Universities Mull Official Role In Music Distribution 253
An anonymous reader writes "News.com.com is reporting that Universities are considering ways to bring legal Internet jukeboxes to dorm rooms, including entering deals with commercial service providers that would see online music charges included alongside tuition fees or picked up by the schools themselves." Reader ajkst1 adds that "meetings were held between college representatives, music industry reps, and online music services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store, Pressplay, and Listen.com. The discussion wasn't about why they should do it, but about how they should do it. Per-user licenses or a general fee to students were discussed to make it look like the music was free. I'm broke, so free is good. Paying more to go to school is bad."
Not first post but close (Score:5, Funny)
Beer, fake id's, drugs, now I have to pay for music? WTF!?
Most college students are poor anyway, nobody'll subscribe to this crap.
Re:Not first post but close (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not first post but close (Score:2, Insightful)
But if they had such a "jukebox", couldn't college administrators take funds from expanding their network infrastructure's bandwidth pipeline and pour it into this new venture?
My reasoning is that colleges continually have to spend money for network maintenance and improvements because of KaZaA and its counterparts. If the adminstrators were financially smart, there wouldn't be any added cost at all.
Re:Not first post but close (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not first post but close (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't be so sure. Yes, that's the ideal, but schools are are a business, and that means their ultimate goal is to survive and make money.
Don't think for a minute that if your school pays the RIAA $10/student that you as a student are also going to pay $10. It will be more like $50 (Entertainment Fee).
Schools already do this with long distance. They pay about 2.9c/minute and charge students between 10 and 25. I know the school I worked at really hates that so many students are using cellphones with unlimited LD... it's really cut into the bottom line. I'm sure they'd love to find a way to make that back up through some kind of "communications/technology fee" that allows students to download music and gives the schools indemnity from lawsuits.
Everybody wins, except, of course, the student.
Re:Not first post but close (Score:3, Insightful)
Schools already do this with long distance. They pay about 2.9c/minute and charge students between 10 and 25. I know the school I worked at really hates that so many students are using cellphones with unlimited LD... it's really cut into the bottom line.
They'll just yentz you where they traditionally yentz you...on textbooks. I have gotten
Re:Not first post but close (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless maybe you are at a music school? Or are taking music classes? Oh wait, knowledge of the arts is worthless knowledge. Actually, it is not knowledge at all, and anyone who says it is is just trying to trick you.
I know the plan sounds like it is more of an 'entertainment' package, but it could be related to the school's curriculum, if it were open ended enough to be used that way.
Re:Not first post but close (Score:2)
You know, kind of like football teams.
Re:Not first post but close (Score:3, Interesting)
This is nothing new. When I attended U of MD, there was a manadatory fee for tickets to all the home games. Didn't matter if you wanted to attend or not (like me and many of my friends), you paid for the tickets. Now here is what really pissed me off. If you didn't pick up your tickets to the next game by a certain time (yes, you had to go get a new ticket for each game), t
Re:Not first post but close (Score:2)
Re:Not first post but close (Score:2)
Re:Not first post but close (Score:2, Informative)
If the uni's library doesn't have it, travel to the local public library. They probably do.
Re:Not first post but close (Score:2)
Re:Not first post but close (Score:4, Insightful)
Aside from that, there's always been an effort on the part of many universities to make school (appear to be) more affordable. Dorm rooms, meal plans, student IDs which can be swiped in a vending machine, cable, internet access, and healthcare are all examples of services which do not directly provide education or advance human knowledge.
So, in conclusion, it's just you.
Seen somewhere before. (Score:5, Interesting)
The real question is, what if I don't have a computer in my dorm room? Do I still have to get stuck paying this?
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure the RIAA will continue to happily sue college people running big mp3 servers. I don't see how this would change that.
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure the RIAA will continue to happily sue college people running big mp3 servers. I don't see how this would change that.
Yes, they would continue to sue them, because this is a seperate system. They are trying to play off the people who claim "if music was available for a reasonable price online, I would pay for it". Well, if you use the universities system (which may appear to be free to you, but still legal) you can still get your mus
How the U of A handles this kind of fee (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, you would. Most (or I daresay, ALL) colleges have publicly accessible computers, or at least accessible to all students, and if they were paying for the services, they'd be likely to have the client installed on such computers.
