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Music Media

Penn State Launches Napster Music Service 249

Posted by timothy from the so-that's-what-college-was-for dept.
Owner of Azkaban writes "CNN has a story about PSU launching Napster for its own students." Also at live.psu.edu." This is the service we posted about last fall; in three days, the Penn State system has served more than 100,000 songs.
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Penn State Launches Napster Music Service More

Penn State Launches Napster Music Service

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  • Duh.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by flewp ( 458359 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @06:25AM (#7971674)
    This is old news, I was using Napster years ago. And back then it was free! Of course, we had to walk 15 miles uphill both ways in snow to get our music over a 9600 baud connection...

    Bah, I got nothing.
    • Now that I've actually read the article instead of making a lame attempt at a first post, I have a question.

      The article mentions the service is free (well, included "free" in tuition) and anyone on campus is eligble to use it. It then goes on to say that for a fee you can burn it to CD. So... is it free to download the music and play it on your computer, and you only pay to burn it to CD? And if so, what kind of format are they using and also what kind of DRM?
      • Penn State is using the streaming service from Napster, IIRC. You can listen to the music as long as you subscribe to Napster (ie until you graduate from PSU). If you want to download a track to listen to whenever, it's the standard $0.99/track $9.95/album. Basically, $9.95/month comes out of the money you pay to go to PSU to pay for the premium service that you could have subscribed to on your own (this probably helps the university avoid pressure from the RIAA).
    • The new Napster has ony the name in common with the old service. The files are WMA which require you to 1) be locked into an MS-platform and 2) install pieces of DRM / Palladium / NGSCB where it can interact with all your other data and applications. Being cynical, I'd say its main goal is the latter.

      "DRM on my business documents?! F-ing A, no way. Wait. ... Oooh ... music..."

  • This just in (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @06:26AM (#7971677)
    The SCO group and the RIAA have joined forces, and cross licensed each other's IP. the RIAA is now going to start randomly suing linux users, and SCO will be going after several thousand penn state students.

    In other words, nothing has changed. move along now

  • I assume they've banned DC++ ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rokzy ( 687636 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @06:27AM (#7971683)
    at my uni the DC++ network isn't reachable from uni computers but is from personal computers in campus accommodation. it's so easy and fast a non-free service couldn't compete on equal terms.

  • Napster is back (Score:3, Funny)

    by grey3 ( 160961 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @06:27AM (#7971684)
    Well, it looks like Napster is finally back, but only for "Educational Use Only"
  • From the state that brings you Hershey chocolate! Now they're bringing you something else to feed your laziness! I guess it's all about convenience.
    • So saving money by buying only the songs you want (I assume it's like iTunes, etc, where you pay per song instead of buying a whole album) is laziness?

      Get off your high horse, if you could order something and get it instantly (or within a few seconds/minutes) instead of going out to a store to get it, you would too.

      I've been trolled.

    • I must get some of that! (Score:4, Funny)

      by carndearg ( 696084 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @06:59AM (#7971788) Homepage Journal
      I thought Hershey [hersheys.com] produced those cocoa flavoured sugar candy bars that make such a good alternative to Kendal Mint Cake [cumbria-calling.com] when I'm over there. The news that they also make chocolate [lindt.com] is most welcome, I must try to find some next time I'm somewhere I can spend dollars.
      You'll be telling me next that Cadbury [cadbury.co.uk] have started producing chocolate!

    • How is eating choclate akin to being lazy?
  • out of some odd 83k in the school, only 100k songs in three days? That is less then 2 songs per person, over three days. Regardless at least someone is getting a bigger cut (RIAA, Artist, Napster, whatever)

    • I was wrong (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Crasoum ( 618885 )
      About 6 songs per student. (17k)

      That's what I get for knee-jerk posting.
    • Jason Schultz (staff attorney the EFF) has some figures in his blog [typepad.com]. He reckons the figure is just over 15% of students using the (crippled) service. ISTR you can't play the music anymore once you leave Penn State. A ringing endorsement for sure!

