Dear Penn State Student,

Penn State announced that it has reached an agreement with Napster to provide its "Premium Service" at no additional cost to students and at a reduced rate to faculty and staff. I would like to use this opportunity to answer some frequently asked questions regarding this
initiative.

First, what is Napster? Napster is the leader in legal online music services and provides access to over 500,000 songs. Thanks to our partnership with Napster, Penn State students will be able to play songs directly from the network, download songs onto their hard drives, and transfer songs to other computers--all for no additional cost to students.

Students can listen to and download to their hard
drives an unlimited number of songs for as long as they are enrolled. Students will also have the opportunity to purchase tracks that they can burn onto a CD for 99 cents per track or an entire album for only $9.95. Purchased tracks may also be transferred to a
portable device.

Furthermore, the Napster service offers artist bios, album information, premium radio stations, and exclusive
tracks unavailable elsewhere.

So who gets it and when? Because this is a pilot program that requires different sign up technology for both Napster and Penn State, the service will be phased in during 2004. In Phase I, students living in the residence halls at all campuses will have the service available starting Spring Semester. In the second phase, beginning in Fall Semester 2004, all Penn State students will be eligible for the service regardless of where they live.

How will I sign up? Students will have to enroll in the service using their Access Account ID and password just as they do to get email, look at their grades, etc. The service will be available to students who live in the residence halls at the beginning of Spring Semester. A pamphlet will be in your postal mailbox and a website -
http://napster.psu.edu - will be available then. Both will describe in detail how to register for the service. The information will be provided to students living off campus before the service is made available to them.

Will the IT Fee be increased to fund Napster? The answer is no, it will not. The IT fee will no doubt increase next academic year, but by no more than would ordinarily be necessary to support the University's IT infrastructure and other applications. There will
be no additional increase because of our contract with Napster. This is possible because the cost to the University of providing Napster for students, although confidential, is very low as a result of Penn State being the pioneering school to launch an on-line music
service. Penn State has worked closely with Napster and the recording industry to design a new service for college and university students.

Will Penn State still enforce its policies concerning improper uses of our network? Yes, Penn State has long viewed copyright infringement as a serious matter. There is simply no excuse for stealing music. Penn State will continue to undertake a vigorous campaign to educate everyone at the university about the legal and moral implications of illegal file sharing and will continue to enforce policies against it.

I urge you to use and explore the new Napster when it becomes available to you. We believe you will be very pleased with the service. Penn State is providing a legal alternative to the improper sharing of pirated music, in partnership with a company that has more than half a million tracks with flexible copying rights. The features of the service are listed below, as are answers
to some common misconceptions.

Sincerely,

Rod Erickson
Executive Vice President and Provost

PS: The Holidays Season is upon us, and it's a time of gift giving.

Where can I get a portable player that works with Napster?
Portable players that support Secure WMA (Windows Media Audio) files will play purchased Napster tracks. They are available from Dell, Rio, and Creative, and Samsung. The Penn State Computer store has the Samsung player (model YP910) available for a discounted price.


Features of the Napster/Penn State Service.

* Search music catalog to easily find a specific artist, album, or track.

* Browse through Napster content by music genre, their new additions, the charts and check out what others are currently streaming.

* Manage your own personal music library of tracks and albums purchased from Napster along with MP3 and WMA files from your personal collection. Access all of your music centrally and create playlists of your choice.

* Browse other member's collections and learn more about Napster listeners.

* Use your Inbox to send and receive favorite songs and playlists to and from other Napster members.

* Download an unlimited number of high quality music files to your computer. You can listen to these downloaded tracks online and offline as often as you like.

* Listen (via streaming) to an unlimited number of full-length tracks while you are connected to network.

* Listen to Napster's quality pre-programmed radio stations. Skip forward or back, loop through all the tracks on the station and download your favorites.

* Get details on Napster's services on their web site.

Common Misconceptions about the Service:

* To listen to music you must be connected to the Internet.

This is not true. You can listen to downloaded tracks without being connected to the Internet.

* The University is subsidizing the reduced premium service for alumni with student funds.

This is not true. At this time, no decision has been made to provide this service to alumni. If it is, alumni, like employees and their families, will pay Napster directly for the service. No funds will come from the University for their subscriptions.

* The network will not support streaming.

Streaming is a key feature of the service. Napster plans to install most of its music on a server at Penn State to facilitate such streaming. Although there
might be some initial delays as the system is fine tuned, there should be excellent service to all on-campus users as the system is implemented.

* Songs cannot be burned onto CD.

Tracks purchased by the individual can be burned onto CDs if the user's equipment supports it. They can also be played on any portable player that supports Microsoft's Digital Rights Management.

* Firewalls are being installed primarily to stop Kazaa.

The primary purpose of firewalls is to protect students from computer worms and other programs that have caused many problems for students.

