More Colleges Strike Up Music-Sharing Deals, Despite Lukewarm Response in Dorms

By BROCK READ

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Information Technology
More colleges strike up music-sharing deals, despite lukewarm response in dorms

When American University decided in February to run a semester-long trial of an online entertainment service that gave students access to a free library of more than one million songs and hundreds of movies via their personal computers, campus officials expected an enthusiastic response. Instead, students gave the service low marks, and many said the university should not offer the program this fall.

In a survey conducted by the university, the students rattled off a litany of complaints about the service, which was offered by a company named Ruckus: There weren't enough songs. The movies were dated. The software was tricky to use. And students with Macintosh machines, which are not supported by Ruckus or either of its chief competitors, were left out in the cold. The survey also suggested that the service had done little to curb students' illegal file sharing.

But university officials didn't give too much thought to giving up offering an online music service, says Julie E. Weber, American's director of housing and dining programs, the office that brought Ruckus to the campus. Over the summer, she put together a focus group of students to test other downloading services. The university has now switched to Napster, which the testers preferred.

Why, observers might ask, would a university where one download service had failed pour more money into a similar service?

For Ms. Weber, the answer is simple: Music downloading, she says, like Internet access and cable TV, is fast becoming an amenity that college students expect in their dorm rooms. And, she says, offering legal file-swapping options remains part of the university's plan to cut down on Internet piracy.

A growing number of college administrators feel the same way. Even though many of the colleges that tried out download services last year got a lukewarm response from students, most decided to bring the programs back for another year. (Some colleges have yet to decide whether they will extend their contracts; several others are in the middle of two-year contracts. Almost all of the colleges have kept the terms of their deals private, including American.)

Meanwhile other colleges are signing up for download services for the first time. Over all, more than 50 campuses have signed deals with online-music providers, up from about 20 last fall.

Plenty of other colleges have music or movie services on their wish lists. According to a survey of about 900 institutions by Educause, an education-technology consortium, 4 percent of colleges have file-sharing programs, 2 percent are planning to get them, and 17 percent are considering doing so. Nearly half of doctoral institutions are at least mulling over one of the services, according to Brian L. Hawkins, president of Educause.

Cybercops and Robbers

Many network administrators admit that they don't know for sure whether the legal services are achieving the goal of weaning students away from stealing songs using peer-to-peer programs, a practice that can clog campus networks and flood students' machines with viruses and spyware.

But the deals may at least create the appearance that colleges are doing what they can to snuff out piracy, said Kenneth C. Green, founding director of the Campus Computing Project, an annual survey of how colleges use information technology. Colleges have been put on notice by the wave of lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America against file-swapping students, as well as by Congress's willingness to weigh in on campus piracy, he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the case of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster Ltd., which found that network administrators could be held liable for individual acts of piracy if they had "induced" the infractions (The Chronicle, June 27), has only added to colleges' sense of urgency, Mr. Green said. Legal downloading deals "may be a self-protection mechanism," he said. "Colleges can say, well, at least we have this, so we're doing something to stop piracy."

Few colleges have conducted extensive surveys of their students' legal-downloading habits, or of the impact of commercial music services. The studies that have been completed suggest that many students' interest in using the services wanes after the initial novelty wears off. At American University, 41 percent of students said their use of Ruckus had fallen considerably by the end of the three-month pilot period.

A survey conducted last fall at the University of Rochester, which has offered Napster for more than a year, suggests that many students still see it as an accompaniment, not an alternative, to pirating music. While 58 percent of the respondents said they had used Napster, 56 percent said they still used peer-to-peer programs, including KaZaA, LimeWire, and Direct Connect, to download material illegally. But the survey did indicate that illegal music-swapping may have diminished somewhat since the legal alternative made its debut.

The standard subscription plans of Napster and other music providers allow users to stream music or to download songs to their hard drives, but not their MP3 players. In that way, the services are like cable television: Users can access the library of content only while they are subscribers. Napster and other companies hope that some users will pay additional fees to purchase some songs that they can keep even if they stop subscribing. But only 15 percent of students said they valued Napster's ability to let them buy music. And 39 percent said that, when they found a song designated on the service as "buy only," they simply went to another service to download that tune.

"Quite honestly, whether students buy the music or not is not my concern," said Charles E. Phelps, Rochester's provost, who is a member of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, a group of campus officials and industry representatives that has advocated legal download services as a way to cut campus piracy. "But obviously it's important in the long run to the fiscal stability of these services."

Student Input

Some institutions are getting students involved in choosing a campus music service.

At American University, the student focus group met several times to test Napster, Cdigix, Ruckus, and Rhapsody, the music-download service of RealNetworks. The students liked Napster best because it offered more song files than its competitors.

Cornell University, which signed a contract with Napster last fall, will invite the company and its competitors to demonstrate their services for students at an open meeting this year. The students will get to vote on which service they want the university to acquire, said Kent Hubbell, dean of students.

Rochester will keep two music services, Napster and Cdigix, up and running throughout this academic year, said Mr. Phelps, the provost. Comparing the programs, he said, could help campus officials determine which features students prize most in a legal music library. "I suspect in the long run we'll use a single platform," he said. "But this is an experiment in some ways, and it puts the two services head to head."

Mr. Phelps views legal music downloading not just as an alternative to underground piracy, but also as an increasingly important amenity for students.

More and more of his colleagues seem to agree on that point. "In addition to study lounges and snack bars, which students have come to expect, these days they expect things like wireless Internet and free music downloading," said Steven W. Tally, director of communications for information technology at Purdue University at West Lafayette, Ind., which is halfway through a two-year deal with Cdigix.

