Penn State Launches Napster Music Service 249
Owner of Azkaban writes "CNN has a story about PSU launching Napster for its own students." Also at live.psu.edu." This is the service we posted about last fall; in three days, the Penn State system has served more than 100,000 songs.
Re:Not more piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess some people will not truely understand the different between copyright infringment and piracy until they are killed on the high seas by people with eye patches who go "Arrrrg!"
and in the long term it can only hurt the consumer as musicians will not make music if there is no profit on it.
Not as long as the majority of music downloaders use p2p primarily to search for new music and purchase the stuff they like.
I expressly banned my son from pirating music but the other day I saw him playing an MP3.
The horror! An mp3!
Where did it come from?
Did he download it from a bands official website where they promote their music by providing free samples?
Did he rip it himself from one of his legally purchased CDs?
Well, obviously copying of any sort is the equivilant of looting and murder on the high seas.
The office of homeland security will be by soon to escort your son to his new cave in Siberia where he will be spending the rest of his life. In fact, it is obvious that you haven't done enough to instill in your son the belief that he doesn't have the right to do whatever he wants with his own property. I guess you will have to be deported too you terrorist! You're no better than the parents of John Walker!
It probably isnt costing the Uni that much (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe they got a site license discount on the assumption that a smallish percentage of the students will actually use this service.
Either way - its a great service for the students, and its a fantastic marketing tool for the Uni- get a degree and we throw in free music downloads!
Sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)
So have fun fighting the battle against [DRM] but please do not be surprised when you fail. After all the war has been lost, long live the new world order: proprietary devices, proprietary interfaces, copy protection, limited functionality, and prepare you credit card accounts for all those monthly rental and service charges you will be paying for every "computer controller consumer electronics device" you use.
Every inroad that DRM makes, every time a service like this or the iTMS is lauded here where the only chance toward resistance should reside, the hope for an open future slips further and further away. Every time somebody sits down at a computer and accepts that the software decides how and what he is allowed to communicate, every person that buys the line that is good when he tied down because it helps keep him honest. Every programmer who writes software whose purpose is to betray and control the person who runs it. Every person who reads a UELA that says the software has the right to delete information and other software against the users wishes and shrugs.
Anyone who believes that ubiquitous DRM can coexist with open networks, open communication, and open software is deluding himself. Either these services fail, or everything that this site was created to celebrate does. Our network has only one future.
No free lunch, Linux, or Napser (Score:5, Insightful)
The article says that the service is "free", but in actuality, students are paying for it in their tuition, when they could be having more useful services provided by the school, like a site license for more online research databases, or simple more trees and benches on campus.
What a waste.
And then students are told that it's "free", I bet half of them even beleave it, but as the old saying goes, "There's no free lunch", McBride seams to think there is no free SCO/linux(tm)*, and there is also no free napster.
*Largly due to the fact that he's visualy inspecting the interior of his own colon.
Re:Not more piracy (Score:4, Insightful)
It is really very sad to view art in this fashion, as if art was only made for profit. I have been an artist most of my life(musician, painter, writer) and I have never made a bit of art becuase I thought it would make money(I'm not saying I wouldnt be pleased if it did). NO ONE thinks, "Hey I'll become a painter and gets lots of money." It would be much more realistic to think, "I'll try to be a painter and be very poor". Real artists make art because they are compelled to do so, and simply love creating. Real artists do NOT include entertainers such as Britney Spears or the like.
Again its very sad to see people viewing art through a very narrow capitolistic frame.
Standard fair from now on. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No free lunch, Linux, or Napser (Score:2, Insightful)
In terms of site licenses for higher-end specialized software. This is covered on a need basis by individual departments. It does not make sense to have a 2,000 unit license for Oracle if only a few hundred will ever use it. Things like that typically come out of faculty research money (most of which comes from outside the Univ).
I don't completely understand the amount of railing people are doing against this service. It is providing students with a *legal* way to listen to music (yes, I know, provided you're on a Windows PC), and a minimal cost to them to burn it to a CD or load it into an MP3 player.
Very few students think it's really free, there's been a lot of back and forth in the school paper and in school-affiliated message boards on the actual cost of this new service. Students really aren't as dumb as people tend to think.
Would you rather the RIAA go after every student who has MP3s on their machine? Bringing in an army of lawyers against the University which would incur huge legal fees, causing for further hikes in tuition? Or would you prefer an incremental increase in the Tech Services fee, and the RIAA turning a blind eye?
Re:Hrm.. The number seems a little low... (Score:3, Insightful)
With Paladium, Secure Computing Initive, and Longhorn on the horizon, the days of all done in the same machine is limited. The new player will be spying for the infringing software connecting to the stream and refuse to work if one is found. They are working on securing the stream from the server, to the sound card, out to the fire wire speakers. There won't be a rippable tap point if the RIAA gets their way and MS sells them the solution. It seems best to have the subscription locked down box and the external open general purpose machine next to it.