“Last spring, Cdigix became a digital resource at the University for
class-related and extracurricular materials (Clabs) and a service to
provide students access to movies (Cflix).

Now, the University community can also take advantage of Ctrax,
offering nearly two million songs for legal downloading--songs from
110,000 artists across 28,000 labels. Students living in residence
halls have access to Ctrax for free; the monthly fee for all other
students for streaming and tethered downloading is $2.00. (Faculty
and staff can use Ctrax for $5.99 per month.) The cost to download a
file to copy to a MP3 player or burn to CD is $0.89 per song.
The University continues to offer free access to Napster. Napster
registrants have free streaming from Napster’s digital library of
over 1,500,000 songs, free local downloads, access to more than 50
interactive radio stations, and permanent downloads for 99 cents
each or $9.95 for an album.

Thus, the University now offers its students a wider choice for
legally obtained digital entertainment than any other college or university.

In making these various legal alternatives available, we remind you
that the University respects the intellectual property rights of its
own community of authors and artists-both faculty and students-and
would ask you to respect the rights of all who publish their works.
You do so when you download music and media through legal channels;
you ignore those rights and violate the law if you download
copyrighted material (songs, music, etc.) without permission from
the copyright holder.

It may be worth remembering that illegal downloading of music and
movies has resulted in numerous lawsuits against college students
around the country by the recording and motion picture industries,
almost all of which have led to a significant financial settlement
paid by the downloading student. In at least one instance I am aware
of, a person involved in illegal file sharing was convicted of
criminal charges and faced maximum penalties of five years in prison
and $250,000 in fines. Also, peer to peer and related file sharing
services can readily bring to your computer viruses, worms, and
spyware, and can open access to others to virtually the entire
contents of your computer’s hard drive.

Please consult http://www.rochester.edu/cdigix/ or
http://www.rochester.edu/napster/ for more information on the options
available to you.

(Please do not reply to this email. Comments about Cdigix are
welcome via the “Contact Us” page on the Web site mentioned above.)”