One possibility, though, would be for students to waive the fee, either because of financial or moral reasons. Such an individual would need to sign a waiver of some sort, but this is the system that the Univ. of Arizona uses to put a lot of small -- but non-mandatory -- fees on all the students' bills. Students have the choice to not fund things like the Rec Center and Student Body, but virtually all of them do. It works pretty well, keeping the naysayers from making a huge issue of the fees, while still providing almost 100% of the funding that a mandatory fee would.
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone seems to ask this, as if this is a totally novel concept. Look around, people! This goes on all the time. People who don't have cars, or who only drive locally, pay taxes for interstates. Vegans pay taxes that pay for meat inspections. Creationists pay for research on evolution.
When things have a small marginal cost, so that individual monitoring and charging is not efficient, an
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:2, Interesting)
Now why the hell should I have to pay for music that I may:
a) not want
b) not be able to play on something other than windows (note I said may, who knows what kind of anti-copy protection they'll slap on this)
This is absolutely idiotic and just a way for RIAA to make money.
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:2)
This is an example of two very large, very powerful groups trying to take advantage of a captive group - college students. If I was still in school, I would protest the living shit out of this, and current students should do the same.
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:2)
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:3, Interesting)
EXACTLY. I think they are going in the wrong direction for free downloadable music.
What they need to do, is start streaming Internet radio stations for the students. And technology is easy enough to have people choose the playlists, its still streaming radio, and subject to the internet radio costs. Throw some radio ad's in so it can fund itself. No cost to the students.
Wonder at 10(
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:2)
Actually, *everyone* pays for music on the radio, so it has the same problem as this scheme.
Commercial radio: increased price on the products advertised to fund the advertisers' market growth; higher supermarket bill.
Public radio: mostly tax supported, if there are any that survive purely by subscription or donation then I tip my hat to them... it's not easy to pay for transmitter ti
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:2)
What...you think the RIAA will stop receiving their CD-R tax? Hell no! This will be an additional revenue stream, and once it's enacted, it will be viewed by the industry as a right, and will be extremely difficult to retract.
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:2)
The real question is, what if I don't have a computer in my dorm room? Do I still have to get stuck paying this?
There is still a university with dorms that doesn't require incoming students to own a computer?
Most every school I have been to or visited (about a dozen) already requires or is considering the requirement as a condission of admission that the student own a computer that meets certain specs.
I don't particularly like it, especially when it comes to public schools where a good chunk of the
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seen somewhere before. (Score:2)
2. Music (in this case) is entertainment, and not mandatory. You could argue the same for sports, except the athletes are getting some value from that.
3. The schools aren't looking to do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Their trying to keep the RIAA off their backs. What they should be doing is addressing the issue legally, either by challenging the RIAA or locking down their own networks so P2Ps don't present a problem. Cop out.
Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
Examine what your target market is doing, then change the business model to match. It makes perfect sense and they're finally catching on.
It reminds me of George Washington Carver's solution to a problem. The university students were walking on the grass instead of the paved walks, and wearing muddy trails. Carver simply noted where the students walked, and put sidewalks there. Problem solved.
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Insightful)
Here here!! You hit the nail on the head with this one. I am not a lazy person. I chose to be an efficient person. In my industry (automotive) efficiency is our livelihood. I don't want to spend a minute more of my free time at work than I do want to spend it perusing the shelves at my local RIAA store. If I find some
Yes but what about indie musicians? (Score:2)
I hate te RIAA and I want to boycott them for life, I dont mind paying for music, but what about indie artists? Forget about the RIAA, how can we allow ARTISTS to get paid?
Yes but the RIAA wants a monopoly. (Score:2)
Is it fair to do this? What about indie artists who want people to buy their music? Why should the RIAA get to sell music but no one else?
I think this is the RIAA bullying people into paying the tax. Read my journal entry.
Re:Yes but the RIAA wants a monopoly. (Score:2)
Re:Yes but the RIAA wants a monopoly. (Score:2)
The RIAA has claimed many indie labels are RIAA members when they actually arent.
