U.S. colleges and universities are increasingly giving students free access to download services like Roxio Inc.'s Napster to discourage illegal song copying, the recording industry said Tuesday.
At least 20 schools have cut deals with digital music services over the past year to allow students to download songs without fear of getting sued for copyright violations, the Recording Industry Association of America said.
"This is a trend that will continue to proliferate, and we could not be more pleased," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a conference call.
The combination of young, broke music fans and high-speed Internet access has made campuses hotbeds of illegal downloading -- something the RIAA has asked school administrators to change.
Over the past year, schools have struck deals that give them a discounted rate to download services like Napster, RealNetworks and Ctrax, the RIAA said in a report to the U.S. House of Representatives intellectual-property subcommittee.
Students typically can listen to as much music as they want for free through their computers, but must pay extra to copy that music to a CD or portable music player.
Students at Pennsylvania State University downloaded up to 100,000 songs per day from Napster last spring, the school's president said.
"I think if we tried to take it away at this point there would be quite a rebellion," Penn State President Graham Spanier said.
Many schools are also taking steps to discourage the copying of songs, movies and other copyrighted materials over "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa, the report said.
Schools have launched awareness campaigns to teach about acceptable use and cut off network access for students who distribute copyrighted material.
Penn State and other schools limit students' bandwidth use, while others use software like Audible Magic's CopySense to stop illegal downloading, the report said.
The RIAA has also brought copyright suits against 158 college students on 35 campuses around the country as part of its campaign against individual peer-to-peer users.
The RIAA represents the world's largest record labels, including privately held Warner Music, Bertelsmann AG's BMG, EMI Group Plc, Sony Corp.'s Sony Music and Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group.