Universities Band to Offer Licensed Music Downloads

Here’s a brilliant solution by some universities that might stop their students from illegally downloading copyrighted music and thereby spare the universities ilegal peril from the copyright holders: According to Penn State University President Graham Spanier, roughly a dozen colleges and universities hope to bundle industry-sanctioned digital music services along with cable television, free newspapers, and other perks of campus life when students show up for the spring semester next year.

“We could make what is now illegal legal,” said Spanier, who co-chairs a group that discourages on-campus copyright infringement. “If music is that important to our students, we should provide music to them,” Reuters reports.

Spanier told Reuters that said Penn State was among those schools currently picking a service, but declined to name the others and did not specify which music services were involved. Service would be bundled into tuition or activity fees and would likely be significantly below the market rate, he said.