quote:

Starting next year, Penn State will provide students with Napster's premium service, which includes unlimited streaming and tethered downloads, 40 radio stations and an online magazine and message boards. If students want to own the digital music, they can download songs permanently for a buck each. "This will be the first step in a new, legal approach designed to meet student interest in getting extensive digital access to music," Spanier said in a statement. Mike Bebel, president and COO of Napster said in a statement that the service will "meet the needs of students who have demonstrated a voracious appetite for online music." Bebel said Penn State "is paving the way for universities around the country to ensure that a legitimate marketplace for online music thrives." The pilot program will begin in January 2004 and will initially be available to the 18,000 students who live in dorms. However, Penn State plans to roll it out to 83,000 students on 24 campuses next fall. Faculty and staff will also have access to the service next year, and alumni will also be invited to participate in the future. Students will not pay a fee for the new service, which normally costs $10 a month. The program will be paid out of money collected for an existing information technology fee. For the past year, Spanier and Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, have co-chaired a group of university officials and music executives that have explored solutions to the piracy problem on campuses. The group, called the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities Technology Task Force, formed in response to the explosion of illegal file sharing on campuses across the country. As college students sucked up bandwidth using free peer-to-peer services, the entertainment industry stepped up efforts to stop alleged piracy on campuses by mailing notices of copyright infringement to colleges across the country. School administrators were then stuck tracking down alleged violators. Over the summer, the recording industry -- which blames its poor sales on the illegal downloading problem -- took even stronger action by subpoenaing Internet service providers, including universities, for the names of egregious offenders in order to take legal action against them. Several college students have been the target of lawsuits this fall. At the same time, the joint committee issued calls for information on two initiatives: programs that could be used to stop illegal file sharing on campuses, and legal alternatives for digital movies and music that could be tailored for universities. The University of Florida addressed the first issue with its Icarus project, which has been successful in cutting off peer-to-peer use in the school's residence halls. The agreement between Napster and Penn State is the first of about a dozen universities expected to launch similar digital music pilot programs with various providers in the months ahead. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on courts, the Internet and intellectual property, applauded the news. "Today's agreement establishes Penn State as a leader in the fight against the illegal sharing of songs on peer-to-peer networks," Smith said in a statement. "If other colleges and universities take similar steps the widespread violation of intellectual property rights on campuses will be sharply reduced. "A legal online music marketplace -- one that compensates artists and offers listeners high-quality music -- is what we all want to see flourish."

Taken from: http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/...w=wn_story_top5

So what are your thoughts? I think this is quite sad showing how money hungry the RIAA really is. First they sue to have Napster shut down (and win) just because they weren't making money off if it and now they're allowing people to download all they want for $10/month. They also have the $1/song rate plus the $10/album. But really, who is going to pay the $10 for the album when you can download all you want for $10?

FUCK THE RIAA

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