After Project Kangaroo was shut down, the technology was bought up by Arqiva and re-branded as SeeSaw. Since then they have been working on content agreements with various providers, and now have agreements with 4oD, Five and BBC Worldwide, and are working on more agreements with other providers. (more…)
Shocking news from the worlds top university – Oxford University have banned the use of Spotify on their network. The justification is that it is a P2P bandwidth hog. There is of course something in that – it does use P2P technology, and it does need at least a 256kbit connection while it is running. If every student tried to run Spotify at once, it would undoubtedly cripple the network. That’s a very big if though.
The reason this is shocking is that for years the music industry has been chasing universities to get them to stop students from stealing music, and then along comes a legal service and the university blocks it. These students (except the PPE ones) are smart people who will find other less legal ways to get their music if the legal ones are blocked, and that doesn’t help anyone.
Update: Manchester University bans Spotify too. Could be a bad trend for fans of free legal music.
Anyway, if you are currently at Oxford missing Spotify, why not try listening to last.fm through Songler. Fantastic way to get your music, and not blocked!