Colleges to charge for online music?

Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University, has come up with a plan to combat music piracy on college campuses: have the schools license the music and charge students to listen to it. According to an article in yesterday’s Boston Globe:

He has proposed that schools increase each student’s tuition or fees by perhaps a few dollars in exchange for unlimited listening, though the ability to burn songs onto a CD might cost extra.

While the thought is only in its infancy, it could be beneficial to colleges whose networks are swamped by traffic from peer-to-peer file-sharing clients. Will it fly? Doubtful. Spanier must be a Mac enthusiast because he seems to “Think Different.”