School-sponsored downloading

While the birth of file-sharing programs has given students free music and movies, it has also given university administrators headaches.

Many colleges searching for more effective ways to combat illegal downloading are turning to subscription-based services that legally give students unlimited access to large databases of music.

Schools hope that students will abandon illegal programs in favor of downloading services that the schools provide.

Many schools feel the need to offer legal alternatives to peer-to-peer downloading. They frequently cite the need to protect their students from lawsuits and to ensure respect for copyright laws.

Another reason behind offering legal downloading options stems from the fact that schools unwittingly enable students to download illegally through their high-speed Internet connections.

Illegal downloading "is always problematic to me. We're a university, we create knowledge," Vice President for Information Systems and Computing Robin Beck said. "It's always an unhappy circumstance when people do not respect intellectual property rights," she said.

Brett Goldberg, president of Cdigix -- a service used by Yale University, among others -- said, "Clearly there's a trend going on here of [colleges] looking to service providers like us" to give students legal ways to listen to music.

The recording industry is also happy that schools are encouraging their students to access music legally.

At the participating colleges, students pay discounted subscription fees for the music services. At some schools, the fee is part of tuition. Each school has its own deal with a company to provide the music subscription service.

More than two dozen schools, including Cornell, Yale and Penn State universities, have already signed up for or are experimenting with such programs.

At Penn, the Undergraduate Assembly and administrators are considering whether to adopt a legal online music service.

The music services let computer users listen to, and in some cases download, songs from a central database. Each service's database has more than 500,000 songs.

But unlike those using peer-to-peer or other programs, users of services supported by universities are not able to transfer streaming music onto portable devices.

The music is either streamed so that listeners hear music as it is played off of a database or "tethered," so they can download songs onto their computers, but not onto portable devices.

Just how adequately legal music programs meet student needs is still unclear.

Wharton Marketing professor Peter Fader, who is part of the committee exploring Penn's downloading options, said that streaming audio provides just as enjoyable a listening experience as downloaded music does.

The quality of "streaming music is so good you actually have no way of knowing where it's coming from," Fader said.

He added, "there's a lot of benefits" to streaming-music services.

"You're in more of an exploratory model" using these programs, Fader said.

He noted that the programs allow users to more easily search songs.

Still, many students have reacted negatively to being unable to transfer music onto their iPods or burn music to CDs.

At Cornell -- which is in the midst of year-long a trial of the Napster subscription service -- students say one of the main drawbacks is not being able to store songs outside of their computers.

Cornell Student Assembly President Erica Kagan said, "The fact that you can only play a song from a computer is a downside."

But many proponents of legal music services believe that students' inability to permanently download music will not hinder their listening experiences.

Goldberg noted that since students spend so much time on their computers already, they will not lose access to music.

"College students are historically using their computers for just about everything," he said. "Students can still use [music] very freely from their computers."

Advocates of music subscription services point out that users can also download songs onto portable music players for only 99 cents per song.

And, in a further blow to copyright laws, some download streaming music by using programs that let them record the stream of music illegally, Fader said.

Cornell students have mixed reactions to their year-long trial of Napster.

The terms of the trial let all Cornell undergraduate and graduate students use Napster free of charge for the academic year.

Kagan said students have been fairly receptive.

"A very large number of students have signed up for Napster and used it [at least] once," she said.

Kagan said she is impressed that about 9,000 students, most of them undergrads, have signed up, given that Cornell has 13,500 undergrads.

After Roxio, a software maker, bought Napster in 2002, it kept the name, but changed the program from a free peer-to-peer song-swapping network to a paid subscription service.

Earlier this year, Penn UA members met with fellow Ivy League student government representatives and, among other topics, discussed the experience Cornell students were having with Napster.

They came away with a favorable impression of the revamped service.

"We went to Cornell, and all the Cornell students I talked to said [Napster] was amazing," said College freshman and UA member Sunny Patel, who is part of a committee exploring a music-subscription service for Penn.

Except for not being able to download songs to personal devices, "I haven't heard any other complaints about" Napster, he said.

Yet Cornell sophomore Adam Mizrachi said that Napster has had a limited impact on illegal file sharing.

