Official Ares Free Download

p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- The upbeat tune Warner Music and Jim Griffin, pictured on the left with Warner boss Edgar Bronfman jr, were singing on Choruss, the music ‘licensing’ scheme they’ve been touting to US universities, is now sounding like a funeral dirge.

Under the scheme, gullible students would pay Warner $5 a month for music downloads, said p2pnet recently.

TechDirt’s Mike Masnick called it a Bait-And-Switch operation and Griffin, hired by Warner to make it happen and convince people it should, told p2pnet Masnick’s story was “factually incorrect in every respect“.

Last month, however, “At least one university system on the East Coast is safe from Warner Music’s  bait-and-switch music licensing scheme,” said p2pnet, reporting the school’s decision to distance itself from Warner and Choruss.

Now, “Under a blanket of secrecy, six colleges have begun testing an experimental service from major recording labels that lets students legally download all the music they want and put it on any device,” says the Chronicle of Higher Education, going on »»»

But some innovative features have been stripped from the service since it was proposed, leaving it similar to existing services that have not made much of a dent in illicit file-sharing.

The experimental service, led by Warner Music Group, is called Choruss. It has no informational Web site, no brochure, and almost nothing in writing to describe it, even though it is slated to be up and running for students on the six campuses in January.

The participating colleges have asked not to be identified, in part because the music industry’s efforts have been criticized in the past and the issue is a political land mine for campus officials.

The only source of public information about Choruss is Jim Griffin, the Warner Music adviser leading the effort.

Taking the ‘voluntary’ out of ‘voluntary’

“Despite Griffin’s repeated accusations of factual inaccuracies in reports on the ill-intentioned ’service’ … Griffin failed to provide any substantial information to refute the claims,” p2pnet was told for the story on the departure of the East Coast university.

The source continued »»»

Given the collapse of this deal it is safe to say that at least some of the previously-stated concerns are true.

Choruss was an attempt by Griffin and the Big Music gang to get universities around the country to pay a monthly tax to keep the lawyers away, a cost that would be passed along to students.

Essentially, Griffin wanted to take the “voluntary” out of the EFF’s “Voluntary Collective Licensing” proposal, forcing all students to pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to their favorite tunes. The money would be distributed amongst the rights-holders, with left-overs trickling down to the pockets of the biggest-name artists.

Yet as more details emerged in closed-door discussions, it became apparent that Griffin and company planned on stripping away any semblance of “licensing.”

Students paying the (mandatory) fee could download songs most likely from “pre-approved” sources, and only from the Warner Music label.

They could not upload these songs to filesharing networks, blogs, or use the songs in any way other than on their personal headphones.

What’s more, the “deal” would be conductedas “covenant not to sue,” with Choruss partners promising not to sue students for downloading so long as the protection money was paid – a promise with about as much weight as the RIAA’s decision to stop lawsuits against individuals last year.

Of course, nearly every filesharing case against university students has revolved around students uploading material, not downloading it, so music-loving students buying into Choruss would be as much at risk as they were before.

On top of all that, suggested methods for tracking the popularity of downloaded songs seemed like dangerous invasions of privacy.

From installing AudibleMagic “fingerprinting” boxes on school networks to software clients telling Choruss which songs were played when, universities and students trying to “get legit,” could be getting a lot more than they bargained for.

At least one state has made the right decision in rejecting Griffin’s sneaky plan to trick universities into using student money to buy into yet another one-way deal that does nothing for students or artists, serving only to line his and other industry executive’s pockets with cash in exchange for, well, nothing.

‘Covenant not to sue’

Griffin has now told The Chronicle the model for Choruss has changed.

On the covenant not to sue, “We’d initially considered the idea but have now decided to use a traditional license approach,” it has Griffin saying. “Another substantial change is that the licenses now would be with individual students rather than with colleges — although on some campuses, student governments or other groups may agree to pay the fee on behalf of students,” it says.

Adds the story »»»

As Mr. Griffin described the current plan, it sounded much like previous efforts to sell digital music to students. Account holders would log into a Web site, enter a user name and password, and be granted access to a catalog of millions of songs from major and independent labels. “They can then access a large pool of songs for a flat fee,” he said.

Each of the six campuses will test a different price to see which attracts the most usage. “The most exciting question for me is what terms and conditions and price points will optimize the revenue to the rights holder,” Mr. Griffin said. That is key to making sure artists get compensated for their creative work, he said.

The most unusual feature of Choruss is that users would be able to download any song in the collection to their own computers, with no restrictions. Unlike Apple’s iTunes, which charges about a dollar per song for unrestricted downloads, this would be an all-you-can-grab song buffet. Want to make CD’s? Sure. Put thousands of songs on your iPod? No problem. Even after students stop paying the Choruss subscription fee, they will be able to keep all the songs they have downloaded. “They get to keep them the rest of their lives,” as Mr. Griffin put it. That differs from some subscription music services, which allow access only while users are active members of the service.

So what’s to stop students from paying for a month and then downloading everything?

“Nothing,” the story has Griffin admitting.

The “basic premise” is that it’s “so easy to download music from unauthorized Web sites that some model has to be developed to persuade users to do the right thing and pay for the content instead,” he says

“If you find a way to make it faster, easier, and simpler to pay, we think people will pay,” he said. “Our gut tell us that the right model is flat fee, unlimited use.”

Really?

Adds the Chronicle »»»

Many campus-technology leaders wonder just who the secret beta testers are. Cornell University officials have denied a report that they are involved, as have officials at Pennsylvania State University, Illinois State University, and the University of Chicago.

Why the secrecy? A college official familiar with the discussions, who asked not to be named, said colleges just don’t want to be attacked by critics of the music industry, especially since they may choose not to participate after the initial experimentation phase. “They’ve been burned before by premature discussion about this and other proj ects,” said the official. “So, up until the point at which they have their own message nailed down, there’s no upside to discussing it and plenty of potential downside.”

“More details apparently will be made public this spring, when students on the test-bed campuses will be asked to pay a monthly fee to try it out,” it says.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Portfolio.com – Fee for All, March 27, 2008
p2pnet – Say No! to Choruss, says Ray Beckerman, March 20, 2009
TechDirt – Choruss’ Music Tax Plan: Bait-And-Switch, March 18, 2009
actually incorrect in every respect – TechDirt Choruss story ‘factually incorrect’, March 19, 2009
Chronicle of Higher Education – Music Industry Changes Tune of New Program to Fight File Sharing, November 3, 2009
p2pnet – Choruss, and the sound of silence, October 16, 2009

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