Cdigix, the legal music- and movie-downloading service, received a
good bit of publicity after the University of California and California
State University systems chose to recommend it—along with three other services—to campus officials who want to
offer students legal downloads. But is that attention a testament to
the importance of the endorsements or to the power of the press release?
At present, none of the campuses in the California or California
State systems are actually offering students subscriptions to Cdigix—or to Napster, Sony, or Mindawn, the three other services
recommended by the system administrators. But stories in several campus
newspapers, including the University of California at Berkeley’s The Daily Californian and the University of California at Los Angeles’s Daily Bruin, have stated that the university systems and Cdigix have struck a unique deal.
As the academic year approaches, it will be interesting to see
whether any California campuses sign contracts with legal downloading
services—or if the current crop of news reports turns out to be much
ado about nothing.
