Together with football coach Joe Paterno, Penn State University president and RIAA enthusiast Graham Spanier has been fired following child sex abuse allegations in which the two “failed to do enough after an assistant coach was accused of molesting a boy in a campus shower,” says the Guardian.
Spanier, one of the longest serving and highest-paid college presidents in the US, was also at the helm of Penn State when the school earned the distinction of becoming the first senior American teaching institution to join forces with Big Content in criminalizing the online activities of its students. Alongside RIAA attorneys Cary Sherman and Barry K. Robinson, Spanier helped to establish Joint Committee of Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, basically a cover organization for the RIAA to penetrate US educational institutions and create all-out attacks on their students.
In the words of Spanier: “…despite these educational efforts, despite our compliance with DMCA, and despite our technical interventions, it is probably fair to say that thousands of our students illegally download some amount of copyrighted material. They are typical of college students nationally in this regard and are party to a practice that is morally wrong, is damaging to the entertainment industry, and is inconsistent with the values of honesty and integrity that students more typically profess.”
During his time as co-chairman of the Committee what Spanier didn’t see as morally wrong was the bullying of students by the RIAA / CHEEC which threatened numerous lawsuits against his own students, frequently wrongfully identified as illegally downloaders; yet only taken one case to trial. Furthermore, thanks almost wholly to Spanier, Penn State was among the first, if not the first, to force a corporate music service onto students under the guise of protecting them from RIAA lawsuits.
Via p2pnet in November 2003:
Penn State U has signed on the dotted line with Napster II, the emasculated Roxio version of Napster, the p2p app that first made file sharing universally popular.
Penn students will get unlimited streaming and ‘tethered’ downloads from more than 500,000 songs, as well as 40 radio stations, access to Billboard chart data, an online magazine and community features, says the university in a statement released by Napster .
Also in attendance at the conference – for university information technology administrators – were MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) boss Jack Valenti, and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) president Cary Sherman.
“Students can also purchase permanent downloads that can be burned to CDs or transferred to portable devices for 99 cents each,” says the statement and, “We have already set up student focus groups at Penn State who have been testing the Napster service,” says University President Graham B. Spanier.
“We will essentially deploy thousands of testers in the spring semester to use this program and give us feedback before we roll it out for even wider student use in the fall of 2004.”
Whether or not information compiled during the testing, such as students’ names, addresses, and so on, will be shared with Roxio for its marketing data banks, wasn’t revealed.
Spanier is co-chair of the Committee on Higher Education and the Entertainment Industry, created with the enthusiastic help and support of the RIAA and MPAA. With him in the other chair is Cary Sherman.
The program will be phased-in beginning January 12th, the first day of classes for Penn State’s spring semester, the statement says, going on:
“The Penn State-Napster agreement, and other similar arrangements expected to be formed by universities around the country, could revolutionize the way millions of college students obtain and listen to music through streaming audio and song file downloads via high-speed Internet and campus connections – all in a completely legal manner that complies with copyright laws.”
It’ll also revolutionize the way the record labels market product and gather data on users, with the MPAA observing closely from the wings.
“The spring roll out will provide access to Napster for about 18,000 Penn State students who live on Penn State campuses in residence halls, including the main campus at University Park,” says the statement. “Penn State has 83,000 students on its 24 campuses. It intends to make Napster available to all eligible students, as well as faculty and staff, next fall.
“Another goal of our partnership is to extend the music service to members of our alumni association,” Spanier says. “With nearly 150,000 dues-paying members, Penn State’s alumni association is the largest in the country, and it would be great to also provide them low-cost access to music.
“There will be no additional costs to students for this service. It will be funded as part of the information technology fee that Penn State already has in place.”
Clearly Spanier’s moral compass was always pointing toward the school’s bank accounts. He closed his eyes to a sexual deviant, who as a respected member of the schools lauded football team used his position to abuse students; the same students he basically sold the to music industry years earlier.