      • Re:Hrm.. The number seems a little low... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Technician ( 215283 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:45AM (#7971936)
        Shh.. Don't tell anyone. Requested streams without the DJ blather.. Line out - Line in VS $1.00 a song that has to be burned on a CD but not saved to hard drive to keep. Watch for these to appear on the local sneaker net as MP3's on CD and DVD's. Don't expect them to anounce this on or off campus. Someone will figure out how to take the freebie music (well included with tuition) with them. Many will reason it's paid for. It's mine. I'll take it with me.
    • out of some odd 83k in the school, only 100k songs in three days? That is less then 2 songs per person, over three days. Regardless at least someone is getting a bigger cut (RIAA, Artist, Napster, whatever) 83k students are in the entire University system. Right now Napster is ONLY available to those living on campus. I don't remember the number of connections in residence halls, but I believe it amounts to around 16k at the main campus.
    • you would download only 2 songs too... maybe not even the 2.. unless you had made sure that this too good to be true event was not a setup by the RIAA to get the money you don't yet have.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • What is a "Penn state" ??

    • Re:for a non yankee.. please explain.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      About 350 years ago, a wealthy Brit was granted a lot of land on the American continent by the British monarchy. His name, William Penn. After the colonies revolted against the British crown, the colonies coagulated into states. Penn's state was big enough that it didn't need to coagulate into a larger territory, so it remained as it was: Penn State.

      One of the legacies of Penn is a love of freedom, and this latest embrace of P2P by Penn State is another in a long string of "Live Free or Die" actions.

      Th

      • Re:for a non yankee.. please explain.. (Score:4, Informative)

        by shadowcabbit ( 466253 ) * <cx AT thefurryone DOT net> on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:23AM (#7971867) Journal
        About 350 years ago, a wealthy Brit was granted a lot of land on the American continent by the British monarchy. His name, William Penn. After the colonies revolted against the British crown, the colonies coagulated into states. Penn's state was big enough that it didn't need to coagulate into a larger territory, so it remained as it was: Penn State.

        One of the legacies of Penn is a love of freedom, and this latest embrace of P2P by Penn State is another in a long string of "Live Free or Die" actions.

        The story of Penn State is long and quite profound, but it's not quite pertinent to this discussion (except for the love of freedom stuff).

        Great. Now for the Rest of the Story, told by someone who actually lives in "Penn State".

        "Penn State", as the above (non-American) poster uses it, is actually the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. (Derived from founder William Penn, "Pennsylvania" is composed from "Penn" and "Sylvania", and generally means "Penn's Woods".) Pennsylvania is one of two commonwealths (not strictly states) in the U.S.; Massachusetts is the other. (The difference is largely semantic to someone not interested in political theory and the like.) Pennsylvania is the only of the original 13 Colonies that does not have a border on the Atlantic Ocean; it is bordered by New York to the north, Ohio to the west, New Jersey to the east, and West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware to the south. The only coastline Pennsylvania has is in the northwest region, on Lake Erie; the city of Erie (home to Gannon University [gannon.edu]) is an important port along the Great Lakes.

        "Penn State" is the abbreviated nickname for Pennsylvania State University [psu.edu], a governmental-run university with its head campus in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (the state capital); there are a grand total of 18 satellite campuses throughout Pennsylvania. Penn State is known for its football team, the Nittany Lions. For any more detailed information, check the link. (I went to Gannon, so I could tell you more about that school.)
      • One of the legacies of Penn is a love of freedom, and this latest embrace of P2P by Penn State is another in a long string of "Live Free or Die" actions.

        Where have you been since 1999? The Napster in question here has nothing to do with embracing P2P, and everything to do with embracing the DRMed, closed, centralized, proprietary, Windows only service launched last fall by the people who bought the Napster trademark after the company was bankrupted by the music industry.

        This service has about as much to

    • It's a prison (Score:3, Funny)

      by SamSim ( 630795 )

      It's a prison.

      Wait, am I thinking of a State Pen.?

      • No, the State Pen (Rockview) is down the road at Pleasant Gap, PA.

