As many colleges debate whether they can afford legal downloading services, or whether such services will cut music piracy, the State University of New York at Binghamton is asking a different question: Do students even want this stuff?
The university’s student government has commissioned a survey of the campus’s 11,000 undergraduates, asking them if they would consider paying for a download database like Napster or Cdigix—and, if so, what features they would like the service to offer. If the returns are positive, the government’s president says, he’ll lobby administrators to bring a downloading service to the campus; if not, he’ll drop the issue.
