We played on the big rock stage made the big rock wages

I stole Edvard Munch’s famous painting, ‘The Scream’, from a museum in Oslo, Norway, a couple of weeks ago. Missing a whole week of class is nothing compared to pulling off an international art heist just so you can admire a painting every day while you walk to the bathroom. That’s right Interpol, come and get me – it’s just sitting in my house.

Of course, this is a ludicrous statement at best, and let’s all hope that the authorities won’t be knocking down my door late some night to check the veracity of my claim, but it’s also a perfect analogy for the problem that USC and other universities are facing on the file-sharing frontier. There has long been buzz that the university was looking into setting up a way for students to legally download music, and the rumor was finally confirmed through an article in this paper on Friday. However fuzzy the details are at this point, it seems that USC is already taking the wrong route in an attempt to cut down on digital piracy.

It shouldn’t be a big deal for higher education in America to admit that they are at least ten years behind in dealing with the impact of the digital revolution on media. In struggling to catch up, USC and its peers may inadvertently implement solutions that will only encourage more illegal activities as students attempt to get around legal downloading. Chief Information Officer Bill Hoague was quoted as saying that his preference was for the RealNetworks system in place at the University of Southern California-Berkley, which confirms that Student Life has already failed to consider the implications of such a service on anything other than the university’s infrastructure.

Take a look at the situation that Cornell University finds themselves in a year after adopting the new Napster as a subscription service on campus funded through student activity fees. Napster, as well as Real’s Rhapsody service, are not compatible with Apple computers, which at Cornell comprise 6 to 7 percent of student’s computers. Furthermore, the main portable audio player in use on college campuses (with a 70 percent market share) is the Apple iPod, which can be used with either PC’s or Apple’s Macintoshes, but cannot play files downloaded from Napster or Rhapsody. Adopting a music downloading option offered by either Napster or Real would render these devices useless, and cut the primary user of such a service out of the loop.

The only way to make a music service viable on campus is to ensure that it has enough content to dissuade students from illegally downloading through Limewire or Bearshare. Real and Napster are severely limited in terms of the files they offer, and even Apple’s iTunes has a catalog that does not include many non-mainstream acts. Since the ultimate goal is to eliminate illegal file sharing, whatever service they chose must include adequate digital rights management (DRM). However, this is in ignorance of the fact that there are no protections against someone legally downloading an album and then ripping it to a format to share illegally. USC’s best option is to aggressively limit student’s ability to use illegal file sharing while encouraging private use of legal services like iTunes instead of endorsing one and limiting choices.