        My Dad tells me that during the forties the bonehead students would park along the highway to watch the lights dim.

    • What is a "Penn state" ??

      It's a university located in the state of Pennsylvania.

      Not to be confused with "the state pen", although both are similarly hard to get into and have similar reputations for academic excellence.
    • I'm a Penn State alumnus, and am glad to see that you (eventually) got reasonable answers to your question.

      Now, here's a related one: A friend who recently took a job at Cambridge came back to the US with a packet of "Penn State" brand pretzels, which are apparently popular in England. Can anyone explain why they are so named, and whether it's got anything to do with the university? The pretzel company's web page was not helpful in settling the matter.

  • Why? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by beelsebob ( 529313 )
    There's already a vast number of music stores out there, why didn't they just let the students look at the normal ones? Oh, and while we're at it, didn't iTMS get 1M downloads in 3 days from US mac users when it opened?

    Bob

    • Sure iTMS did sell a lot in a short period of time. Unfortunately, your comparison makes little sense unless the sizes of the population using the two services were comparable. You're not trying to say that the Mac OS X population is equivalent to that of a Big Ten College population, are you?

      Matt Fahrenbacher

  • It probably isnt costing the Uni that much (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrRTFM ( 740877 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @06:56AM (#7971775) Journal
    Uni's and schools get very big discounts on Software and other items, so why not music as well?

    Maybe they got a site license discount on the assumption that a smallish percentage of the students will actually use this service.

    Either way - its a great service for the students, and its a fantastic marketing tool for the Uni- get a degree and we throw in free music downloads!

  • Sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hobbex ( 41473 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:09AM (#7971825)
    Here is a nice prophetic article [theregister.co.uk] from more than two years ago.

    So have fun fighting the battle against [DRM] but please do not be surprised when you fail. After all the war has been lost, long live the new world order: proprietary devices, proprietary interfaces, copy protection, limited functionality, and prepare you credit card accounts for all those monthly rental and service charges you will be paying for every "computer controller consumer electronics device" you use.

    Every inroad that DRM makes, every time a service like this or the iTMS is lauded here where the only chance toward resistance should reside, the hope for an open future slips further and further away. Every time somebody sits down at a computer and accepts that the software decides how and what he is allowed to communicate, every person that buys the line that is good when he tied down because it helps keep him honest. Every programmer who writes software whose purpose is to betray and control the person who runs it. Every person who reads a UELA that says the software has the right to delete information and other software against the users wishes and shrugs.

    Anyone who believes that ubiquitous DRM can coexist with open networks, open communication, and open software is deluding himself. Either these services fail, or everything that this site was created to celebrate does. Our network has only one future.

    • Re:Sigh... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MrRTFM ( 740877 )
      The average user who clicks OK OK OK OK to get the software/music/whatever installed does not currently give a shit about any DRM crap.

      They just want to get it working... now once this simple method of click through installs [ignorance] starts to fail and they realise the CD they bought wont work in their car, or the software they bought wont run after 3 months - they will scream loudly and it will really be heard.

      'Poor Grandma Jones saved for 341 months to buy an MP3 for her grandsons new car hifi sy
    • You are probably right that eventually the copyright owners will win the DRM wars, although they are not doing too well at the moment. However, I think that the genie is out of the bottle in that there is an awful lot of open content and hardware out there. I can take my home computer, and my iPod, and even if they discover a perfect DRM for CDs tomorrow, pretty much all the music published to date is still available.

      They can't ban existing CDs or minidiscs or vinyl or cassettes, and I can get all of them

  • No free lunch, Linux, or Napser (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AngstAndGuitar ( 732149 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:15AM (#7971841)
    which comes free with their tuition.

    The article says that the service is "free", but in actuality, students are paying for it in their tuition, when they could be having more useful services provided by the school, like a site license for more online research databases, or simple more trees and benches on campus.

    What a waste.

    And then students are told that it's "free", I bet half of them even beleave it, but as the old saying goes, "There's no free lunch", McBride seams to think there is no free SCO/linux(tm)*, and there is also no free napster.