Re:Yes but the RIAA wants a monopoly. (Score:2)
Schools caving to blackmail (Score:5, Interesting)
Not a good idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the university's responsibility to take all the students' money and then provide all kinds of services. The university should charge for and provide essential services (these days that could include internet) and let the students' spend their remaining money as they see fit. Universities should not dictate the entertainment of their students.
Re:Not a good idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
The city of Boulder was not pleased, and they passed the so-called "couch law", which forbade residents from keeping couches and other indoor furniture outdoors (during the riots, couches were a very frequent and ready source of burning material). However, most of the couches didn't come from student housing, and the city residents got pissed. The school, in turn, reacted by raising tuitions for a so-called "riot tax", which would help to reimburse the city for the cost of riot-cleanup.
Naturally, students were now pissed. But since the school had no foolproof way of singling out specific individuals responsible for the crimes, they had no choice but to bill everyone. Given that most rioters were students (but most students were not rioters, mind you), this seemed pretty fair, imho.
Now, the only difference I see between this, and the present situation is that a riot has a fairly undisputable price tag. You can find out exactly how much damage was caused, and there's really no arguing the numbers. However, with "stealing" music, the damage isn't so concrete. It's a matter of potentially-lost-income, which is a debate I dare not redrudge up on slashdot.
So as a student, I would be willing to pay a bill to my school in the event that my school were actually sued in court for damages caused. But, I have no intention for paying a yearly bill which essentially boils down to the music industry shaking the good old money tree and seeing what falls out.
Re:Not a good idea. (Score:2)
In your example, the rioters remained anonymous...hence the blanket charge (which doesn't really sound right, either, IMHO).
It doesnt, the RIAA are thieves. (Score:2)
Now they want to tax us and rob consumers of every last penny. The RIAA is evil, we must boycott them, take their CDs and throw them into the ocean damnit!!!!!
Bad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
This program should include an opt-out option, at the very least.
Furthermore... it will be interesting to see if the files they feed the students (which they will have paid for) will be useless due to DRM. There is an increasing number of college students running linux. If they have to pay for something they can't use... they are not going to be happy. And neither will I... and my tax money helps fund the public universities and I would prefer to not have my tax money going to the RIAA, seeing as they may not pay for it all with tutition increases. Even if my tax money doesn't go to the RIAA, a government sanctioned organization should not be forcing it's students to pay (in their tutition) for a monopilies product... although there are plenty of examples of them already doing that...
Re:Bad thing... (Score:2)
But the problem is tha
Re:Bad thing... (Score:2)
Let me describe a scenario to see if I understand you correctly. Normally the government runs welfare, top to bottom. Let's say a private corporation takes over. It runs everything now, about as efficiently and about as fairly. So from the perspective of someone on welfare, there is no difference. Are you saying t
Re:Bad thing... (Score:2)
RIAA tuition fee? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:RIAA tuition fee? (Score:2)
It was easier to go around the system. We didn't have the funds to pay no stinking licensing fees.
Captive audience (Score:3, Interesting)
This is lame. (Score:2, Insightful)
This reminds me of the Internet tax, by which everyone would have to pay extra money for their Internet connections so a few dolts could get free music legally.
I already get free music legally: I compose it. Necessitating that I pay more for something unrelated so I can have the opportunity to get someth
MIT is trying something like this (Score:3, Informative)
It'd better be optional (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, if a college offered "free" DRM'd music, and people continued to share unencumbered music, maybe they'd get a clue. I can guarentee free music in open formats would kill P2P at a college.
non-commercial alternatives? (Score:5, Interesting)
what if your style is industrial, ambient, techno, folk, noise - whatever... stuff that isn't top-40 is most likely going to be ignored completely; and these students will still be forced to pick up the tab
There's a 'field house' here at the university [www.mun.ca]; a nice recreation facility, but there was a HUGE uproar from students who didn't want to foot the 40$ per semester fee to use it whether they'd actually use it or not - i forsee similar outcries about any service which likely would suck for all but the lowest common denominator - pop music is all you'll see, and it's what we're all force-fed right from the start
Re:non-commercial alternatives? (Score:2)
It's not through cable internet, but our Comcast digital cable has stereo (I think they say CD-quality) music on the 900 channels. We have line-level stereo outputs on the digital box, so you only have to feed them into a receiver and jam away!
