Big Music: selling in schools
p2pnet.net News:- Entertainment industry efforts to turn schools into product marketing and sales divisions, with educational staff acting as unpaid assistants, are becoming increasingly successful.
The Big Music record label cartel, in particular, is achieving this under the guise of saving students from prosecution through suits initiated by the Big Music record label cartel.
More schools offer cheap music downloads for students, says a USA Today headline, leading to the intro:
“More college campuses are adopting deeply discounted – and legal – digital music as the latest amenity for students.
“Several top schools began offering these services in September, either free or highly subsidized. Now, student demand is spurring more university administrators to institute programs in January instead of waiting for fall.”
It’s perfectly legitimate, say proponents, asking, What’s so bad about that? After all, they say, computer companies vie aggressively with each other to have their hardware and software used by teaching institutions.
However, computers have a very definite function, and even blatantly self-serving product such as Apple’s iPod portable mp3 player, offered in some schools as an ‘educational aid’, can be said to have a use, if one stretches one’s imagination hard enough.
But no similar argument can be made for mp3s.
They’re inferior music tracks – lossy, highly compressed copies made from CDs which, for the most part, have already been separately bought and paid for.
The music industry disingenuously claims the presence of mp3s on p2p networks is robbing them of sales, backing this up with equally disingenuous assertions that campuses are among the worst offenders.
This has enabled them to blackmail schools by threatening potentially costly civil suits unless the students buy grossly over-priced ‘product’ from services such as Napster II, which are in turn wholly supplied by EMI, UMG, Warner and Sony-BMG, the four members of the Big Music record label cartel.
It’s now almost established practice and as the USA Today story states, “Some of the biggest and most prestigious schools offer digital music service to their students.”
Tom Warner, director of coordinated technology management at the University of North Carolina, is quoted as saying, “What we hear from our students is ‘We don’t want to be sued’.”
In charge of suing them is the cartel’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) whose president, Cary Sherman, said recently:
“The lawsuits are an essential educational tool. They remind music fans about the law and provide incentives to university administrators to offer legal alternatives”; and,
“College students are some of most avid music fans. The music habits and customs they develop now are now are likely to stay with them for life.” [Our emphasis]
The RIAA has launched lawsuits against nearly 7,000 people, many of them students.
“Our responsibility as educators is to do a better job of explaining what copyright is,” Warner remarks in the story, “and to offer students a legitimate alternative to the peer-to-peer services.”
P2p services aren’t illegal.
And the responsibility of educators is to educate, not to act as music industry sales reps and provide explanations of heavily contested copyright principles on behalf of the music industry.
In the meanwhile, a recent ‘report’ from Hollywood’s Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities (JCHEEC) – co-chaired by Sherman with Penn State University president Graham Spanier situated cosily in the other slot – boasts that at least 20 universities have signed up with corporate online music sales companies, supplied and supported by the cartel, and:
“We are even witnessing that some candidates for student government positions are running on platforms that encourage university administrators to adopt on-line music services,” it states.
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See:-
cheap music – More schools offer cheap music downloads for students, USA Today, December 13, 2004
supplied and supported - University p2p ‘report’, p2pnet, August 25, 2004
December 13th, 2004 at 8:24 pm
Since the RIAA-approved commercial services such as Itunes offer a very limited selection of music – therefore still tempting customers to turn to the P2P networks for their files – I wonder if paying customers would be exempt from lawsuits?
If so, some music enthusiasts might even be willing to subscribe to a pay download service just for the legal protection it offers, without actually using it to download any files.
Just a thought.
December 13th, 2004 at 10:24 pm
If you have a copyrighted file on your computer that was obtained via P2P and missing the all important DRM “protection” you have no immunity, paying customer or not. IMHO that will not change.
December 13th, 2004 at 11:31 pm
My school (EMORY) has, after only 9 subpoenas in the summer, instituted a firewall reminiscent of communist china.
The worst part was the complete lack of official announcement, because they knew how many people would quickly bail out of their housing contracts rather than put up with it.
It blocks legitimate bit torrent traffic from places like p2p congress (am am very heavily into politics), among other more grey but also arguably fair use activities on p2p networks.
They have backed this action by lying through their teeth, saying the blaster worms were comming in through p2p rather than their actual entry through windows security holes.
Finally, after hammering for a whole semester, i got someone in management to admit the truth, but that still hasnt changed things here.
The students are up in arms, but because of the ranking of the school, there is no effective threat which could force their hand, as there are always 10 waiting for each spot which would be vacated..
The director of “legal compliance”, also known by the position “local RIAA sellout”, is talking about forcing us to pay for “legal services” in our tuition!.
I’m a mac user, and 8 of every 10 players here are ipods. the Crapster offered to campus residents in other cases has expired upon graduation, meaning loss of all the music you pay for, or perpetual pay per use forever. Additionally, it lacks the “priveledge” to burn to cd.. (otherwise known as FAIR USE).
Crapster wma files dont work on ipod or mac.. I’d be forced to pay for music which not only do i not agree with, but wouldnt even be able to use. Itunes files only work with ipod.. so my friend with the archos device couldnt use that.
This “protection from ourselves” denies our very sentience as human beings, it insults our intelligence that our universities have decided to take OUR choice from us, and extort money from us under threat of denied education. (no diploma if you dont pay the bills).
December 14th, 2004 at 10:36 am
Let’s not delude ourselves.
Just because you have files in your computer does not make you guilty of anything.
Not to those of us who live in a country with the presumption of innocence.
A copyright owner would first have to prove you have something of theirs to have the police search your computer for it. If they can find anything then they would have to prove the material is theirs and that it was acquired illegally.
Well, in Canada anyway.
In the US the music monopoly blackmails people who can’t pay to appear in court.
December 14th, 2004 at 1:57 pm
Unfortunately, that protection is under financial attack in Canada and there isn’t as many legislator’s to grease to push through whatever the cartel wants.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I’m in the UK and the same problems are here too. Internet service providers are now being “recruited” to spy on their customers internet habits. The big guns will always find a way of squeezing money out of the music business, even if it’s through court settlements