DA Project Concerns

Copyright

The number one issue here is that the music is not publicly accessible. By restricting on campus access to limited locations we have limited access to valid WCSU community members. Indiana University Music library provides access to the full collection of music but only in the music library. We will follow this restriction likewise.

All off campus users will have to authenticate just as they do now for access to licensed material. In addition, by converting the music to FM quality mp3s there is little interest from pirates for this quality of file.

UTSystem has a very good site dealing with copyright.

I think my ideas about music will work because this is transmission and not performance

This is from their site

ACCESS AND USE

1. Electronic reserve systems should be structured to limit access to students registered in the course for which the items have been placed on reserve, and to instructors and staff responsible for the course or the electronic system.
2. The appropriate methods for limiting access will depend on available technology. Solely to suggest and not to prescribe options for implementation, possible methods for limiting access may include one or more of the following or other appropriate methods:

1. individual password controls or verification of a student's registration status; or
2. password system for each class; or
3. retrieval of works by course number or instructor name, but not by author or title of the work; or
4. access limited to workstations that are ordinarily used by, or are accessible to, only enrolled students or appropriate staff or faculty.

Extras

Obviously it would be nice to have extended metadata along with all the cover art and material that is packaged with the CD, but this would add considerable time to the project. It might be done for selected works though as an added value project.

Network Traffic

On campus I don't believe that this will ever be a problem. Classical music is losing popularity with the general public so it is very unlikely that everyone at WestConn will connect to this service. We wish that we would have that kind of problem!

I believe by compressing the file and reducing its quality we can serve out off campus students while not creating a network problem. If this ever should be a problem it is very easy to restrict this traffic at the server. Again simple monitoring will detect if we ever have a problem.

Below is the bandwidth required to support 50 simultaneous uses with various compression schemes.

Expertise Required

In some ways this is an ambitious project. We have the software and hardware needed to provide this service, we just have to build it. Obviously this is easier said then done but we feel that it is definitely worth a try.