UW to pay Napster $24,000
p2pnet.net News- “It’s getting harder and harder for students of any age to get an education in the US without being hammered by greedy corporate entities,” we wrote earlier this month, referring to the almost unbelievable pact involving Dell, the University of Washington and Napster, the corporate online music ’service’
“Dell will sell subscriptions to Napster’s digital music service to colleges and universities at a discounted academic rate through Dell account executives,” we reported, quoting Dell, which went on.
“Colleges will be able to use Dell blade servers on campus to store music from Napster’s library locally, allowing network processing speed to remain fast while hundreds of students simultaneously download digital music.”
In another product penetration exercise, Apple weaseled its iPods into Duke University, the music players disguised as ‘educational’ devices.
And these are only a couple of examples of the way in which America’s junior and senior learning establishments have been turned into vast marketing arenas where money, not the acquisition of knowledge, rules.
Penn State paved the way as the first senior US education institution to become a hard-core marketing and sales unit for the entertainment cartels, its teaching and administrative staff acting as unpaid sales and PR people and cartel enforcers. But it’s now common practice.
Paranoid? No. It’s happening. And parents, who haven’t been consulted although they’re ultimately paying for it all both in hard cash and in terms of the well being of their children, don’t seem in the least concerned.
But back to UW. There, school president Mark Emmert believes it’s, “important for universities to establish mechanisms that provide our students with high quality, legal access to the growing body of content available in digital repositories worldwide. This relationship with Dell and Napster will provide us with a state-of-the-art approach to downloading music.”
Kayla Webley, writing for the University of Washington’s The Daily, has ferreted out the details.
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
UW to pay $24,000 for Napster deal
By Kayla Webley – The Daily
The financial details of the contractual agreement between the UW, Napster and Dell show the University will pay Napster $24,000 for student use licenses.
The $24,000 fee will cover a $2 per month academic license fee, for 8 months, for 1,500 students. Dell will also pay $24,000 for an additional 1,500 student licenses.
Dell will contribute a total of $84,087. Along with the student licenses, Dell will pay for 10 PowerEdge servers, valued at $52,887, and their installation — valued at $7,200.
In exchange for their financial contribution Dell is allowed several opportunities to market to students on campus.
Under the provisions the University must exclusively promote the Dell branded DJ, secure two Dell kiosks on campus to feature Dell products and services, facilitate a Dell launch event in the back-to-school timeframe, host Dell information on the UW website, execute an email campaign and participate in a case study.
The UW’s monetary contribution comes from the UW computing and communications department’s discretionary fund, said Norm Arkans, UW executive director of media relations and communications.
“These are not state appropriated funds,” said Arkans. “[The money is] not from the student technology fee, not tax funding and not tuition.”
Instead the money in the fund comes from royalties generated by software and technology that is developed by the University and licensed to manufacturers and users.
Residence hall students will use the 3,000 student licenses purchased by the UW and Dell on the Dell servers. With the license, students will have full access to Napster’s basic service.
The agreement makes the UW the first university to offer a free, legal music downloading service in coordination with a hardware provider.
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Lurking in the shadows in all of this are, of course, the owners of the music and movie cartels who use the likes of Napster, Apple and Dell to get their ‘product’ onto campuses.
Meanwhile, the students don’t even want Napster.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
unbelievable pact – Dell and Napster hook up, p2pnet, July 6, 2005
paved the way – University p2p ‘report’, p2pnet, August 25, 2005
iPods into Duke – Apple’s university gravy-trains, p2pnet, April 20, 2005
don’t even want – Napster? Forget it, say students, p2pnet, July 11, 2005
August 11th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
I find it interesting that the only slant is one of corporate greed and avarice. Specifically the “Apple penetration” and “weaseling into” Duke, nice headlines and slant, but not quite the truth. Maybe they will “pull out” and offer their “respect” and “promise to call tomorrow” as well.
Duke approached Apple to acquire iPods for incoming students as an incentive to attract more students to the school and increase its own bottom line. I think it humorous that it is all about the corporations and their needs to expand vs. the univeristies blatant appeal to our society’s base needs that is exhorted in your article.
Do you guys underwrite for The Star or The Globe? If you are going to report in a yellow press style, change your back ground colors accordingly. Otherwise, present balanced information. Or better yet, let The Onion do the real job of reporting fictions on the net. They do a much better job.