8 Comments

Bill Approved: Universities Will Be Required To Offer “Students Music Services”

February 8, 2008 by in Stupid with 8 Comments

Uhhhhh, this HAS to be the STUPIDEST thing I have read in a long time.

[There is] a bill that would put pressure on universities to put in place an official approved music subscription service or risk losing federal financial aid support for students. This is a bizarre piece of legislation, as it effectively props up Napster and RealNetworks by basically requiring universities to sign up for such a service, even if they don’t want to.

This bill has now passed in the house, and is off to the Senate. The good news is that supporters of the bill said it will never be used to cut off Federal Aid is a university refuses to comply, but the sad news is this bill blatantly proves that the RIAA has bought off DC with this ridiculous concept.

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  • Matt K.

    Huh, my university (Washington State University) already does this. They provide students with a subscription to Ruckus, which gives us a pretty good selection of music and such. But, understandably, the music is also DRM encoded, so we don’t really have rights to play it after leaving the university. But they did this on their own volition, it would be weird to have a law mandating this though.

  • Ian

    I know the students will have to pay for this indirectly for this new subscription through higher tuition feeds, but I wouldn’t have minded being given a subscription to a service that provided tons of quality music w/o hassle. You know it’s only a matter of time before intrepid college students manage to bypass the DRM and completely spoil the RIAA’s plans.

    Make a better mousetrap, and someone will create a better mouse.

  • http://pw-software.com NetOperator Wibby

    “Make a better mousetrap, and someone will create a better mouse.” And that’s exactly what I was thinking. ‘Nuff said.

  • Chris

    Obviously the other option would be to have the universities pay a fee to the record companies, like a music tax on their internet, but that’s an equally terrible idea and there is absolutely no justification for giving universities more responsibility than the ISPs in managing illegal downloading. The RIAA needs to realize its legal place and shut up.

  • Rager

    Um, don’t you realize that they’ve already done away with the DRM on Ruckus?

    http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=RZi&q=mirakagi.zip&btnG=Search

    Silly RIAA. Now college kids can have all the DRM-free music they want without getting sued for downloading it.

  • http://www.ScottiXtag.com/ Scott Easterday

    I think our country all of a sudden got a little dumber. With rising tuition prices people can’t afford to go to school without Financial Aid. Congrats RIAA you made the US dumber.

  • marc

    Why are colleges now in the music business, and why is the government basically guaranteeing a revenue stream for the music industry? This is absurd. I wish the US congress would spend a little less time on MP3s and baseball players, and a little more time on any of the dozens of issues that actually matter. Our politicians sure love to tout how we are the greatest nation on earth, but they sure dont spend much time trying to make it true.

  • Per-Erik Broz

    What about movies? Or software?

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