Whatever they do (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Whatever they do (Score:2)
If anything, it's someone testifying firsthand that they are essentially being wrongly accused of theft.
Radio stations over the LAN (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps they should consider setting up some shoutcast/icecast style stations to stream music over the college LAN? Assuming it can be done cheaply and legally, this would be pretty neat. If people like the radio stations enough, they will spend less time messing with MP3's.
It would sure beat a DRM'ed library of music that I have to pay for, that would lack the convience,variety, and quality of what is already on my harddrive.
Re:Radio stations over the LAN (Score:2)
The RIAA gets theirs.
As my econ professor said... (Score:5, Insightful)
"There is no such thing as a free lunch."
Maybe this is just my gut reaction, but maybe colleges should be spending their time working on EDUCATION and not SELLING MUSIC. Leave that to the music companies, stores, etc.
Stuff like this is symptomatic of a (youth) obsession with music. Personally, I'm completely sick of hearing about music[companies,sharing,piracy], and I think that both the music companies and media(inc. slashdot) continuously overstate the significance/importance of music. You can rape 'em at the voting booth(if they even show up), you can make it nearly impossible for 'em to travel without the government massively invading their privacy(on the assumption hijackers will use real names, birthdays, etc)...and they won't even lift an eyebrow. Tell 'em they can't "share" their music, and they get absolutely RIPSHIT.
God forbid we should worry about the important things, like who is going to pay for our parent's medical care, our environment, our rights as individual citizens, our massively corrupt politicians, overpopulation, corporate greed...
US Education system isn't about education (Score:2)
I don't exactly know when it happened, but the American educational system stopped being primarily about education and instead is about being a social welfare delivery system. It's why schools spend so much (and are still short of books, teachers, and classrooms) and deliver so little.
College campuses are almost idealized socialist countries -- the college is the source of e
Re:This is wrong, the RIAA is getting free lunch! (Score:2)
Pushing Pop Music? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pushing Pop Music? (Score:2, Insightful)
Which colleges/universities? (Score:3, Insightful)
Multimedia Library (Score:2)
This is like ground breaking in the original idea department!!!!!
The main challenge in this article is how to make licenses that allow a member library to distribute copies of works among their members.
The libraries could probably go a long way if they simply had a kiosk system that allowed only one copy of a song to play at a g
Sigh (Score:3, Insightful)
And thus, it will fail. College Students tend to have the most diverse of music tastes, and from what I have read about the various music services, most of what is available is the more popular current music. Beatles and Rolling Stones tunes are next to impossible to come by.
We all want the best, not some half assed attempt at pretending this is better. If I can't get my music from their legitimate service, I'm going to get it elseware.
Also, from my understanding of state laws, State owned (and funded) schools would likely have a difficult time getting something like this started, "A mandatory fee for a commercial service not provided by a university" wouldn't look very good on a budget itinerary for a cash strapped (all) state.
Who picks the music? (Score:3, Insightful)
The article doesn't talk about DRM controls, but I would assume that the system would prohibit burning CD's and limit copying to portable devices. Excuse me, but isn't this already available to students (iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.) who want to pay for this service?
The music industry will get lots of revenue through these contracts, and the universities will get some legal coverage to avoid being dragged into court. The universities will probably even take on a service charge to whatever the music industry charges.
Universities are interested? Bet I know why... (Score:4, Interesting)
Most universities are terrified, repeat, terrified, of being legally liable for anything. They are doubtless motivated in this case not by the desire to provide music to students, but to provide assurance that they are not going to be sued, no matter how unlikely it may be.
Does anybody remember how the RIAA quietly went around and threatened to sue universities that did not block Napster? Right after this happened, mine announced they were blocking Napster because of 'bandwidth' reasons. This is the same kind of situation, the universities are just dying to pay protection money. They will do anything to avoid the high costs and bad publicity that could come with a lawsuit.
The DMCA protects universities (Score:2)
Enjoy Free Legal Music with iRATE radio (Score:5, Informative)
But there is the problem of finding the music, and weeding out the bad stuff without actually having to download and play it all.
