UNIVERSITY DEAL WITH NAPSTER

The IPKat has read on The Register about the steps taken at the University of Washington to bring Napster to the students who live at its halls of residence. The University’s Director of Client Services and Learning Technologies for Computing & Communications has expressed his regret that a standard free market in online music services couldn’t operate in this situation. However, he points to the fact that file-sharing by students has been turned into a major legal issue with individual students being sued and universities standing as the middlemen between student-users and copyright owners.

Yes - we know the formats aren't open and lock people in to paying subscription fees if they want to retain access to their music. It's very important to universities that the recorded record of human history remain accessible to students, teachers, and researchers - and remain accessible for the long run…And yes - we know Napster doesn't work with Macs and iPods. We continue to try to talk to Apple and others about what kind of service they might offer to university students. And don't think that Napster and the others wouldn't love to have their services work on Macs and iPods, if Apple would open up its DRM schemas.
The IPKat thinks that it’s right that universities should police their computer systems (within reason) but he’s not sure that locking students into a single legal file-sharing programme is the way to go.