    *Largly due to the fact that he's visualy inspecting the interior of his own colon.
    • I would invite you to take a good look at Penn State in how it functions and how it looks. No, the service is not completely free, it takes a bit out of the standard Computing Fee charged to all students. This fee increases a few dollars every year to cover inflation and flux in tech prices. What is happening here is cost is being reallocated from another area covered by this IT fund. Yes students are still paying for it, but the cost increase to them is negligable.

      In terms of site licenses for higher-
      • In terms of site licenses for higher-end specialized software. This is covered on a need basis by individual departments. It does not make sense to have a 2,000 unit license for Oracle if only a few hundred will ever use it. Things like that typically come out of faculty research money (most of which comes from outside the Univ).

        Thank you. A little more detail in how a university is set up (at least, PSU)... The university is divided up into Colleges, and each College is divided up into Departments. (For
      • What is happening here is cost is being reallocated from another area covered by this IT fund. Yes students are still paying for it, but the cost increase to them is negligable.

        Oh, that's just GREAT [sarcasm].

        So instead of jacking up student fees they just SLASH FUNDING FOR THE REST OF THE COMPUTER DEPARTMENT! Gee thanx, I feel SOO much better about it now.

        It is providing students with a *legal* way to listen to music

        LMAO! The ones strangling *legal* systems is the RIAA cartel itself.

        They flat out r

        • P.S. (Score:2)

          by Alsee ( 515537 )
          P.S.

          I want to clarify one point:

          Would you rather the RIAA go after every student who has MP3s on their machine?

          (A) MP3's are not illegal.
          (B) I want some member of the RIAA to break ranks with the cartel and start SELLING MP3's. That label would absolutely mop up the download market. It would absolutely slaughter every single DRM crippled music service. Everyone else would have to follow suit or quit the business.

          -
      • Yes, I'd love to see the RIAA bankupt itself by trying to sue 40 million file-sharers at once. That would be such a farce it would emphatically demonstrate that the public is not in favor of the current copyright system. But the RIAA is too smart for this.
      • Further, I'd like to mention that the RIAA has no grounds on which to sue the university. It's only a carrier like the phone company or an isp and is not responsible for the behaviour of its clients. Not that this would stop the RIAA from threatening to sue, in order to extort a deal like this one. But the case would be baseless.

  • So when is a Penn State student.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...going to set up a tunnel through his machine to allow us to connect to the service through his machine?

    Hell, I'd even send him a micro-payment for that!

  • Windows Media Player DRM (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ok, so I hear you all bitching and whining about DRM, but it's not really a big deal. After all, you can play the songs for free -- just not copy to another device. And if you can play the songs then it means that WMP has got to the stage of decoding the WMA file.

    After that it's pretty simple. Insert a hook into WMP software (Google for 'wmrip') to write the un-DRMed data to a separate file. And there you have it -- a WMA file that you can keep.

    A simple solution, really.

  • Usage (Score:2, Interesting)

    by vpscolo ( 737900 )
    OK now prehaps this might be seens as a troll but being outside the US is there any special reason Penn State gets napster? Why not all universities?

    Rus

    • Re:Usage (Score:4, Informative)

      by ThogScully ( 589935 ) <neilsd@neilschelly.com> on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @07:53AM (#7971957) Homepage
      If you're from out of the country, then perhaps it would help to clarify that all schools are very different from one another. While Penn State is a state school and thus funded by its local state government (among other sources I'm sure), it is run by the administration of Penn State. Other schools are run by their own respective administrations.

      Each administration decides on its own what's worth spending money on and what's not. Penn State decided this was a worthwhile investment for its student body and other schools have not. Personally, I would side with the other schools if I were a student at Penn State, but as I'm not, I couldn't care less.
      -N

    • Re:Usage (Score:2, Informative)

      by e6003 ( 552415 )
      Looks like Penn State is getting Napster for free [theregister.co.uk]. There are (well-founded IMO) allegations of a conflict of interest [theregister.co.uk] on the part of one Barry Robinson who is not only a trustee of Penn State, but also an RIAA lawyer.

