Last month, Napster announced that it has reached a tentative agreement with BMG Music to change the Napster service to a subscription-based service. In other words, so much for free music on the net. To many of us, this news was perhaps not much of a shock. Many who have learned the hard way that nothing in life is really free probably saw this new development coming right up Main Street like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Sooner or later, every gravy train comes into the station.
Nobody rides free forever.
Sorry to disappoint you, but Napster does not appear to be the free gold at the end of the MP3 rainbow. Someone will pay those copyright owners, and it looks like it is going to be the 38 million Napster users. Well, maybe yes and maybe no. The question of bandwidth and proper usage of university resources still leaves the question open for our purposes. On the one hand we have the students, who see their university sponsored Internet access more as an entitlement than a luxury.