Monday, October 13, 2008

College Networks Protect Music Rights

Frankfurt Bookfair is this week October 15-18th

Ars Technica reports on the trend on Campus networks to offer music download services so that students actually pay for music. This is a transparent effort by educational institutions to avoid being named in any potential lawsuits placed by Music publishers. Music publishers could claim that as a network owner, the Universities facilitated and did nothing to prevent students from illegally downloading content. Interesting that they don't seem to have the same issue with Students and Academics illegally unloading college course material.
Isolated stories about this trend have appeared in the tech press for the last few years as schools have tried to convince students (often with little success) to use sponsored solutions instead of peer-to-peer file-sharing. Early music solutions were often Windows-only and used DRM that was incompatible with the iPod, which generally led to failing grades for legal alternatives. Such services have also proved controversial at schools where student fees were used to fund them; the non-eyepatch-wearing landlubbers among the student body tended to object to this use of their money.

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