Dell in collaboration with Napster over services to Universities

Dell Incorporation is the world’s largest seller of personal computers and Napster is credited with pioneering the concept of sharing files on the Internet. Both are now joining hands to provide colleges with a legal online music hardware and software package. The deal would provide Napster’s digital music service with Dell’s PowerEdge 1855 servers that will boost network bandwidth at schools.

With this package, Colleges will be able to use the servers to store music from Napster’s library locally. This would enable the students to download music from the local servers saving overall bandwidth for the colleges and preventing music piracy overall. The University of Washington would be the first one to offer this service to their students.

Dell would now be selling Napster subscriptions to additional colleges and universities at a discounted academic rate. Also on offer are special prices on bundles that include Dell’s digital music players. This collaboration comes just days after a path breaking Supreme Court ruling, which said that the software service providers could be held legible for damages for the actions taken by the users of their services. This ruling had a condition, which said that it applies only to services, which encouraged piracy.

Napster was the original granddaddy of music piracy on the net and organizations like MPAA and RIAA nearly got the company closed. The new avatar of the company is all legitimate and is competing with Apple iTunes to provide paid for music services on the Internet.