Letter to the Editor: Download service

To the Editor:

While it is disappointing that the misguided initiative to get Penn into the legal music downloading business is proceeding, it would be a positive change if the proposed service were optional, as the DP reports ("New service for downloading on the horizon," 10/28/05). However, serious concerns remain.

By contracting with a download service based on music distribution system that does not support what is by far the most popular digital music player, Penn would be lending its name to the marketing efforts of the current losers in the digital music market, while achieving very little to change the habits of digital music users on campus. Evidence from other schools that signed onto to this Faustian bargain is that campus practices have changed little, but the losing competitors and the RIAA have constantly exploited the names of those schools in their propaganda.

Instead of fostering law-abiding music behavior as the service providers and the RIAA disingenuously claim, the service would just present another easy target for freely available music-copying software.

Furthermore, the opt-in character of the proposed service does not mean that it will not cost all of the Penn community indirectly. Contracts for some of the campus music subscription services are said to have included restrictions on other services and monitoring of users, thus imposing opportunity and privacy costs.

Music subscription software in some other schools has decreased the security and reliability of student computers, thus increasing support costs. Therefore, ensuring that the service does "not have a negative impact on network performance," let alone on openness, security and privacy could end up being pretty expensive for all of us.

Given these ethical, technical and financial concerns, it is essential that any contract for a music subscription service be openly presented and discussed, so that the Penn community really knows what it would be getting into.

Fernando Pereira

The author is chairman of Penn's Computer and Information Science Department

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.