College pact a fresh start for Napster

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By Dawn Chmielewski | Mercury News

FREE MUSIC FOR STUDENTS CAN NOW BE HEARD LEGALLY

The Napster service that Pennsylvania State University once banned for enticing students to steal music is back -- with a twist.

Penn State will offer students free access to the new, recording industry-sanctioned version of Napster as an alternative to legally dubious file-swapping services like Kazaa.

``We truly believe this could be an important first step in changing the way our students access music -- and perhaps ultimately movies -- and a great service that we want to provide for them,'' Penn State President Graham B. Spanier said Thursday at an education technology conference in Anaheim.

The pilot program launched Thursday is an attempt by nascent online music services like the reconstituted Napster to enter the potentially lucrative college market, where students are passionate about music, even if they've grown accustomed to downloading it for free. And it gives educators a legally palatable alternative to unauthorized downloading.

At Penn State, all 18,000 students living on campus will receive the Napster service when the spring semester starts Jan. 12. The service includes unlimited access to Napster's catalog of 500,000 songs, programmed radio stations and other features, such as music videos.

Penn State will pay an undisclosed fee out of the $160-a-semester information technology fee the university collects from each student for access to the campus computer network. The only time students will receive a bill is when they purchase a track to burn on CDs or transfer to a portable music player.

`This will be the first step in a new legal approach designed to meet student interests in getting extensive digital access to music,'' said Spanier. ``We believe it will serve as a model for the nation's higher education students and universities.''

Not coming west yet

Officials at San Jose State University and University of California-Berkeley applauded the Napster-Penn State program as a sign of progress in once-contentious relationships between educators and the recording industry. But they aren't planning on rolling out similar services soon.

``UC-Berkeley does not have a student technology fee to use as part of the full site license the way Penn State does. We are not looking at any additional student fees due to the large increase in tuition costs in California this year,'' wrote chief information officer Jack McCredie in an e-mail. ``However, we will certainly follow the Penn State pilot very closely. If our students would like such a site license and be willing to fund it in some way, I'm sure we could implement it quickly.''

Shelley Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on Education, said he thinks the Napster deal with Penn State is, ``one of several that I think are going to be tried out over the next year as a means of accommodating students so that they do not have to risk personal liability to enjoy the music that they would like to have.''

The music industry has been working to forge such partnerships since May, when it invited Napster and other licensed online music services to meet with educators on the campus of Georgetown University. All the budding services -- RealNetworks' Rhapsody, Apple's iTunes Music Store, and MusicMatch -- have developed special pricing plans to entice colleges and universities, according to a well-placed source.

Applause

It is the essential ``carrot'' in the carrot-and-stick approach wielded by the Recording Industry Association of America, in its efforts to combat campus piracy.

The recording industry has been applying increasing pressure on college administrators to curb student use of file-sharing networks, beginning with a letter last October to 2,300 administrators that vaguely warned of legal consequences if the schools failed to halt copyright infringement.

Last spring, the RIAA turned up the heat on campuses when it sued four students for allegedly operating mini-Napster services on campus. The students reached out-of-court settlements.

RIAA President Cary Sherman said such enforcement efforts are key to the industry's survival because students, once they grow accustomed to free music, would be lost as customers forever.

Ian Rosenberger, president of the Undergraduate Student Government at Penn State, said students have grown increasingly worried about their use of file-sharing networks, especially when the university responds to notices of unauthorized downloads of music or movies by disconnecting the student from the campus network.

Napster offers lots to like -- it's easy to use and offers lots of artist information, said Rosenberger. But he noted Napster still has gaps in its collection it will have to address to woo students accustomed to getting their music from file-swapping services.

``It's going to take some time for students to feel good about this,'' Rosenberger said.

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