p2pnet - rss feed: Sad day for Stanford U
p2p news / p2pnet: It’s a sad day for Stanford, one of America’s premier universities.
Not only is it foisting iTunes, a hard-core commercial product, onto students, it’s bragging about it, even publicly linking its name to the product in a url. And were that not enough, its alumni association will tout the ‘service’ during its annual reunion homecoming weekend, which starts today.
Also starting today, “the general public will have free access to the same audio content”.
Stanford on iTunes will provide “Stanford-related audio content via the iTunes” in a project, “developed with Apple and led by staff from the Stanford Alumni Association, the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and the Office of University Communications”.
Stanford couldn’t have developed a similar service either using its own resources or in collaboration with one of the many US schools whose students are trained to create these kinds of applications?
Apparently not.
“Stanford has been fortunate to partner with Apple in a project that allows us to share the intellectual and cultural life of the university with our alumni,” said Howard Wolf, vice president for alumni affairs and president of the Stanford Alumni Association.
But in retrospect, the Apple thing isn’t too surprising.
Stanford has also done a deal with Yahoo under which it’s offering ‘free’ Yahoo downloans paid for by a mysterious unnamed ‘donor’.
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See:-
Yahoo downloans - Stanford: Yahoo sales unit, October 14, 2005
October 22nd, 2005 at 2:11 am
So once again, the another caves into threats to attempt to protect an institution.
What sort of protection is who getting though? If you can’t follow the money trail then you can certainly follow the doors opened that would normal not open. Many times when deals are made but the agreement is kept from public ear, ESPECIALLY A UNIVERSITY, you can look at the results and see where it went.
Stanford has made a deal that offers too download services legal access to its student body. Something that in the past would have been frowned on. The two corporations that are offering these services would give their eyeteeth to be right where they are now.
Apple has long known this association at an early age leads to life long customers. A large portion of the high schools have always recieved some sort of deal that involved their computers being in the school for student use, with that very idea in mind. It is also why students are seeing vending machines that sell sodas in school also.
In return a percentage of these students will be life long customers, provided they are trained and hooked at an early age. The corporations have penatrated the schools where young minds are trained and shaped. As such they will become the future that keeps the corporation afloat and guarentees future business.
Honestly this sort of consumer training reeks to high heaven of manipulation without regard to a child/young adults mental growth. Military services do this also but with a greater degree of results. While the military isn’t training good consumers, they are training minds. Get those minds early enough, make them conform, make them believe you have their interests at heart, and obey them to take unquestioned orders. How else would you get someone to tote a gun and fight a war for you? Idealism and commitment, that’s how.
Corporations have no business being in schools. If they can’t make a profit from legal competition, they really don’t need to be in business. Doesn’t matter if we are talking cigarettes, booze, songs, or copyright issues. None of them should have access to the student body with any sort of commercialism involved.
October 22nd, 2005 at 2:42 am
All right, now see here, Stanford is in the heart of Silicon Valley. Its campus is not that far from One Infinite Loop. And Steve Jobs recently gave a commencement address which you can listen to here:
http://www.wiredatom.com/jobs_stanford_speech/
It’s a far more inspiring address than anything either the droll BillGatusOfBorg or his embarrassing best friend SteveBallmerOfBorg might deliver.
Suck it up, iTunes rocks. So does Apple. So Does Stanford.
PS Are you a Folder?
http://folding.stanford.edu/
October 22nd, 2005 at 3:17 am
iTunes sucks. I tried it once or twice, slowed down my computer considerably. You are better off with a program like Winamp.
As for buying music:
Fairplay is awesome, I can play it on ANY computer I own, put it on my non-apple music player, burn as many cds as I want with the same song/playlist.
And the quality of the songs is stellar…….(/sarcasm)
I’ll stick with downloading my VBR MP3s made by bands that don’t have their music on iTunes…..
October 23rd, 2005 at 8:05 pm
(1) iTunes foes not suck, it works fine on my Macintosh and PC.
(2) On religious principle I will not buy DRM-encumbered music period. Because of the RIAA and its racketeering I will not and I will not allow my family to buy CDs anymore.
(3) Fairplay lets us listen to our ITMS music on up to five computers and burn it to CD legally so I see no real restrictions. THAT is why ITMS is number one. And ITMS music plays on the most popular music player in the word - iPod.
(4) Some bands make their music available for free. See here:
http://www.legaltorrents.com/index.htm
Rock on!
October 23rd, 2005 at 9:09 pm
rock but not on ipod =)