After reinventing itself as a legal file-sharing company, Napster has recently affiliated itself with several American colleges. The University of California System announced last week an agreement with Napster inviting any of its campuses to participate in the "Napster on Campus" program.

"The UC deal is with the entire UC System, but each UC System that wants to be a part of it has to opt in," said Napster Senior Director of Business and Legal Affairs Avery Kotler. "Negotiating terms with the UC System was the [prerequisite]."

UC spokesperson Jennifer Ward said the university system, in its efforts to discourage illegal file-sharing, has included Napster with a number of vendors for the campuses to use at their disposal, including Cdigix, Sony and Mindawn.

"We think that the low cost of the service will encourage students to purchase the material rather than illegally downloading items," Ward said via e-mail. "Besides, stealing isn't cool. I don't care if you do it with a computer or you snatch bread off a store shelf."

Ward compared the music vendors UC has signed to fast-food restaurants to whom they may lease space at their student union. The university makes these companies available for the students to utilize, Ward said, but the students — not the university — actually purchase the product in question.

"[Our] new digital-entertainment vendors will give students a legal, affordable alternative for online entertainment … at no cost to the university," she said. "In addition, UC campuses have the option to decide which vendor to use."

The University of Wisconsin, Kotler said, expressed interest in affiliating itself with Napster last spring, though talks have since stalled.

"We just left off with Wisconsin in kind of a vague … They wanted to study the market a little bit more," he said. "We would love to work with Wisconsin. I think it's exactly the right school [and] demographic, if the students are interested."

However, UW Division of Information Technology Communications Manager Brian Rust said UW has no interest in signing a contract with Napster.

"If we did something like that, it would be expensive," Rust said. "We just don't think it would be worth it."

Rust added the university encourages students not to pirate music off the Internet but purchase it through a number of different available outlets.

Kotler said Napster introduced its new service at Pennsylvania State University several years ago and said the program is now marketed to colleges across the nation because of the feedback from Penn State students.

"The students weren't interested in a download store," he said. "[They] didn't want to feel like a cash register was ringing every time they clicked a song to listen to."

Though Rust said UW has found students do not actually use the services that frequently, Kotler claimed college students at campuses that do business with Napster typically download, on average, 10 songs per day.

"We're used more than the most popular cafeteria on campus," Kotler said. "Other than giving out free beer, free music is what students are looking for."