Universities, Legal Music Services and Apple

CNet reports that various Universities have been working on plans to offer legal music downloading services to college students.

Universities have been significantly affected by the proliferation of the file trading networks -- with increased bandwidth usage, as well as legal disputes with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). According to this article, there has already been a meeting between University officials and a number of online music service representatives -- including Apple Computer.

The May meeting underscored different expectations from both sides -- with University officials requesting a fixed-fee/unlimited download service. Licensing issues would apparently make this difficult to implement, according to music representatives.

Proposals from individual services (such as Apple) are to be returned to Universities, but details of final plans are unknown.