Napster.com makes changes to appease colleges

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - A company that writes software for downloading music from the Internet says the program has been changed to please dozens of universities that had banned it because students were clogging up the schools' computers networks.

The problem arose late last year when some universities saw the connections between their own systems and the Internet bogged down by heavy traffic.

Officials discovered that the traffic jams were caused by students who were downloading free music by using an application from Napster Inc.

So far, only Indiana University, which worked with the San Mateo, Calif.-based company on the changes, has confirmed it will try out the updated version, though other schools are waiting.

"We'll be watching," Alan Cubbage, a spokesman for Northwestern University, said yesterday. "It's nice to not be the guinea pig."

The technology's capabilities haven't endeared Napster to the Recording Industry Association of America, which accuses the company of encouraging people to break the law by pirating commercially recorded music from the Internet.

Many students feel otherwise.

"I'm a poor college student, and I can get on Napster and download any music I want for free," said Indiana freshman Ryan Bruner, a daily Napster user before the school blocked the application last month.

Bruner set up a Website and petition drive for students at 196 universities that he says have banned Napster.

Eddie Kessler, Napster's vice president for engineering, said the changes will mean search requests will first be handled locally - on the special, high-speed network shared only by universities and other research-based institutions.

Only if a request can't be satisfied will it cross the school's pipeline to the larger Internet, he said, greatly reducing the traffic on those roads.

"We fully expect this will do what needs to happen," said Mark Bruhn, who helps set information-technology policy at Indiana University.

A later version of the application will direct searches to a university's own network before sending them to the schools' shared one, Kessler said.

The changes "show Napster is willing and able to work with third parties to make sure our service is as good a citizen as possible, both in this area, network citizenry, and in the area of copyright and content, as well," Kessler said.

A spokesman for the Recording Industry Association did not return phone calls seeking comment.