Students still prefer p2p
p2pnet.net News:- “At the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y., about half of the 10,000 students have used Napster, which has been available for free since spring 2004, said Charles Phelps, the university’s provost.
“But internal studies suggest that virtually no Rochester students purchased songs from Napster – at 99 cents per track for the right to burn or transfer music to portables.”
The quotes come from a revealing Associated Press story which says, in effect, that despite the Big Music cartel’s sue ‘em all campaign, students are still flocking to the p2p networks and ignoring the over-priced, under-stocked ‘corporate’ services such as Napster.
And the fact Rochester students don’t use Napster is old news.
“American University is one of about 50 colleges that have begun providing students with a legal means to get music online through services like Rhapsody, Ruckus, Cdigix and the now-legal version of Napster,” says AP. “In many cases, services that can cost as much as $15 a month to the general public are being funded through existing technology budgets or student activities fees.”
And one way or another these are, of course, paid for by parents or students, which in turn means they’re also funding entertainment industry marketing efforts which use US schools as sales outlets and enforcement units.
“[...] American estimates that only about half of the 3,800 eligible students actually used the Ruckus service last spring, despite having an anonymous benefactor cover the subscription costs,” the story continues, emphasising it’s, “switching to Napster this fall and will start using student fees”.
And, “Other universities found that although students use such services to listen to music on their computers, many continue to tap file-sharing networks or syphon digital music files from friends to load their portable music players,” says AP.
“Legal services typically offer some 1.2 million tracks, but limit how and where the songs can be heard – often requiring that students stay at their desks. Getting songs to transfer to digital players costs extra, and tracks may not work with all gadgets.”
Then comes the crunch line: “Music retailers say they are banking not so much on students buying tracks now, but on becoming paying subscribers after they graduate.”
But, “Although the companies behind the legal music services continue to add new universities to their client roster, it doesn’t appear they are driving away illegal file-sharing operations – although some university officials contend the legal services have curtailed the illegal activity,” AP continues.
Rochester was the second US university to be sucked in by the Big Four music labels through their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
“We suspect there’s been a drop off,” said Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University, who actively works alongside RIAA president Cary Sherman on the ludicrous Hollywood Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities (JCHEEC).
Penn was the first major US institution of higher education to decide that one way to stop the labels from suing students was to use Napster to pipe their products into the school.
RIAA president Cary Sherman said, “We’ve had the impression that there has been a decrease in the amount of illegal activity on many campuses but not all,” Sherman said. “That’s a reflection of the fact that a legitimate alternative is not sufficient in and of itself.”
You got that right, Cary.
Meanwhile, there are some 3,000 four-year US colleges and universities. But after years of intensive, high-pressure effort and extremely expensive campaigning, with the mainstream media backing them all the way, the Big Music cartel has only been able to penetrate around 300 schools, bringing to mind the disparity between RIAA sue ‘em all claims and their actual effect.
Around 13,300 people, including thousands of students, have been victimized during the RIAA’s efforts to frighten people into buying product.
The labels claim the lawsuits, none of which have actually reached a court, are making a marked impression on file sharers, turning them away from the p2p networks.
In fact, the opposite is true. The chances of any one person being served with an RIAA subpoena are akin to them being struck by lightnining or winning the lottery, and the chances of this happening grow correspondingly smaller as millions of new people sign up for the Net every day.
In July, 2004, in the US, an average of 4,584,111 were simultaneously logged onto the p2p networks at any given moment, says p2p research firm BigChampagne.
The RIAA has been suing people for far longer than that, and they’ve now pilloried 13,300 unfortunate men, women and children. Judging by the huge number of headlines generated by these spurious law suits, and judging by the equally spurious comments regularly pumped out by Sherman, el al, one could be forgiven for thinking the RIAA is indeed convincing people to log off, and stay logged off.
But in fact, by July this year, the 4,584,111 of the year before had soared to become 6,872,768.
Stay tuned.
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See:-
Associated Press – File-sharing continues at colleges, October 28, 2002
old news – Napster? Forget it, say students, July 11, 2005
works alongside – University p2p ‘report’, August 25, 2004
August 20th, 2005 at 7:01 pm
Since students have already proven that they prefer P2P to paid services, and will continue to use P2P even when paid music service is provided, the university should instead put the student fee money to better use, such as in a government lobbying fund, instead of using it to pay off the music industry. If universities across North America organized and fought this war together – rather than surrendering one by one – they might have a chance of holding off the industry’s continuous push for more and tougher anti-P2P laws.
“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”