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The next generation of Napster has been hit with the inevitable lawsuit. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suit Thursday against students at several universities who allegedly run large file-swapping sites. Napster, you may remember, began as a similar venture. The RIAA claims that the four students accounted for thousands of freely shared songs floating around the net. They say that such behavior violates copyright and free usage laws. The students attend Princeton, Michigan Technological University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. According to the RIAA, the four students offered between 27,000 and 1 million songs for trade among them. The group apparently found the alleged offenders by studying student newspapers. The Daily Princetonian had a story about the school’s local area network sites being used to trade songs.
War spurs popularity of streaming video
Broadband has become the must-have medium during the war. A record number of high-speed internet users are viewing video streams on major news web sites. MSNBC.com, for example, is averaging 5 million video streams per day since mid-March, seven times its February average. RealNetworks, which carries ABCNews.com content, reports that its streams doubled during March. The premium service offered by RealNetworks may see its customer base double to 1.8 million this year. Earthlink predicts that its subscriptions will spike 15 percent in 2003 because of the war.
Standardized tests move from paper to screen
More and more standardized tests are going online. Several states will have at least one-fifth, and up to four-fifths, of their students taking tests via computers this year. The subject and breadth of the tests will remain the same as the offline versions. One of the main differences is when the tests can be administered. States can choose from October to May instead of the now-standard March 17 to April 18 frame for paper examinations. Oregon, Idaho and Virginia have been the fastest adopters of this policy. In Idaho, more than 90 percent of kids from second to 10th grade will take reading and math tests online this year. Tech-savvy children seem to prefer the method, which has been used for the grad school entrance test, the GRE, for more than five years. It cost Oregon roughly $2 million per year to develop the tests and show teachers how to administer them to about one-third of the state’s test takers.
Government proclaims: No porn for Pakistanis
The very small number of internet users in Pakistan apparently share one universal interest: pornography. Now the Pakistani government has begun a campaign to smite the smut. It’s estimated that more than 60 percent of the Islamic country’s 1 million web users frequent pornographic sites. Since February, Pakistani government officials have identified and blocked 1,800 such sites. They face a tough task in wiping out what they call an evil and corrupting influence. Millions of pornography sites exist, and the government is working on blocks for anti-Islamic sites as well. Pakistani internet service providers have said that most pornography viewers are under 18, with another significant segment being middle-aged viewers. Government data shows that 25 to 30 percent of Pakistani users are still trying to access the banned sites. Users report that the blocks have slowed internet connections, which aren’t very fast to begin with.
April 7, 2003© 2003 Media Life
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