For years, students at Fairfield have used illegal programs to download free music.
Starting next week, the school is attempting to change that.
Next Wednesday, the university is holding a demonstration of Apple’s iTunes music store program in the Barone Campus Center, offering the use of 16 computers to give students a chance to try iTunes themselves.
In addition, two of Apple’s popular iPod MP3 players will be raffled off and a limited supply of 10 free songs will be given to students who attend.
Dave Deslauriers ’04, the university’s Apple authorized education agent, hopes that the school’s promotion of the iTunes program will help curb illegal downloading.
“iTunes is a great program. I certainly hope it helps stop students from downloading illegally,” said Deslauriers.
“There’s a definite wall against students [downloading legally], because there’s still access to doing things the wrong way,” he said.
Deslauriers added that students eventually need to get used to the idea of paying for downloaded music files.
“At some point, people are going to have to suck it up and pay for the music,” Deslauriers said.
“The Napsters and Kazaas of the world are fading quickly. Free music is going to disappear eventually,” he said.
Dean of Students Mark Reed also hopes that the promotion will help encourage students to pay for their MP3s.
“There is a lot of concern across the country over music being traded illegally, and we feel an institutional responsibility to offer our students a positive alternative,” said Reed.
The school’s Internet network was recently reconfigured in order to give the iTunes service more bandwidth, assuring students quick downloading and browsing of titles. In addition, members of the school’s Computer and Network Services are sure that the bandwidth devoted to iTunes will not have a significant impact on Internet speeds for other students.
“We’ve tested the iTunes service and have found it to be very dependable and an extremely low impact on our network and Internet traffic,” said Jay Rozgonyi, the network manager at Fairfield.
In addition to offering students the opportunity to buy songs through iTunes for 99 cents per song, iTunes also allows its users to share music with people on their network. Because of this feature, students who live in a residence hall can share their music with other iTunes users in their dorm.
This feature has proven popular with iTunes users on campus.
“They’re smart enough to let you legally share music with people in your building,” said Austin Ayers ’07, a resident in Jogues Hall.
Ayers also was enthusiastic Fairfield was offering students a chance to legally obtain MP3s.
“I love iTunes. The music companies have to make money somewhere, and iTunes lets them do that,” said Ayers.
Deslauriers hopes that this demonstration is just the beginning of a healthy relationship between Fairfield University and Apple.
“I’m thrilled that Fairfield has the relationship with Apple that allows us to hold events like this, and it’s convenient that both iTunes and iPods are both the most popular products of their kind on the market right now,” he said.
The demonstration will take place from on April 28 from 12-6 p.m. in the ground floor of the Barone Campus Center.
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