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Sept. 8, 2004
GW Launches Legal Music Program
Free Subscription to Napster, iTunes Application Offers
Almost Unlimited Music
By Greg
Licamele
The classic song R-E-S-P-E-C-T could serve as a theme behind GW’s
initiative to provide a legal environment for students to download and
share music as the University joins other institutions in finding ways
to promote the value of copyright laws.
The University launched a pilot program that gives more than 7,100 residence
hall students a free subscription for the academic year to Napster. In
addition, GW licensed the iTunes application for distribution to students,
which requires no subscription. Students can access the legal music Web
site at gwired.gwu.edu/legalmusic.
“The pilot program is only part of the answer to peer-to-peer piracy
and minimizing illegal downloads of music,” said University President
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. “It will help us better understand student
habits and expectations about using the Internet and copyrighted material
responsibly.”
The GW pilot program with Napster provides residence hall students with
a free membership to the library of more than one million songs from major
and independent record labels. Students can purchase songs or albums from
Napster to transfer to an MP3 player or burn to a CD for 99 cents a song
or as little as $9.95 an album.
In addition to GW, Napster inked agreements this summer with Cornell University,
Middlebury College in Vermont, University of Miami, The University of
Southern California and Wright State University in Ohio. Penn State University
and the University of Rochester were the first institutions to join Napster’s
program this past winter.
“These colleges and universities are focused on providing their students
with a great service that offers a legal and ethical alternative to peer-to-peer
file sharing while reducing their school’s networks’ exposure
to the viruses, spyware, bandwidth drain and other technical problems,”
said Chris Gorog, chair and CEO of Napster.
Graham Spanier, president of Penn State, said his students reacted positively
to this partnership, downloading as many as 100,000 songs a day.
“I’m delighted that so many universities are about to provide
their students with a first-class online music service and commend them
for utilizing Napster’s high quality, user-friendly and legal solution,”
said Spanier, who also serves as president of the Joint Committee of Higher
Education and Entertainment Communities, a group composed of university
administrators and entertainment executives.
In another partnership, the Apple iTunes Music Store® provides GW
students with more than one million tracks from all five major record
companies and 600 leading independent labels. The cost of songs and albums
on iTunes is similar to Napster.
In establishing these agreements, GW has worked with the Campus Action
Network (CAN), an initiative dedicated to facilitating the introduction
of safe, legitimate digital music services to colleges. CAN, which is
led by Sony BMG Music Entertainment and other record companies, works
with a wide range of legitimate online music services and helps institutions
create programs that uniquely fit their needs, as well as the needs of
their students. CAN does not recommend any one service or technology to
institutions.
Using illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing software such as KaZaA, Morpheus
or Limewire to download and upload copyrighted materials is against federal
law and GW policy. Violators are subject to warnings and temporary or
permanent loss of GW-supplied Internet connection, University judicial
action and external lawsuits.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
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Related Link
Legal
Music Program
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