There is good and bad about the Penn State-Napster deal: good that someone worked out a blanket deal with a provider of digital music, bad that there so many restrictions on usage, and especially the $.99 per-song price to keep permanently or to burn to CD. This will not solve the file sharing problem to the extent that they hope. Here are the FAQs from the Penn State site:

Penn State University has announced that it is going to revolutionize the music world with a ground-breaking agreement with the online music service Napster. The University has provided a list of common questions and answers that should address many of the features of this new service, and why the University has taken this initiative.

Why is Penn State providing a music downloading service to its students?

Penn State is concerned that some of its students don't understand that downloading music over computer networks without purchasing copyright permission is both unethical and against the law. The University believes it has a responsibility to do something to change that. Penn State will continue to try to educate students on this issue and will continue to enforce its strong policies against copyright infringement. At the same time, the University wants to provide legal alternatives to illegal downloading. This service is directly aimed at helping students to understand the issue and to provide them with an alternative.

When will the service begin?

The service will launch as a pilot program on January 12, 2004 - the first day of Penn State's spring semester. It will initially be available to on-campus residence hall students at residential Penn State locations.

Is Penn State the first higher education institution to implement a service like this?

Yes, we believe that Penn State is the first college or university in the world to implement such a service for its students.

How many digital music service company products were considered by Penn State before the decision to partner with Napster was made?

The University considered a large number of online music providers and actually tested several of them before choosing Napster.

Why did Penn State choose Napster?

In the end, Penn State chose Napster to be its online music provider because they offered the widest number of features that the University thought were important to students.

What is the cost of this service to each Penn State student, and how will it affect tuition rates?

Students will receive this service for free as a part of their overall information technology-related services that are partially funded by the University's Information Technology Fee. There will be no increase in the fee as a result of this service.

Is this service accessible on all computing platforms (i.e. Windows and Macintosh) and different types of Internet connections?

With the current pilot program being tested this spring, the service is only available to Windows 2000 and XP users. With the addition of certain software, it will also run on Macintosh computers.

What music services will be offered through this arrangement?

The service is Napster's 'premium service' that is fully described on their Web site: http://www.napster.com. According to Napster, this service provides: downloading of an unlimited number of songs to a user's computer; streaming of songs while the user is connected to the Internet; listening to Napster's preprogrammed radio stations; and participation in Napster community message boards.

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