http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=musicNews&storyID=6061840
Wed Aug 25, 2004 12:41 AM ET
By Glenn Maffei
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - Downloading free music will be a usual order of business for college students returning to classes in the coming weeks, but this school year will be different at 20 universities in one simple but groundbreaking way: It will be legal.
The music industry pledged to continue to sue students who download music without paying, but it also is pushing a new approach in the battle against widespread piracy: encouraging university administrations to subscribe to download services on behalf of students.
A report submitted to Congress on Tuesday by the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, which is co-chaired by the music industry's top lobbyist, Cary Sherman, and Penn State University president Graham Spanier, addresses the industry's efforts in the past year to curb illegal file-sharing, including education, enforcement and the university partnerships. A hearing on the report before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property may be held next month.
In the case of Penn State, 15,000 students were given free access in November to download a half-million songs, the first university to start such a program. The university's information-technology fees fund the contract with Napster, a descendent of the company that once threatened the industry's profitability by allowing unsanctioned sharing of music collections.
Now, 20 schools -- including Wake Forest, Tulane, Purdue, and Ohio University -- have climbed on board to give students free or low-cost access to music through a deal with Real Networks' music service Rhapsody. Although students are not be able to keep the music at the end of the school year unless they pay for it, industry and university officials believe that readily providing the music while school is in session takes away the incentive to steal it.
"Ours is clean, it's fast, it's high quality, it's legal," Spanier said.
Meanwhile, the aggressive effort by music industry trade group the Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) to battle unauthorized downloading by suing students, faculty and university employees for copyright infringement continues. As of April, the music industry trade group had filed lawsuits against 135 students, faculty members or employees at 35 universities.
"You have to look at where we're coming from," RIAA president Sherman said. "As little as a year ago, there was still a great deal of reluctance by universities to consider this a problem that they needed to address at all. Now you have universities taking a wide variety of steps to address the problem. ... It introduces students to the concept that music has value and that the people who create it deserve to get paid."
Beyond an interest in discouraging piracy, universities benefit by avoiding tying up "tremendous amounts" of external bandwidth and subjecting computer systems to outside viruses, Sherman said.
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - Downloading free music will be a usual order of business for college students returning to classes in the coming weeks, but this school year will be different at 20 universities in one simple but groundbreaking way: It will be legal.
The music industry pledged to continue to sue students who download music without paying, but it also is pushing a new approach in the battle against widespread piracy: encouraging university administrations to subscribe to download services on behalf of students.
A report submitted to Congress on Tuesday by the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, which is co-chaired by the music industry's top lobbyist, Cary Sherman, and Penn State University president Graham Spanier, addresses the industry's efforts in the past year to curb illegal file-sharing, including education, enforcement and the university partnerships. A hearing on the report before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property may be held next month.
In the case of Penn State, 15,000 students were given free access in November to download a half-million songs, the first university to start such a program. The university's information-technology fees fund the contract with Napster, a descendent of the company that once threatened the industry's profitability by allowing unsanctioned sharing of music collections.
Now, 20 schools -- including Wake Forest, Tulane, Purdue, and Ohio University -- have climbed on board to give students free or low-cost access to music through a deal with Real Networks' music service Rhapsody. Although students are not be able to keep the music at the end of the school year unless they pay for it, industry and university officials believe that readily providing the music while school is in session takes away the incentive to steal it.
"Ours is clean, it's fast, it's high quality, it's legal," Spanier said.
Meanwhile, the aggressive effort by music industry trade group the Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) to battle unauthorized downloading by suing students, faculty and university employees for copyright infringement continues. As of April, the music industry trade group had filed lawsuits against 135 students, faculty members or employees at 35 universities.
"You have to look at where we're coming from," RIAA president Sherman said. "As little as a year ago, there was still a great deal of reluctance by universities to consider this a problem that they needed to address at all. Now you have universities taking a wide variety of steps to address the problem. ... It introduces students to the concept that music has value and that the people who create it deserve to get paid."
Beyond an interest in discouraging piracy, universities benefit by avoiding tying up "tremendous amounts" of external bandwidth and subjecting computer systems to outside viruses, Sherman said.
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