Complaints with Content Providers May Send Students Back to Illegal P2P
Colleges are partnering with digital content providers to offer students legal music downloads, but barriers remain. Platform incompatibility and non- portability top the list of complaints to school information technology experts, some of whom fear students will return to unauthorized peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing for their music fixes, administrators said Fri. at a university symposium on intellectual property.
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Pa. State U.’s Samuel Halderman and U. of Md.’s Amy Ginther told librarians, technologists and media specialists the services their schools employ have received mixed reviews from users and they've had to work with providers to fine tune product offerings. Pa. State pioneered in the field, signing a deal with Napster in Nov. 2003, and U of Md. launched its Cdigix service last March. According to RIAA, Cdigix serves 22 campuses, Napster has agreements with 13 schools, iTunes offers an application at 7 and Real Networks and Ruckus make their products available on 4 campuses.
Halderman phased in Napster’s presence at Pa. State over several semesters, first offering the centrally funded service to 16,500 residence hall occupants, then expanding to all 75,000 students and nearly 30,000 school employees. By spring semester of 2005, users were listening to more than 150,000 songs per day, he said. The U. of Md. came to the game later. Ginther said Cdigix reached campus last March after student and administrative task forces studied providers to pick one that would meet their needs. All undergraduates were made eligible for the service, she said. Of Cdigix subscribers, 52% are residential and 46% are commuters.
Still, both institutions are fielding widespread gripes that new and prized tracks aren’t available through Napster and Cdigix, and that neither program supports the Mac platform. At Pa. State, Windows users account for more than 95% of the population. The U. of Md. has more Mac users, Ginther suggested. She said administrators there are urging students to “speak loudly to Apple, instead of to us.”
One U of Md. student told administrators: “The very fact that this new [sic] service doesn’t support Macintoshes alienates me right away. I guess the university doesn’t mind us using P2P services, just the Windows users.” On the flip side, a Windows user who refuses to use P2P networks to download illegal music said the service is “a great addition” to campus life. “It is great that I can now receive the same pleasure as those who break the law without actually breaking the law myself,” the student said. While the U. of Md. now pays for Cidigix, students have indicated willingness to pay a fee for the service. Ginther said the school is grappling with whether to add a line item into the student technology fee, as Pa. State does.
Halderman and countless music lovers at Pa. are irked that Napster uses Windows DRM to encrypt and protect files, so tracks can’t be loaded onto iPods or other MP3 devices. Ginther agreed, but said the desire for portability and the iPod’s ubiquity both may be myths. An informal poll at Pa. showed that 46% of individuals didn’t have a portable listening device, she said. At the time Pa. State was selecting a content provider, only 5% of students had iPods -- a figure that undoubtedly has risen, Halderman noted. Ginther said Cdigix is a workable solution for now, but she’s keeping her eyes how the industry digital content evolves and how her students want music delivered to them. Soon, they might bypass iPods entirely and start requesting tunes on their cell phones, she said.