By
Aaron Cowman
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Music file-sharing service to charge special membership fee
For more than a year, music lovers have been thinking it's too good to be true - now, this just might be the case, as times are changing for Napster users everywhere, including at the UA.
Hank Barry, CEO of Napster, told BBC News Online this week that the online file-sharing program, which has been free to use until now, will institute a fee possibly as early as June.
At this point, the exact dollar amount is still undetermined.
Napster's official Web site stated that the company will continue to offer a free service. For a membership fee, however, users will receive an enhanced service and will allow Napster to reimburse artists whose music is exchanged through use of the program.
About 4,000 students currently living in UA residence halls have access to the university's Ethernet connection, which allows for accelerated download speeds of files such as the ones traded on Napster, said Steve Gilmore, assistant director of Resident Life.
Undeclared freshman Adam Falabella, who recently moved into Coronado Residence Hall, said that the difference between Internet speed at his dorm and his home is enormous.
"With the faster connection, you can just sit there and download it all, instead of waiting on one or two songs," Falabella said.
Some students said that they would choose not to use the service if they were forced to pay.
"The entire purpose of Napster was not paying for it," said Jon Galina-Mehlman, a physics freshman and Coronado resident. "I'd rather support the bands I like by buying their CDs as opposed to others."
Psychology junior Chad Waits, a resident assistant for La Paz Residence Hall, has used Napster to download more than 1,800 songs. The biggest factor is the price, Waits said.
Business sophomore Danielle Demirjian also said the cost would matter to her.
"It depends on the fee, but I would probably pay for it," she said.
Demirjian, a Coronado resident, said that her time spent using Napster has increased greatly since moving into the dorm.
"I use it, like, everyday, as opposed to when I was at home and I only used it a couple of times a week," Demirjian said.
Napster has been under scrutiny from the music industry since its inception in 1999. Many artists have said that Napster users are violating copyright laws when they download music without paying for it.
"I still buy all my favorite bands when they come out," Waits said. "But sometimes I download the songs and burn them onto a CD."
As far as the service's impact on the university, Gilmore said that Napster has never been a big problem, even though, at any given time, 20 to 30 percent of the university's bandwidth use is attributed to Napster.
"We don't look for Napster," Gilmore said. "Our biggest cases are copyright violations."
Gilmore added that downloading songs from other users takes up far less bandwidth than having them uploaded from campus computers.
"The intent of the network was never to have users be information providers, but information consumers," Gilmore said.
