about every college/university has a band with a following. Somewhere out there, is a group you will like. Trust me, you will! So the P2P network that the schools set up will share the talents of their students with other schools and in the process down the RIAA at the same time!
It's simple, the SGA (Student Government Association) sponsors the web site. They in turn get the students to put their works in to the school's system. The bands obviously still own the music, but it's freely available to the rest of the network (get your name out there sort of thing). The school's bandwidth (let's face it, they are paying for it whether it is used or not) is then used to spread the music to the other participants (sometimes over I2)!
Schools across the country can simply join in by setting up a proper system for storing the music by the students and joining the P2P system. Each OGG (down with MP3) holds a URL to a University sponsored page for the music group so people can learn about the group, find out where they are playing next. Maybe even book the group to play at their school, which is what the SGA does (at least ours did). To find a type of music, just hit the systems search engine, which is tied to the rest of the network.
Are their problems with the idea? Yeah, but I can find problems in a Utopian society too! The point is, the kids get their music, they get it fast, and they get exposure. The University comes out with a win, and thumbs a proverbial nose back at the music Industry for being snobbish and greedy and a total {insert explitive here}.
As If Tuition Wasn't Expensive Enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, like students that can get the same music for FREE.
If the recording industry wants collge students to start buying music when they're already in a bad shape financially and it's free on other P2P channels, they should wake up.
Although if the university just added the legit P2P charge to tuition... That's all they need to do.