In an attempt to curb illegal music downloading over the residential network, the University is offering the Napster 2.0 music service to students for free this year in a trial program.
"Brown has had a couple of problems with illegal downloading," said Sarah Saxton-Frump '07, vice president of the Undergraduate Council of Students, who was a member of the committee that recommended Napster.
Six Brown students were sued earlier this year for sharing copyrighted files by the Recording Industry Association of America.
"The RIAA has started cracking down on universities around the country ... and Brown wanted to do its best to offer a legal alternative to students," Saxton-Frump said.
The pilot program offers the Napster music service to students for the academic year, with subscriptions expiring on May 31, 2006. Students can download songs onto their computers for free using Napster, and for a fee put them on a digital music player or compact disc, a service called Napster To Go. Downloaded songs cannot be played after the subscription expires, though students will have the option of purchasing the service themselves.
Napster is "the best we could offer at this point" in terms of "a legitimate alternative to illegal file sharing," said David Greene, vice president for Campus Life and Student Services.
The Herald reported in February that a committee drawn from Computing and Information Services, Campus Life and Student Services and UCS met with representatives from four music services: Rhapsody, Cdigix, Ruckus and Napster.
"There was strong consensus" among the group of staff and students "that Napster was the best service at this time," Greene said.
"Napster had the most to offer Brown," said Brian Bidadi '06, UCS president. But, he said, "depending on the feedback we get from students, we can go in a different direction."
"Napster seemed to make sense for a pilot program," Saxton-Frump agreed, noting its ease of use and large music library of 1.5 million songs.
The pilot program is funded by a grant from the Campus Action Network, Bidadi and Saxton-Frump said, but the amount the Sony BMG Music Entertainment-led industry group paid for the service is confidential, according to Greene. This year, it will be free to the University and to students.
However, the service is not compatible with either the Macintosh operating system or with Apple's popular iPod music player, which has cornered more than 83 percent of the digital music player market, according to industry estimates.
None of the four services examined were compatible with Macintosh or Linux, according to Saxton-Frump, so Napster did not stand out in that regard.
"We did try to get a discount from Apple so that we could offer an alternative service for iPods, but the discount offered was not a great incentive," Ellen Waite-Franzen, vice president for CIS, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
Greene blamed the problem on the continuing battle between Apple and its competitors for the digital music market.
"Until this gets settled at the industry level, there's nothing we can do about it," he said.
In the meantime, he said, Macintosh users can run Napster using the VirtualPC program. Saxton-Frump suggested that Macintosh users run their accounts on University computers in clusters around campus.
Bidadi said he expects the working group of students and staff to decide whether to continue the Napster program within the next two months.
Expectations for the trial program vary, but student leaders and administrators hope it will help curtail illegal file sharing by Brown students.
"I would like to see at least 50 percent of students who can use it using it," said Saxton-Frump, adding, "I would also like Brown students not to be slapped with lawsuits. That would make me very happy."
"I expect that some students will find this to be a viable and legal option for getting the music that they want to listen to and others will not find it as useful," Waite-Franzen wrote. "I do think we need to see if this will replace the downloading that students were doing from non-authorized or (non-)permissioned services."
"For me, success would be students will find this service so attractive that they will want to pay for it themselves," Waite-Franzen added.
Greene said he will measure the program's success by how many students use it, specific feedback from students and "whether it curtails illegal file sharing."
Bidadi said he expects UCS to hold a WebCT poll to determine student opinion on the Napster service.
"I'd like to see at least more than two-thirds of the student body satisfied," he said.
