File-sharing solution: yale finds a way to cope with growing media files.

Imagine the university that is OK with music and movie file sharing. That university would be Yale (CT), which has spent the past six months tweaking a file-sharing service that will allow students and teachers to share video clips and files. This is media that is specific to coursework (such as a clip from Hitchcock's Psycho, for a film course) says Chuck Powell, director of Academic Media and Technology at the school, who adds that close to 300 hours of academic-oriented video and music clips were uploaded to online courses during the Spring 2004 semester. That represents a major increase over the 15 hours worth of material that was uploaded during Spring 2003.

But even required file sharing can choke bandwidth and place stress on the IT staff. Powell is solving the problem by using Cflix (www.cflix.com), a service that codes video and music dips to travel over the Internet efficiently. Using the service also saves Yate's IT department money, although Powell could not give specifics. "The service can code and toad media for Less than what we were spending in staff time and server licensing costs." Yale's next step will be to push students to pay for music and movie downloads via Cflix and its Ctrax division. Yale's program is a twist on the few known file-sharing alternatives, such as those at Penn State and the University of Rochester, where the schools pay fees to music services that allow students free access.