* The service is unavailable on Macs.

With the addition of Microsoft's Virtual PC with Windows XP, most Macs will be able to use Napster.

* Already downloaded tracks won't work in Napster.

The Napster client is a full music jukebox program and supports the inclusion of any music in the MP3 format among others.

one word junk.

The Penn State Computer store has the Samsung player (model YP910) available for a discounted price.


This is the real reason they're doing it

Napster is the leader in legal online music services and provides access to over 500,000 songs.--Interesting, didn't they just launch here recently? I've not heard any reports about them claiming the lead, what about iTunes?

Will the IT Fee be increased to fund Napster? The answer is no, it will not.--Now that is. Before it was something like 150 per sem., it was probably dropped to silence this move caused amongst some students.

Suikio

"With the addition of Microsoft's Virtual PC with Windows XP, most Macs will be able to use Napster."

Microsoft's products don't work right on real PCs, so Mac users are supposed to spend a few hundred dollars to install a sorry, sorry, Windows emulator?

So the answer is that yes, this rumor is true. You can't use Napster on a Mac. Because if you're smart enough to get into Penn State, you're probably smart enough to avoid "Virtual PC."

"Napster plans to install most of its music on a server at Penn State to facilitate such streaming."

How many corporate tits can PSU suck on at the same time? Stay tuned!

Remember, colleges are business' that have profit margins too. Looks like Penn state is going into retail.

Penn State Inc.
Watch for our IPO soon!!!

Um, yeah... The corporatization of the American higher education system rolls on. This time, it's Napster that'll be forced onto each and every student on this campus. For shame.

And I also thought that most campuses these days are crying about lack of available bandwidth? Wouldn't streaming files take up a lot more bandwidth overall than just downloading them outright (read: most of the "special features" are for streaming only, not downloading)?

And I also have a problem with forcing the gullible (and poor) students into paying for burnable tracks. God, I hate WMA. But, as was said on this site many times over, "If it can be seen or heard it can be burned" onto CD.

Wow sounds kinda cool for Penn State students

They will always try to mislead the public by mentioning the music format "MP3".

MP3 is a patented compression technology. The music format that Napster sells is not MP3. It's the Microsoft WMA, or some other Microsoft variation. Like it or not, MP3 is here to stay, WMA may simply become a passing phase because of its limited use.

I don't know if this is really "free" for students (I suspect not). But I will give credit where credit is due: at least students will be able to listen to entire tracks before they buy. This is not really such a bad deal; one of the biggest complaints about buying CDs in stores it that historically customers don't have a chance to preview all the music on the album before purchasing.

True Bufo, I must agree on that point, but I have to ask, how deep is the catalog? I suspect it will all be the same old tired crap you can get anywhere, not much of value.

My campus has about 4000 students if they are paying $15 a month for napster thats $720,000 a year ripped apart from our IT fee. I believe T3 is about $45,000 a month, $720,000 will pay for 16 months of a SECOND T3 which would be a hell of alot more wanted than crappy drm infested RIAA music that we have no choice but accept crammed down our throat.

We Are Penn State !

::cries::

It is "confidential" how much Penn State is going to pay Napster for this service. Why? The students pay money for "IT fund" and it goes into "black ops" where you need security clearance to know how the university is spending the money?

This is nuts. Shouldn't the students, who pay the fee, and who are the customers, be able to know how much they paid out of their IT fund for what the university has purchased for them? What's the state secret?

Digital rights management? WMA format?

So is there anything actually worth buying on the new napster?

Don't let them get a foot in the door. All students must boycott this before they get the chance to spread this disease elsewhere.

The cost is confidential? That sounds suspicious. Why is it confidential? Is it to stop napsters competitors makeing a better offer, or just because they think the students would be outraged if they found out?

Its the WMA format, using the WMDRMv1 DRM system. Its not decryptable, but vulnerable to both digital and analog loopback recording. I dont think many students will be buying the CD versions. The quality isn't any better, they are just the download-only versions with a different set of permissions.

Students,

If you allow this to pass without putting up a fight, I will have no respect for you.

They are fighting. Where do you think this article came from?

-->darkened03, we feel your pain {{{hug}}}

This is just dictatorship. Since it is for the students, paid for by students, the students should have been given a list of alternatives, and the cost of each one, so that they could collectively decide which, if any, type of music service the university should purchase. Instead, it was unilaterally imposed from above, and now even the details are "secret."

Apparently the students are expected to bow and scrape, and chant "The Great Leader is always right."

autodidcat your so right because atleast we used to have "hall council" where students of a dorm got together and were able to organize events to spend a very very very small amount of school sponsered money (less than 1/3 of a single residents housing fee, not including the $900 they take from us to eat food but dont give us food for).

Yesterday this was removed by the student government, why? I don't know... it was scheduled during my physics class

autodidact* sorry.