Ms. Weber, of American, said incoming students are "starting to ask questions regularly" about music downloading. "This is the first year that they're asking specific questions, like 'Do you have a way that we can burn songs onto CD's?'"

The notion that a student might choose one college over another because it offers Ruckus or Napster is silly, said Mr. Green, of the Campus Computing Project. But even if only a few students use a legal service, college officials may feel like they are gaining a small selling point, he said.

"This is part of a mutually-assured-services race -- to see who's got the best food, the best dorms, and now, the best music downloads," Mr. Green said. "Some sectors in higher education would argue that this is peripheral and superfluous, but others say it's part of the new requirements for college."

Under Pressure

Campus officials are not thinking only of their students when they decide on a legal downloading service, Mr. Green said. In all likelihood, he argued, they are also hoping to insulate themselves from the wrath of the recording industry, Congress, and the courts.

Many college administrators have expressed concern that the recording industry may attempt to hold them liable, as Internet-service providers, for any copyright violations by their students. "For commercialized ISP's, litigation is a cost of doing business," Mr. Green said. "But colleges have to respond in a different way, by trying to protect themselves."

That may be especially true in the wake of the Supreme Court decision regarding file sharing. Much of the discussion in the Grokster ruling focused on Justice David Souter's argument that the company could be held liable for individuals' piracy because it had actively induced the infractions.

But a "little hidden implication" in that decision is actually more troubling to campus officials, said Mr. Phelps, of Rochester: "When I first read the case, I noticed a line mentioning that Grokster could have put filters to block piracy on its network, but that they didn't do so. I wonder if that may be a slippery slope for campus networks as Internet-service providers."

It is conceivable, he said, that the entertainment industry could use that clause to try to hold colleges liable for file-sharing if they do not demonstrate that they have offered students an alternative. In that light, he said, campus administrators could see services like Napster, Ruckus, and Cdigix as an expedient gamble.

The decision is already helping the services drum up some business, according to Josh Weiner, a spokesman for Ruckus. "In general, I would say the Supreme Court ruling has forced more attention onto the issue of piracy, and that's allowed administrators to think through this and get in touch with us."

The costs of the services can be considerable -- typically, they charge on the basis of the number of students expected to sign up, often at a rate of $2 or $3 per month per user. But colleges are finding creative ways to pay the bills.

This fall, the University of Washington will offer Napster subscriptions to the 6,000 residential students on its Seattle campus, but it will pay just $24,000 to do so -- enough to cover only 1,500 yearlong site licenses. The university worked out the deal through Dell, the computer maker, which will kick in another $24,000, for an additional 1,500 licenses, and will provide about $60,000 worth of hardware to run the Napster software. (Campus officials expect that 3,000 site licenses will be enough to serve the entire campus, since many students will either not sign up or have computers that are not compatible with the service.)

Dell plans to offer similar deals to other colleges this fall, but there are a few strings attached: In exchange for the financial support, Washington will let the company set up campus kiosks to sell, at a discount, Dell's Digital Jukebox, a portable music player that has yet to capture much of the digital-music market share.

Washington's $24,000 will come from royalties generated by software that the university has developed and licensed. But for colleges that don't have such a revenue source, Ruckus and Cdigix offer "opt in" services that let students, not institutions, pay for their own subscriptions. Those services may reduce the financial risk inherent in downloading deals, but they also may keep many students from using the programs, said Mr. Phelps.

Bands on the Run

For Napster, Ruckus, Cdigix, and other companies to keep colleges involved over the long run, though, they may have to strike a better chord with students. Skeptics of the deals argue that the services will struggle to do so until they do a better job of accommodating students who want to move songs from their computers to portable music players.

Setting up that technology has been difficult, to say the least. Today the legal services' basic subscription packages allow students to stream songs or to get them as tethered downloads -- which require students to be near their computers, and subscribed to the service, to listen to the music -- but not to have the music permanently. Both Napster and Ruckus have started to offer services that let students download songs to MP3 players, but students must pay a flat monthly fee to use those features.

Ruckus uses copy-protection software, designed by Microsoft, to prevent students from stealing the music they listen to. But that software also prevents the downloaded tunes from playing on Apple's iPod players, so only students with other brands of portable players can use the tool.

That could be a real sticking point for students, who have helped make iPods -- and iTunes, Apple's digital music-playing software -- far more popular than any rivals. According to the Rochester survey, 71 percent of students on the campus use iTunes, even though Apple has not offered campuswide subscriptions to the service, as Napster, Cdigix, and Ruckus have.

"iTunes and iPods are so ingrained in popular culture that students know all about them," said Alexandra H. Kim, a top technology official at George Washington University, which has extended its contract with Napster. "I'm not sure that Napster is really on the average teen's radar."

Most college officials say it's too soon to tell whether Napster and its competitors will ever reach that level of saturation. Campus ventures into legal file swapping are, for the time being, experiments, these officials say, and while few colleges seem likely to jettison the services anytime soon, none have signed long-term deals.

"This is a year-to-year endeavor," said David Donahue, associate dean for library and information services at Middlebury College, about its involvement with Napster. "This is such a rapidly changing area that it will practically force us to revisit this year after year."

• Napster and Dell to Sell Music Services to Colleges (7/15/2005)

• Colleges Split Over Effects of Court Ruling on File Sharing (7/8/2005)

• Supreme Court Says File-Sharing Services May Be Sued for Copyright Infringement by Students and Other Users (6/27/2005)

• Professors Join the Fray as Supreme Court Hears Arguments in File-Sharing Case (4/8/2005)

• List: Colleges With Legal Downloading Services (1/28/2005)

• Downloading to a Lawful Beat (10/22/2004)

• U. of Rochester Signs With Napster to Give Students Music Online (2/20/2004)

• The Downloading Beat Goes On (2/6/2004)