This problem is solved with iRATE radio's [sourceforge.net] collaborative filtering:
iRATE radio's server has 46,000 tracks registered in its database - so if you use iRATE, you don't need to go hunting for music anymore. All of these are legal downloads from websites like mine [geometricvisions.com]. (I compose for the piano.)The way iRATE works is that it downloads a few tracks at random at first. It downloads them directly from the artists' Web sites after finding them in its database. (The author of iRATE is careful to register only legal downloads.) After you listen to and rate the tracks, your ratings are sent back to the server where it uses statistical analysis to correllate your ratings with the ratings given by other users. If you like the same kind of music I do, then iRATE will send you all the same music I like. Conversely, if you hate my music, iRATE won't send you the music I like.
iRATE is a java program, known to work on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The client and server are both Free Software, licensed with the GPL.
Here's some screen shots [sourceforge.net].
While iRATE works on Mac OS X, it could stand some improvement. Apple provides a package which can give java programs a native Mac OS look and feel. The project is actively seeking Mac OS X java programmers
Re:Enjoy Free Legal Music with iRATE radio (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I think that this app suffers quite a bit from a bad interface. I'm not sure if the ">>" button starts playing or fast forwards to the next song. The ">>" is normally used to indicate fast forwarding, but in
It's a work in progress (Score:2)
I'll post the URL of your comment on the irate-devel mailing list.
I'd just like to ask that you check iRATE's website [sourceforge.net] from time to time and give version 0.3 a try once it's released. We have several developers now, most of them devoting significant ti
Re:It's a work in progress (Score:3, Informative)
The problem was with running iRate directly off the supplied read-only disk image. Once I moved it, everything worked fine.
I also added a few additional bug reports, which I won't repeat here. Keep this great program up, it has a lot of potential! :-)
One last note - or more of a which, actually: iRate eats CPU cycles like whales eat krill. A non-Java version would be muc
This is terrible (Score:3, Funny)
Have a nice day.
Great but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, if it became a 'fee', all hell would break loose. Colleges already charge a crapload for extra stuff lots of people never use, just on the assumption that you "might" use it.
Examples: (per semester at Virginia Tech)
Student activity fee: $113 (most student activities suck)
Athletic fee: $116 (gym crowded, and don't have to attend gym to excercise)
Rec Sports Fee: $71 (the funny thing is most people who actually do rec sports have to buy their own gear as well)
Bus fee: $30 (I use it, but many others don't)
Pay each of those twice a year and that's $660. I don't even want to think about what the "music fee" would be.
Re:Great but... (Score:2)
Re:Great but... (Score:2)
Just call it extortion, why don't you? (Score:4, Insightful)
It also sounds as though colleges will pay a set fee per student, so they can use the service, thus supposedly freeing up the college of legal liability.
But wait, what happens if the college-affiliated jukebox doesn't carry, say, Rush's CD catalog? As a broke college student who already indirectly paid my $30 extra in tuition to subsidize this program, what am I likely to do? That's right, go onto a Kazaa and pirate those Rush CD's. And then we're right back where we started. And at that point, you can be sure that both my college and I are back on the hook, as far as the record companies are concerned.
More to the point, I think the most pressing concern is how much money from these college jukeboxes would be passed to the artist. The article makes no mention of this. And I'm inclined to think that when I download my DRM-crippled music, at this cut-rate University special fee, the artist is going to get shafted even more than if I had purchased a CD. And to me, the whole point of buying music is to support the artist. If a big chunk of my dollar doesn't support the artist, then piracy seems a moral option. I can always go to the artist's concert later, paying for tickets and t-shirts.
So to sum up, there's plenty of reason to be distrustful of this. It looks like a way for record companies to take $30 or whatever for each college student, and then to continue going after these same students, when they resort to piracy after realizing the college jukebox sucks.
The RIAA (Score:2)
Legally liable? (Score:2)
A paranoid person would think that the RIAA was just attempting to set up one large, rich target rather than suing each and every moneyless student independently.
Re:Legally liable? (Score:2)
I've got a better idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot major universities in dire straits financially, and of the ones I've observed, their problems are owed to very poor decision making by presidents and boards that don't know how to run universities as a business. If universities want to increase profits, they should reengineer their existing business processes
Re:I've got a better idea... (Score:2)
Universities? For profit? Very few are run this way, in America at least. Public unis are not supposed to be run like businesses. What businesses have tenured employees and fund open-ended research? If everything in the world were run purely for the immediate monetary gains, civilization would not move forward.
