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Byline: Cynthia L. Webb

The music industry appears to have pacified college campuses in its wide-ranging war against online music piracy. Not only have major universities cozied up to the industry in a joint partnership to educate students about the perils of file-sharing, they're jumping into the e-music business themselves.

The hope is that students will stop pirating and start paying for music --- perhaps out of their student fees. The Boston Globe reported today that "as many as two dozen universities nationwide this spring will start testing technology for delivering songs to their students over the Internet, recording industry officials and a prominent educator said yesterday. Pennsylvania State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among the schools considering such a service."

Penn State President Graham Spanier , co-chairman of a joint committee of higher education leaders and entertainment industry executives, "wants to license songs from digital music providers, make them available to students through streaming or download, and tack a few dollars onto each student's bill in the same way that some universities now charge for cable television," the paper said. * The Boston Globe: Colleges Plan Music Services

The Los Angeles Daily News noted that "Spanier, in announcing the pending pilot programs Tuesday, said the aim was to make the 'illegal legal.'" The newspaper added that no California schools have joined the effort so far. * The Los Angeles Daily News: Colleges May Pay The Piper To Legalize Music Downloads * The Associated Press via DelawareOnline.com: College Restrict Music, Movie Piracy

Spanier, as quoted by CNET's News.com, said: "There is much greater acceptance among university administrators that we need to be part of the solution, rather than standing on the sidelines and watching it unfold." Interesting that the solution also has potential monetary awards for campuses too. Expect students and downloading die-hards to balk. Nevertheless, the plan seems to be gaining steam. The group issued a request for information from companies "that could help curb illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) network file sharing on college and university campuses. It is intended to lead to on-campus pilot projects beginning this academic year that will afford a practical demonstration and evaluation of the utility and effectiveness of the technologies," InternetNews.com said. * CNET's News.com: Colleges Making Dent In Campus P2P * InternetNews.com: College File Swapping: Making The Illegal, Legal?

* CNET's News.com: Colleges Explore Legal Net Music Setups (Link is from Aug. 1)

CNET reported more on the pay-for-download plan, writing that "efforts are moving ahead to create authorized campus music services, essentially subsidizing students' legal access to music in much the same way some campuses provide cable TV in dorm rooms. As reported earlier, campuses are negotiating with services such as Napster and RealNetworks ' Rhapsody to create trial projects offering students access to legal digital music in hopes of competing with the file-swapping networks. Spanier said he expected to see close to a dozen trial projects of this kind of on-campus service, possibly paid for by student fees, in universities around the country beginning in early 2004."

Buymusic.com is one potential partner for universities. " Liz Brooks , vice president for marketing at Buymusic.com, said she was currently negotiating discounts with five large universities and several smaller colleges. Students might get a set number of songs for free or at a discount from the service's usual 79-cent to $1.14 price, she said," according to Reuters. "We're looking at ways to help the colleges have a clear and well-delineated way to push the authorized download services," Brooks told Reuters. * Reuters: As Suits Loom, Colleges Eye Pay-Music Services

CD Sales Drop = Lawsuit Rise?

CD sales continue to drop, further fueling the recording industry's warpath against illegal file swappers. "For the first six months of 2003, shipments of CD albums, singles and other recorded music dropped by 15.8 percent compared with the same period last year, according to a midyear report by the Recording Industry Association of America," The San Francisco Chronicle said. "Overall, recorded music sales are down 31 percent since mid-2000, when the Napster online file-sharing phenomenon was in full bloom, said RIAA President Cary Sherman ." Sherman told the paper through a spokeswoman the "issue is not the decline in CDs; it's the decline in people paying for the music that they acquire. We need to get people back into the habit of paying for music, whether it's from record stores or a legal online service." * The San Francisco Chronicle: RIAA Decries Drop In CD Sales * Bloomberg via The Detroit News: Music, Film Industries Join With Colleges To Battle Web Piracy

Quicker Downloads

As the entertainment industry works to fight digital piracy, computer users continue to flock to sites --- both sanctioned by the industry and back-door sites --- to download music and movies. Movielink of Santa Monica, described by The Los Angeles Times as a joint venture of Viacom , Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , Sony , Vivendi , and AOL Time Warner , has tweaked its downloadable movie service in an effort to attract more paying downloaders.

The newspaper said the new version is out today and "aims to fix two crucial flaws: long download times and portability problems." Movielink "offers about 450 movies on its Web site that can be rented for $3 to $5. But it can take more than an hour to download a movie, even with a high-speed Internet connection and compression technology. And once a movie is on a computer, it cannot be transferred to another device. In its new version, Movielink enables renters to play a movie while it is still downloading instead of having to wait until the transmission is finished. That should give the service more of the instant-gratification quality offered by video-on-demand services on cable TV, said Chief Executive Jim Ramo ." * The Los Angeles Times: New Version of MovieLink Aims To Speed Downloading (Registration required)

Turning The Tables on the RIAA

Meanwhile, some more tidbits regarding an unnamed Internet user who is fighting the RIAA's efforts to subpoena records from her Internet service provider. The RIAA wants Verizon to provide data on the user's online file-trading activities. From BBC News Online today: "In court papers, the lawyers said they may argue the RIAA violated state and federal laws by tracking what was passing through the woman's internet connection as its investigators scoured file-sharing networks looking for songs to download. RIAA vice-president Matt Oppenheim called the arguments 'surprisingly shallow.'" * BBC News Online: 'Music Pirate' Challenges Industry

Ebbers's Day in Court

Former WorldCom chairman Bernie Ebbers is due in court in Oklahoma today to face criminal fraud charges filed by the state's attorney general. Ebbers already arrived this morning to start processing for his day in court. CNBC this morning showed Ebbers entering the building, surrounded by a slew of cameras. "Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson filed the 15-count complaint a week ago, charging Ebbers, WorldCom and five other former executives with artificially hiking the value of the company's stock and bonds by falsely boosting the company's profits in quarterly public financial reports. Oklahoma is the first state to file criminal charges in the $11 billion accounting scam that produced the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history," The Oklahoman said. * The Oklahoman: WorldCom Ex-Executive Due In Court (Registration required)

Meanwhile, WorldCom-cum- MCI faces some fresh allegations from rival AT&T . "AT&T Corp. filed a civil racketeering lawsuit yesterday against WorldCom Inc., accusing its rival of conspiring to improperly reroute telephone calls in an effort to avoid paying millions of dollars in fees to other telephone companies. The long-distance giant claims that WorldCom conspired with Minneapolis-based telecommunications company Onvoy Inc. to route calls into Canada. The telephone traffic was then secretly moved onto AT&T's international telephone network where calls were transported back into the United States, according to the lawsuit," The Washington Post explained. WorldCom has denied any wrongdoing. * The Washington Post: AT&T Sues WorldCom Over Call-Routing Methods