Amid growing concern over peer-to-peer file sharing and illegal downloading, the University of Rochester recently signed a deal with Napster, allowing students to download music legally.
According to Charles Phelps, Provost of the University of Rochester, it is important to educate students about the ethical issues of peer-to-peer file sharing.
“Every time a student downloads a song illegally, that student is violating the U.S. copyright law,” Phelps said. “Students, in large scales, are using our network to do this violating. [The Napster service] is a legitimate alternative.”
Under the deal with Napster, students can stream and download music for free. If a student burns the song to CD, he must pay 99 cents per song or $9.95 per album.
The system is not yet functioning.
“We still have some technological things to work out, and as of now we have no timeline as to when it will be up,” Phelps said.
Penn State recently set up the same deal with Napster. The system launched Jan. 12, the university’s first day of spring semester, according to Sam Haldeman, special assistant to the associate vice provost for information technology services.
Haldeman began looking in early September 2003 at various music services for downloading alternatives. Signing this deal with Napster was the best option for Penn State, he said.
For residence hall students, Haldeman said he found most students just want to download songs, and about 10 percent or less actually burn the music.
“We knew where they were coming from, and they knew what we wanted to do,” he said. “[Napster] gave us the best deal with the best features.”
The university did not go with other services such as iTunes because Napster does not charge students for songs.
Although the University of Rochester and Penn State looked for deals with outside music services such as Napster, UW-Madison has not yet made any decision to bring this service to its students.
UW Housing, the group that would be addressing the issue of illegal downloading, has talked to UW’s network service and decided to hold off until information at Penn State and the University of Rochester comes through, according to UW Division of Information Technology spokesman Brian Rust.
“We are giving it at least a year to evaluate how popular it becomes,” Rust said. “We want to see if it cuts back on illegal downloading and file sharing.”
Rust said UW is not rushing to form a deal with Napster because that would put the university in the realm of providing music for students, and UW is not sure if that is something the university should be involved with.
“Once you go down that path to provide music, that is where [UW Housing] has to look long and hard to see if that is something they want to do,” he said.
With campus housing, UW residence halls have to compete with what students would want in an apartment, like high-speed cable.
If the university is going to provide housing for undergraduates, they strive to provide the same things that are available to private or off-campus housing, Rust said.