More than a math mistake
Issue date: 1/29/08 Section: Editorial
The MPAA and its co-conspirator in resisting modernity, the Recording Industry Association of America, have spent most of the past decade suing their customers instead of creating a new distribution model. Meanwhile, open-source software such as BitTorrent has stepped in to provide the fastest means of distributing digital content. If the MPAA wants to reduce illegal downloading, it will have to cooperate with innovators to offer customers easy, fast, relatively inexpensive and device-independent downloads.
Brown's response to students' illegal downloading hasn't been too successful either. University officials deployed Ruckus, a legal, DRM-ridden alternative to illegal downloading of music, in September 2006. Without ownership, though, Ruckus is not a viable long-term solution. The consumers have spoken: We want to own our music and movies, and we generally won't settle for compromises that stop us from putting them on our iPods or TVs.
What can Brown do? Not very much, though it should look beyond Ruckus for something compatible with more students' computers. But since we no longer should be seen as the culprits of nearly half of all illegal downloading in the United States, we as college students deserve more leverage in asking for reasonable, fast, easy and legal ways to purchase digital media.
Brown's response to students' illegal downloading hasn't been too successful either. University officials deployed Ruckus, a legal, DRM-ridden alternative to illegal downloading of music, in September 2006. Without ownership, though, Ruckus is not a viable long-term solution. The consumers have spoken: We want to own our music and movies, and we generally won't settle for compromises that stop us from putting them on our iPods or TVs.
What can Brown do? Not very much, though it should look beyond Ruckus for something compatible with more students' computers. But since we no longer should be seen as the culprits of nearly half of all illegal downloading in the United States, we as college students deserve more leverage in asking for reasonable, fast, easy and legal ways to purchase digital media.