Posted at 3:02 p.m. PST Friday, February 25, 2000
Colleges target music Web sites
BY KATE N. GROSSMAN
Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO (AP) -- University students nationwide are getting unexpected results when trying to access some of the Web's most popular music sites: They're finding them off limits.
Schools are using filtering programs to deny students access to the sites, saying using them to download music clogs computer systems and makes it difficult to use the Internet for academic work.
``That is not a cost the university is willing to sustain,' said Bob Foertsch, who works in the computing offices of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The school has banned access to Napster, a site that at times has accounted for 60 percent of the school's Internet traffic, he said.
A student group protesting a similar ban at Indiana University says almost 70 schools have banned Napster, including the University of Texas, Boston University, Northwestern University and Oregon State. The University of Chicago also banned Napster last week.
``This is just the tip of the iceberg,' said Chris White, who coordinates the residential computer network at Oregon State University in Corvallis. ``This is just a temporary fix.'
A similar program called iMesh, which can be used to download movies too, now is taking off on campuses, White said. The University of Illinois is among the schools filtering out iMesh.
To universities, Napster and iMesh are cumbersome because each user who downloads the software becomes a ``server,' capable of swapping music and video with other software users. The result is an enormous amount of traffic flowing through university systems, said Gregory Jackson of the University of Chicago.
Napster, based in San Mateo, Calif., is being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America, which claims the company is facilitating widespread copyright infringement.
On its Web site, Napster says it respects copyright laws and expects its users to do so as well.
Napster officials did not respond to an interview request, but in a statement, spokeswoman Elizabeth Brooks said the company is ``aware of the bandwidth issues faced by some universities and we are working together to address that.'
One student group wants access to Napster restored.
Ryan Bruner, a freshman at Indiana University, said about 2,700 names are listed on a Web site petition for his group, Students Against University Censorship. The group has a goal of 10,000 signatures and hopes to take legal action to restore student access to the sites.
``I think it's a student's right,' Bruner said. ``We should be able to look at what we want to on the Internet.'
mercurycenter.com
reminds me of the song. "I Want my MTV" now becomes "I want my MP.3"
Despite the security of EDIG, the revs are of no comparision to MPPP.
Jack |
