Follow this great thread from Jason (here, here, and here) and Ed, with comments from Donna here. They brilliantly critique Penn St.’s banning student use of servers without faculty permission. While Penn St’s adopting Napster 2.0 was a desperate act, this is just plain stupid.
On the Napster 2.0 front, see the stats in Jason’s first post. It seems like no one’s using it that much. Even though 75% say they use the service a few times a week or every day, students stream on average around a mere 5 tracks per day (80,000 tracks per day / 16,500 students). 60% of people say they can’t find the content they want and around 15 percent are pleased with the $.99 price to buy and burn tracks. I think this lends more credence to my previous criticisms. This hasn’t solved any problems, while taking money away from more valuable services that lie closer to the university’s mission.
Of course, as the server ban exemplifies, Penn St. has moved away from its academic mission in many ways. This is becoming all too common in the copyfight. As Jason writes, “When institutions like Penn State begin to make copyright enforcement more important that academic freedom, education, and self-expression, we should question those decisions and how they relate to the overall mission of higher education.”
Filed by Derek Slater at 2:51 pm under General news