TheOtherView
Opinions from around the country

Napster back on college campuses for small fee

Napster is back and running for a small fee and that skateboard-riding logo is setting its sights on college campuses.

Pennsylvania State University became the first college to team up with a file-sharing program when it announced Thursday it would give students access to Napster 2.0 as part of their student fees. The partnership does not come without fine print — students will have access to streams of its library of songs but will have to pay the 99 cent fee if they want a permanent download or to burn the song to a CD.

The steps the music industry has taken to begin to appease its primary audience, college-age listeners, is long overdue. Even though the attempt is filled with loopholes for the student, it is a good start to mend the severed relationship between the Recording Industry Association of America and a major fan base.

The methods employed by the RIAA before this new measure have been disrespectful and ridiculous. Their misguided attempts to sue the listeners has failed miserably. It is high time the RIAA focuses on more viable solutions, like the Penn State-Napster alliance. Through forms of compromise, the music industry and the consumer can begin the process of reconciliation.

Napster and other programs such as Apple Music Store, in conjunction with the company’s iPod MP3 player, are the future of file-sharing. As a means to quiet the music industry’s buzz-kill higher-ups, these pay services are a valuable alternative to the inflated CD prices.

Napster president Mike Bebel was happy with the Penn State partnership.

“This deal encourages a new generation to try a legitimate service, enjoy and adopt it, and later when they have more time and money, continue it,” Bebel said.

Bebel hits on a key point: One of the negatives to Penn State’s agreement is the temporary aspect of the supposed “free” service. Students do have the capability to explore a huge base of music. This means that for Penn State students to maintain their new dependence on free music after graduation, they would need to purchase each song.

The move by Napster and Penn State is a step in the right direction — it certainly took long enough.

This is a staff editorial from the Daily Orange at Syracuse University. This editorial was distributed by U-Wire.