Napster gives students the best option

Author: Andrew Jacobi '05

I was disappointed with the article about Napster in The Middlebury Campus this week. I felt like the tone was meant to drum up controversy where not much has existed before. Yes, we spend Student Activities Fee (SFA) money on Napster, but frankly, that is what the SAF is for - to be spent on extracurricular activities for students, with the aim of benefiting as many students as possible. The reason Napster is here now and the reason the group chose to keep Napster as part of the student experience is that it provides an excellent service. Students can listen to almost any music they want on any PC on or off campus without worrying about viruses or the RIAA.

They can create and keep playlists, listen to custom radio and discover new artists. We think the program is of high quality and encourage all students to take advantage of the opportunity to use Napster, whether or not they decide to pay to keep the tracks.Our process in both deciding to renew with Napster, and in deciding whether or not to subscribe to any service at all, was done with as much transparency as possible. We took into account every complaint and positive review we received through the SGA and Napster e-mail accounts, and put out a survey - and even offered respondents the chance to win an MP3 player that retailed for $300 just to try to get more responses - to try to gauge student opinion. To suggest that this is some underhanded ploy by the Student Government Association (SGA) or the school to inappropriately use the SAF for some ulterior motive, or that this is some scheme conceived by the RIAA to cut down on piracy is utterly ridiculous.

The decision to renew with Napster was made by me and a group of students. Administrators were there to help solely with issues that we were not familiar with, such as IT costs, etc. No other interest group or corporation has influenced us in any way.

And while we regret that not every student is eligible for the program, our iTunes vouchers were the only way we could conceive of to compensate Mac users. The only reason that Napster is not available to Mac users is because Apple refuses to make any of these services compatible on both PCs and Macs. If and when they decide to change their mind on this compatibility issue, ALL of these programs will offer the service to both Mac users and PC users.

In the future, I would urge writers to avoid speculating on facts that are completely untrue - such as that the RIAA paid us or tried to influence our deal with Napster in any way - and stick to the facts, such as the results from the survey we sent in that went missing from the article, as well as the data that Napster sends us each day showing that students are downloading and streaming over 5,000 songs per day that also would have been informative. As always, the SGA encourages students to email us at sga@middlebury.edu with any complaints they may have about any SGA program or initiative, or to email napster@middlebury.edu with any questions or concerns they have with Napster.