"You use Napster on your computer if you're looking for songs, but we still mostly steal the music," he said.

Mizrachi added, "As long as there's the free music, Napster will be a substitute but won't be able to fully stop downloading."

Despite the optimistic outlook of some people, there have been student complaints.

One such point of dissatisfaction is that Napster's database of songs is lacking.

"Napster doesn't have that much of a variety of new music," Cornell freshman Joe Bellucci said.

Cornell students are also angry that Napster is not compatible with Macintosh computers and older versions of Windows.

"That's one major downside of Napster. ... Basically everyone is upset with the program in that regard," Kagan said.

Citing complaints from Mac users who cannot use the program, Kagan also said, "We're committed to finding [a service] that all students can use."

Cornell has not decided whether to continue the service after the trial expires this year.

"We're continuing to evaluate and look at other legal music downloading options," Kagan said.

According to Kagan, Cornell has already met with representatives from other music-subscription services, such as Apple -- which produces the popular iTunes software -- and software company Ruckus.

Yale is also encouraging its students to seek legal alternatives to downloading music. Starting this year, Yale students have the ability to opt into a program called Cdigix.

Unlike at Cornell, though, Yale students must pay a monthly fee of $2.99 to use Cdigix's music database. They also have the option of paying 89 cents for individual downloads.

Cdigix owner Brett Goldberg said, "We feel very good about how administrators at all of our schools are feeling about our service."

Cdigix has four components. Ctrax gives music lovers a database of songs, Cflix lets students watch and buy movies, Clabs allows professors to post educational movies online and Cvillage hosts campus forums and student videos.

Clabs and Cvillage are free, while Ctrax is $2.99 a month and Cflix is $5.99 a month.

Unlike Napster, Cdigix is available only to college students.

Cdigix representative Laurie Rubenstein said that Cdigix offers many advantages over illegal downloading.

"The important thing is that [Cdigix is] a service that's easy to use, that offers broad content and not only is legal but also is in a secure environment."

She noted that Cdigix, unlike some illegal peer-to-peer programs, does not come with spyware.

Yale Director of Academic Media and Technology Chuck Powell said that the school chooses to use Cdigix primarily for its educational components.

"The truth of the matter was that I didn't set out to find an online music service," Powell said.

He noted that Cdigix provides a much more cost-efficient way for professors to post videos for classes online.

According to Powell, Cdigix has been "a wonderful success."

As far as how the music and movie parts of Cdigix are received, Powell said, "I don't think the jury is in yet."

He noted that Yale may in the future use another music-subscription service.

"We're always looking at other venders to some degree," Powell said.

But he added, "I've heard no particular interest on campus in spending the University's money in buying entertainment for students."

Many Yale students, however, are unaware of Cdigix.

Yale sophomore Amy Broadbent said Cdigix is "not widely known on campus."

According to Powell, about 25 percent of Yale students have used Cdigix in some capacity.

"It's a darn shame Penn hasn't been more progressive" about exploring legal music options, Wharton Marketing professor Peter Fader said.

Vice President for Information Systems and Computing Robin Beck said, "I'd like there to be a wide range of legal alternatives." She did not say, though, that she would specifically like to see a program like Napster or Cdigix come to Penn.

She noted that Penn's computing Web site lists several online legal music programs.

Freshman UA member Jason Karsh, who is a member of the committee exploring legal file-sharing options, said that the UA has talked with representatives from music-subscription programs.

"An unnamed company has offered to install the database [of music] free of charge and to update it," he said.

Patel said that Penn is now "in the process of evaluating" Napster, Rhapsody, Ruckus and Cdigix as possible programs.

Penn will also have to figure out how to fund a subscription program.

While some schools, like Penn State, make students pay for subscriptions as part of their tuition, others, like Yale, let students choose whether to sign up for a program.

Karsh said "it would be best if students opt in between $2 and $5" a month.

Karsh noted that one option the UA is exploring is to allow alumni to sign up for a music subscription service for a higher fee than students. The alumni fee would then help to reduce the student fee.

Fader said that "students should be paying some minimal amount of money."

He said this would prepare students to pay for programs after they graduate.

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