Some universities think that research is inefficient, and tenured faculty are lazy. So they
Re:I've got a better idea... (Score:2)
I did a visit of one major internatioal university in Chicago a few years ago that was (and still is) going through a finan
Its not about music, its about 40% more tuition! (Score:3, Informative)
So while I like the idea of them trying provide free music for the students (or seem free), its more of a value added feature when you have to pay 40%+ more in tuition.
It must be a tough to attract kids to colleges with these budget costs, cutting fund for additional programs, and the harsh job market for software/computer related jobs. Anything they can do to make the life a little easier on the students is almost a business decision, a very smart one.
Gotta see the trees through the forest, Free music for colleges is more about avoiding lawsuits, tuition prices and attracting students.
DRM test bed (Score:5, Interesting)
*** This Month Only!: The Metallica add on pack is
only one penny more for the first three months*
*One year contract at standard pricing required.
After providing this "service" to the nation's colleges for a time the RIAA will have trained the next generation of music consumers to accept usurious licensing fees in exchange for digitally managed content without batting an eye.
*** Note: Beginning next month all Britney Spears
content will be disabled pending the release of her new masterwork - - "Ooops, I made Millions again"!
yeesh,
Fibonacci Ceres
They better make it per-user... (Score:2, Interesting)
The only way it would work... (Score:2)
Repository for copyrighted information (Score:5, Interesting)
I shall call my creations LIBRARIES and students will flock to them.
Seriously folks, Universities have the infrastructure already. Have the library buy the CD. Load the CD on a server and seal the origional in a vault. Stream the cds to the users (athenticated via library card). Set the server to one stream per purchased copy and it is all fair use. How alout them apples RIAA!
SD
Universities used to PRODUCE music (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing that's been left out of the debate thus far is the role of University communities in the production of music. And of course they are free to freely distribute on their own internal networks music which they have written and produced.
Universities have music programmes --everything from aspiring rock and roll bands to amateur chorale groups and semi-professional jazz ensembles, to chamber orchestras and full-blown symphony orchestras. Has the RIAA taken so much control over the terms of the debate that the role of University communities in providing cheap or free innovative cultural events is pushed so far over to one side as to be completely missing? Personally, I think the Universities have a duty to their students to discourage the RIAA crap music and provide a superior product themselves -- in the name of education.
As an example, a coffeehouse at Cornell, we had a folk concert series called "Bound for Glory" that usually featured one local or not-so-local artist and an opening act by a student or student group. And it was broadcast free-to-air on the campus radio station. What better way is there for students to learn about music performance, production and distribution than for them to DO IT THEMSELVES? The Talking Heads started out at RISD, and the music scene surrounding the university community in Athens, Georgia is legendary for producing such bands as REM and The Indigo Girls. Carnegie Mellon University would be the ideal place to start producing its own MP3s for distribution on campus, because it has both one of the best Computer Science departments in the country and one of the best music schools in the country. In cities like Boston and New York, you could have consoria, between, say, MIT nad the Boston Conservatory of Music; between Columbia and Julliard. I can see NYU publishing its own film productions on internal broadband, UCLA and USC as well. Certainly, they're already doing things like this, but why not promote it to students as a much better thing to do than downloading some crap 80's music that you can hear on the radio anyway?
Quite frankly, I'm really disappointed with both the musical taste and leadership of college students that are such passive consumers and apparently incapable of producing anything better than what the RIAA would sell them. Pathetic! Is it that they're so technically incompetent that they cannot find music on campus to record and distribute via mp3's-- or is it that their leadership and creative abilities are so underdeveloped that they can't even recognise what a fantastic opportunity it is to be at university, where there are already all of the facilities and pool of highly developed talent available to put on -- and electronically distribute -- creative productions?
