2008 Woodie Awards
Schools may launch own music downloading services
Emir Senturk--Brown Daily Herald (Brown U.)
Issue date: 9/17/03 Section: News
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(U-WIRE) PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Students at colleges and universities across the nation may soon be able to download digital music legally over their schools' networks as early as this spring -- but they'll have to pay to do it.
File sharing is placing a burden on many schools' networks, including Brown University's, causing slowdowns and outages. Students arriving on campus this year at Northeastern University and Boston College took part in discussions during their orientation periods about the legal hazards and moral implications of file sharing over the Internet.
Administrators at Brown also revamped the University's network access policy over the summer in an effort to drive down costs of rampant file-sharing activity.
But Pennsylvania State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among several schools that see the problem in a different light. Both schools may launch their own music distribution programs within the academic year.
Penn State President Graham Spanier envisions the school as making "what is now illegal legal" by licensing songs from digital music providers, making them available to students via download and then tacking on a certain sum of money to each student's bill, he told the Boston Globe earlier this month.
At MIT, though no specifics of any such program are available to the public yet, a decision is in the process of being made.
"There is certainly discussion about some service options that might be implemented," Tim McGovern, MIT's senior project manager in Information Systems, told The Herald.
McGovern added that active monitoring of the campus network is not the norm at MIT, as is generally the case at Brown.
Northeastern's Information Technology Security Manager Glenn Hill does not see any need for a similar program on Northeastern's campus, even though the school has investigated 20 or so copyright infringements in the past eight months, he said.
"We simply haven't seen students making the case, and we do things regarding (information technology) here based on what it is that the students ask for," Hill said. Citing the costly implications of a campus-based music distribution service, Hill stressed the importance of gauging student interest.
File sharing is placing a burden on many schools' networks, including Brown University's, causing slowdowns and outages. Students arriving on campus this year at Northeastern University and Boston College took part in discussions during their orientation periods about the legal hazards and moral implications of file sharing over the Internet.
Administrators at Brown also revamped the University's network access policy over the summer in an effort to drive down costs of rampant file-sharing activity.
But Pennsylvania State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among several schools that see the problem in a different light. Both schools may launch their own music distribution programs within the academic year.
Penn State President Graham Spanier envisions the school as making "what is now illegal legal" by licensing songs from digital music providers, making them available to students via download and then tacking on a certain sum of money to each student's bill, he told the Boston Globe earlier this month.
At MIT, though no specifics of any such program are available to the public yet, a decision is in the process of being made.
"There is certainly discussion about some service options that might be implemented," Tim McGovern, MIT's senior project manager in Information Systems, told The Herald.
McGovern added that active monitoring of the campus network is not the norm at MIT, as is generally the case at Brown.
Northeastern's Information Technology Security Manager Glenn Hill does not see any need for a similar program on Northeastern's campus, even though the school has investigated 20 or so copyright infringements in the past eight months, he said.
"We simply haven't seen students making the case, and we do things regarding (information technology) here based on what it is that the students ask for," Hill said. Citing the costly implications of a campus-based music distribution service, Hill stressed the importance of gauging student interest.