    • Re:Usage (Score:2, Informative)

      by zoomba ( 227393 )
      PSU gets Napster because they initiated a deal with the RIAA to keep the legal hounds at bay. In exchange for working on this service, PSU students were largely spared the music industry crack-down.

      All Universities have the option to develop similar programs to this, but this one specifically was an initiative conducted by PSU.
    • All you have to do is pay for it, and it's yours.
  • The number quoted includes streamed content.

    As far as I understood, the service is "free" for the streaming content, which usually costs a subscription free, but to burn the songs, a separate purchase fee must be paid.

    It would be interesting to see the breakdown b/w streamed content versus "paid" download content. I have a feeling for actual purchases, it would be a low number. However, if I were living on campus with access to broadband and free streaming, I'd be using it all the time! So the number is a

  • Anti-DRM DRM (Score:3, Interesting)

    by locarecords.com ( 601843 ) <davidNO@SPAMlocarecords.com> on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @08:38AM (#7972077) Homepage Journal

    I run LOCA records [locarecords.com] and I've been thinking that a wrapper that expressly indicates the copyleft properties of a song would be a superb step forward as any kind of sharing method would just check that the wrapper was in place. This could be linked to the Creative Commons licenses so that people can find out more information.

    Question is the technical issue of implementation - it really would need to be an extension of the MP3 standard (or Ogg) and would have to be non-changable and able to convince a court should anyone wishing to defend their swapping need to do so.

    Maybe a third-party Verisign-type music label could be the answer that holds a database of public domain tracks that 'signs' the MP3 and which can then be checked against in a database?

    • non-changable and able to convince a court should anyone wishing to defend their swapping need to do so.

      Then you've totally broken the copyleft. Anyone who remixes it or re-encodes it no longer has a valid wrapper.

      sharing method would just check that the wrapper was in place.

      So if I record a song, or write a text, or take some pictures, your system will refuse to let me simply send my stuff to anyone, including my brother Bob in TimBukTu?

      -

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @09:46AM (#7972564)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • *shrugs* from a psu student (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dalamarian ( 741404 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2004 @10:03AM (#7972705)
    I know all of the rhetoric, like this is "a step in the right direction" but I can't say that I am all that excited. I can't use this service as I live off-campus, don't use XP or 2k and I am not particulary fond of WMA. Not that I am really angry about it (unless my activity fees increase), but I am just not all that excited either. In addition, from my on campus friends, most of them said that it was a lacking in user interface but was still manageable. The biggest gripe was that a lot of artists/songs (popular ones) are no where to be found.
  • Only when I'm this tired could I read
    • "By Monday, more than 8,000 visits were logged on the Napster Web site"
    and think I'd read
    • "By Monday, more than 8,000 idiots were logged on the Napster Web site".
    Somewhere, deep in my subconscious, I guess my early-morning brain does all my translations and fact-checking for me...
  • I remember when it was ths students launching their own napster services.
  • ... for a University (goverment University it seems, for what I have read here) to enable such "service"?

    If such thing would be procured on my native Mexico on a public University the university's director wold find himself without a job in a very short time...
  • If I'm reading the FAQ [psu.edu] correctly then it looks to me like students at PSU can stream any song that they want but if they want to actually put it on an iPod^H^H^H^HiRiver or whatever then they actually have to shell out their own money for the track that they then can keep for playing away from their computer.

    Also, since this is a service that is drawn from out of the students' tuition fees that means that everybody is paying for it. What about people with a Mac? What about Linux/BSD geeks?

    There are a lot
  • Penn State President loves Microsoft, Napster, the RIAA and Al Gore (true) [theregister.co.uk]

    There is magic behind Penn State's Napster deal [theregister.co.uk]

    Penn State trustee and RIAA lawyer denies conflict of interests [theregister.co.uk] ...Praise to El Reg for doing that thing many American journalists seem to have forgotten to do: investigative reporting.

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