I think the Universities should seize the high ground they have such easy access to. In 5 years the RIAA will be begging the Universities for access to the Universities' MP3 archives for wider distribution. You know, those early recordings of the frat party gigs of the student band that went platinum after graduation. That remarkable performance of early church music on the University's collection of medeival instruments. Stephen Speilberg started his career with a student film at USC, and Spike Lee started his career with student films at NYU. Why not have a media server plus a critical forum for viewing and commenting on student films, student music, student plays? The HECK with the *crap* the RIAA is laying claim to. They can KEEP it. Sheesh!
People deliberately go to University in order to be exposed to the good stuff, and to hone their critical thinking via discourse with the best -- i.e. why Mahler trumps Britney Spears and why Melville is better than Mills and Boon. The Universities are doing the students a disservice in protecting the students from RIAA legal moves -- not that they should be offering legal protection when they steal other artists' copyrighted (a
Student rep? (Score:2)
I guess the student representative had a class or something, right? How is it that we, the students, have no say in something that will inevitably effect the cost of tuition, which is already sky high at most places? Not all college students infringe copyrights. Some of us actually respect them, even if we don't like them. All that means is that our music selection is much more limited than the guy in th
Paying more to go to school is bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
Paying more and having it go to the RIAA, or to some RAP artist who you would never support or listen to is even worse. Making all students pay for this, directly or indirectly, on the assumption that some will illegally copy music, is crazy.
Pay the RIAA Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Pay them nothing. Let them starve the way they let their artists starve. How on earth did we ever get to a place where a company can claim to own our culture, and even worse, have a lot of average joes believe that's the way it has always been?
Folks, we the people own our culture collectively. Yes, artists create, but without people watching/listening/enjoying the creation, it don't count for diddly squat. It's a conversation, you see, and twisting it into a monologue is just nuts.
So get up from the keyboard and do something about it. I personally am working hard on the Howard Dean presidential campaign, but take whatever approach you like. Just do something.
This gives the RIAA what it really wants (Score:2)
What are the chances that independent artists will have access to getting into these jukeboxes, even if they're willing to donate content?
Needless to say, I'm hoping this project fails utterly, I'm working with an indie artist.
Of course, given the timeframe and the rate of change w
Why should States/Feds collect taxes for RIAA (Score:2)
--sounds of silence of US congresss--
I for one do not want my f**king taxes goign to the f**king RIAA!
ISP-level service? (Score:2)
Very Bad Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds like one of the best ideas I've heard to take market dynamics out of music distribution.
Let me put it another way: Do any of you remember banalty tax from History of Western Civ 1?
Simply put, these are royalties due to an entity in exchange for a service, even if you don't use it. How do you "vote with your dollars" when you can't choose what your dollars go towards, or if your dollars can go at all?
On the flip side, this is a great deal for the music industry: They get a garunteed revenue stream for doing nothing. Hell, they can completely quit producing new or interesting works and continue getting paid for 95 years, with that back-library of theirs.
This also sets a great example for the economics students. Who needs all those complicated supply/demand and market dynamics theories? All you have to do to get rich is convince someone you deserve a tax revenue. This can be a private institution (Universities, in this case) or the Federal government (place a media tax on something and funnel the money back to you). Why work for hard-core capitalism when you can have the much simpler capitalistic socialism?
Cue the banalty song.
But the question is... (Score:2)
Don't Throw The Baby Out With The Bath-H20 (Score:2)
First, this opens up the door of digital music distribution and licensing wider than it has ever been opened up before. It drags the record companies and the RIAA into the 21st century. That alone is a positive step.
Even if this includes DRM, this is a positive step. Remember how copy protection was part of many early PC software programs. It was dropped as the industry matured and they determined
ISPs (Score:2)
The savings in bandwidth costs for ISPs not located in areas where bandwidth is relatively cheap could easily pay for a machine with plenty of disk space to install the software and files on.
Around here, it's about $1,000 a month for a T-1 line. It wouldn't take that many users to use the service to free up one or more
After shakedown, P2P on campus still be target? (Score:2, Interesting)
I have never purchased a music cd, all my music consisting of albums and cassettes. Yet if I decide to go back to college, I'm going to be paying shakedown money straight out of my tuition, with nothing to say about it?
Sort of like the student fees you are forced to pay for the communist public interest research groups, along with their wacko activism you are forced to support.
So do the students and colleges get protection from p2p lawsuits, or do the media/entertainm