thursday, September 25, 2003
news
the university daily kansan 34
3A
University to review policy for downloading music
By Steve Schmidt
sschmidt@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
The University of Kansas may soon be a player in the file-sharing prevention game.
The University has been invited to participate in a pilot project to develop an online music delivery service to students nationwide, said Allison Lopez, external relations coordinator of information services.
For a fee, students could legally download music online with the service.
The University received the invitation Tuesday from Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University and co-chair of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities. The other co-chair is Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America.
"We'll be reviewing the proposal and will consider whether it will be good for KU and its students and whether we want to participate in the pilot project," Lopez said.
LOPEE said.
She said a group of University officials will meet to discuss the issue during the next few weeks.
The study comes largely in response to the association's complaints — and in some cases, subpoenas — asking universities to find peer-to-peer file-sharing violators.
According to an Associated Press article, the online civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation said at least 10 universities had been served
subpoenas demanding that they help the association locate offenders.
offenders. Lopez said the University had yet to receive a subpoena.
The association began legal actions on April 4 when it filed suit against four students at three universities for copyright infringement, according to a press release from the University of California-Los Angeles.
While schools are pondering Spanier's proposal to allow students to download music legally, one school has focused on preventing any peer-to-peer file sharing.
Bird said that the program had been remarkably effective in its brief existence.
Last semester, the University of Florida launched ICARUS, a program that could detect file-sharing offenders and temporarily limit their access. Its name is an acronym for Integrated Control Application for Recognizing User Services.
Rob Bird created the program. He is the coordinator of network services in the university's department of student housing.
He said the spring before ICARUS was launched, about 3,500 of the 9,000 members of the school's residence hall community, nearly 40 percent, were using file-sharing programs.
The school started a no-file-sharing policy six years before ICARUS was born after students began using the school's network to launch their own online business Web sites.
ness Web sites.
"Allowing people to run their own servers is generally a safety policy no-no anyway." Bird said.
In addition, Bird said the school received about 50 Digital Millennium Copyright Act infringement complaints a month from the association. Since the program started, the school network has not received one complaint.
"For a school our size that's basically unheard of," Bird said.
Nearly 50,000 students — undergraduate and graduate combined — are enrolled at the Gainesville, Fla., school Bird said, about twice the number of the University of Kansas students.
Besides keeping Florida clear of legal woes, Bair said the program also had the power to quarantine any Internet worms, a function that came in handy during the worldwide worm attacks earlier this semester.
"For all the attention that peer-to-peer has given to it, that's just one facet of it," Bird said.
ICARUS' success has piqued the interest of the university information technology community. Bird said 15 schools, both large and small, had shown interest in bringing ICARUS to their campuses.
Bird said that the program was not ready to be released to other schools yet, but he planned to offer it for free to other institutions next spring.
While Bird would not disclose what other schools were interested in the program because of confidentiality issues, he did say that the University of Kansas had not contacted him.
Customers switch to online bill pay
Edited by Doyle Murphy
By Kevin Kampwirth
kkampwirth@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Everyone from credit card to phone companies have offered online bill pay to their costumers for several years. But now the trend is catching on.
Almost 17 million households paid bills online last year, an increase of 41 percent from 2001, according to a study by Forrester Research Inc., a company that analyzes trends in technology for clients.
Online billing allows people to pay their monthly bills through the company Web site,accessible through a user name and password.
One aspect of online billing that people find especially appealing is auto-pay, said Joe Yager, financial management analyst with Lawrence Utilities.
With auto-pay, the users' checking account or credit card numbers are stored in their personal accounts on the company Web site. Every billing period, the
amount owed is taken directly from the customer's account.
Lawrence Utilities offers this auto-pay option, which it calls auto drafting.
auto drafting."
"Auto drafting has been very popular with our costumers," Yager said.
More than 4,000 accounts about 14 percent of their total costumers, use auto drafting. Yager said.
Another online service that has become increasingly popular is online banking.
Online banking allows customers to access their checking or savings accounts through their bank's Web site and monitor any transactions that occur.
Central National Bank, with four Lawrence-area locations, is just one area bank that offers online banking to its costumers
"There been a very positive response with our online banking." said Jake Wright, a customer service representative with the bank.
Wright said that the largest benefit of online banking was that
the customers could easily learn the balance of their account, which led to less human error when it came to tasks like balancing a checkbook.
A choice that people have involving both their bank and their creditors, is monthly bill pay through their bank.
Online-banking customers can compile a list of monthly bills in their accounts on the bank's Web site. The bills are paid directly from the customer's checking account each month.
"If you factor in the postage and time you take to actually sit down and figure out your bills, in the end it saves a lot of time and money." Wright said.
One drawback of online bill pay is the transaction fee. The fee differs depending on the amount owed. Lawrence Utilities assesses a $2.95 fee for bills of $50 or less. Bills that are more than $50 incur a fee of $5.95, and the fee increases the higher the bill.
Despite this, Yager believes that online bill pay will continue
"This is a great solution for students who either don't like the hassle of paying bills or who don't have much time on their hands."
Joe Yager Financial management analyst
to increase in popularity, especially among students.
Holly Arndt, Arlington Heights, Ill., senior, pays her Verizon Wireless cell phone bill online every month.
"It's so much easier this way," she said. "It takes less than five minutes and it's done. You're worry-free until next month."
certain anglings.
"This is a great solution for students who either don't like the hassle of paying bills or who don't have much time on their hands," Yager said.
Edited by Doyle Murphy
Lawrence popular among newcomers
The Associated Press
LAWRENCE — The annual influx of students attending the University of Kansas is an obvious reason that Lawrence is ranked third in the nation in percentage of population made up of newcomers.
But fans of the city say it also has become an attractive place for older residents who like its location and cultural amenities.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday that 39.8 percent of Lawrence residents in 2000 had not lived in the city five years earlier, ranking Lawrence third in the nation in that category.
Not surprisingly, eight of the nation's top 10 cities for percentage of recent arrivals were college or military towns.
Jacksonville, N.C., home of the Camp Lejeune Marine base, was first with 45.8 percent of its population coming from elsewhere.
The Bryan-College Station area, home to Texas A&M University, was second with 44.8 percent of its population from elsewhere
Other factors likely contributed to Lawrence's ranking. The city's rapid growth in the last decade has included many older newcomers who like the college-town amenities and proximity to jobs in Kansas City and Topeka.
In the early 1960s, Bob Nunley knew only one couple who lived in Lawrence and commuted to jobs in Topeka and Kansas City.
jobs in Nunley, who spent his career studying why people live where they do, said retirees are attracted to the city because of its cultural resources.
"Certainly, our university plays a big role in that," Mayor David Dunford said of the census rankings. "But it confirms what a lot of us have been saying all along: Lawrence is a place people choose to live because of its quality."
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