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The recording industry may consider Kazaa the second coming of Napster, but the peer-to-peer file sharing site sees itself differently. Kazaa will begin encouraging users to swap legal files instead of pirated ones through a new user incentive program. The Peer Points Manager, being run by Kazaa partner Altnet, will offer rewards that run from DVDs to laptops for users who post legal files to trade with others. Such users will receive points, which can be exchanged for prizes such as concert tickets or lottery-type entries for more expensive things, like laptops. Kazaa users, who surf the site for free, can download files right from other users’ computers. Many such files are pirated, as downloaders pay no usage fee for copyrighted materials. But Altnet listings comprise about 1,000 legal music, movies and software listings on Kazaa. The problem is that many of the listings are obscure and in low- to no-demand. Altnet hopes to go from 20 million downloads per month to 20 million per day with the Peer Points program.
Coming soon: Earn a degree in video games
You can probably already imagine the class titles: “The Id of Pac-Man” or “Misogynistic Undertones of BMX XXX.” But Southern Methodist University is quite serious about its new Guildhall school of video game making. The program will debut in July with its first group of classes in what’s believed to be the first traditional undergraduate college program of its kind. Redmond, Wash.’s DigiPen Institute of Technology and Orlando’s Full Sail already offer video game programs. MIT and Michigan offer individual classes in the discipline, but nothing as organized as a full-fledged program. Gaming jobs are projected to grow by 15 percent per year in the already 30,000-strong industry. Specializations in SMU’s 18-month, $37,000 program will include art creation, software development and level design.
BYU web designers caught pulling a Blair
Brigham Young University’s student news site won two national awards for creativity this year. As it turns out, the only thing creative about the site is its design attribution. BYU has returned the two awards after discovering that the two undergrad student designers copied the NewsNet design from Builder.com, a site that offers site-building instruction to net neophytes. NewsNet had won second place in the online college newspaper category from Editor & Publisher and first place from the Society of Newspaper Design’s University of Missouri chapter. A BYU student reportedly informed NewsNet editors of the design plagiarism, which they apparently had not been aware of. After looking into the allegations, the editors decided to return the awards.
NYTimes.com offers amateur film critics an outlet
New York Times online readers hoping to channel their inner Elvis Mitchell are in luck. The site has launched a new community tool that allows NYTimes.com readers to post their own movie reviews. The area already has generated more than 1,400 reviews of “The Matrix Reloaded.” Also packaged on the Movies.nytimes.com page are links to Times reviews past and present and information taken from “AMG’s All Movie Guide.” Twenty years’ worth of reviews are available for free, and select reviews dating back to 1929 also have been made available.
June 3, 2003© 2003 Media Life
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