File sharing at Columbia U
p2p news / p2pnet: On Tuesday we reported that the UConn (Univerity of Connecticut) Information Technology Services plans to ban all p2p file sharing programs, except DC++.
That’s one way of dealing with p2p.
Another is to let hard-core corporate music ’services,’ backed and supplied by the Big Four Organized Music cartel, onto the campus, believes Columbia University .
"This year, University administrators have considered subscribing to a legal online music service," says the Columbia Spectator’s Josh Hirschland.
"Through an agreement with a program like Napster, iTunes, or, most likely, Cdigix, Columbia would join more than 100 colleges and universities nationwide in giving students this kind of service.
"I spoke to administrators dealing with the potential agreement in November, expecting that they would talk about the deal as a perk that tour guides could talk about while promoting Columbia. Instead, they wrapped the deal in language not of rights, but of liability."
Schools that have subscribed to the legal services have found wildly uneven responses, says the post, noting, "subscribing to a legal service is not a guarantee that people will use it. In studies held last spring by several schools that began using legal music services, they found that many students never switched over to them.
"There has been a slowdown as of late. Since i2hub was shut down – an action that founder Wayne Chang has said was due to pressure from the RIAA, no University users have been specifically targeted in lawsuits."
But, "The slowdown appears to be an anomaly," says Hirschland, quoting an RIAA disinformation statement which says, "We have a comprehensive approach to addressing piracy on college campuses: … [including among other actions,] when necessary, enforcing our rights against individuals who violate the law. We have and will continue to pursue each of these components as part of our overall effort to discourage students from illegal downloading and encourage them to turn instead to legal services."
At the end of the day, however, "The fact remains that the only way to avoid lawsuits is to have individuals stop downloading illegally, and nothing – not the shutdown of i2hub, not schools subscribing to legal services, and not having front page stories about their classmates being sued out of thousands of dollars and potentially having to leave school – has proved effective in doing that."
Also See:
except DC++ – University bans p2p apps, April 11, 2006
Columbia Spectator – File-Sharing Still Campus Problem, April 13, 2006
April 13th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Penn State has had a contract with Napster to give students free access for over a year now…it works well to find new music that I can then download(without DRM CRAP) from other sources, but it does nothing to prevent piracy since most students have ipods that don’t work with Napster, so they have to either get an itunes account or, if they are lucky enough to live off campus, use p2p.
April 13th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
“…enforcing our rights against individuals who violate the law…”
Will somebody explain this to me. I’m thinking this should read “policies”, not “rights”. Friggin’ doublespeak.