The University of Delaware has joined the Apple Computer's iTunes on Campus program, which, beginning this fall, will provide students with a legal option to download music from the Internet and manage digital music collections.

"We are thrilled to be participating in this innovative program, which provides students with a new service in a conscientious way," Ron Nichols, manager in UD's Information Technologies­User Services, said. "The program should help reduce the issues of copyright infringement and bandwidth use that have become a problem at universities across the country."

At UD, concerns about both bandwidth use and copyright infringement led to the Code of the Web educational campaign and tougher enforcement.

The iTunes on Campus program enables universities to provide students with a legal means to download music, making it easy to import entire compact discs or individual songs, create playlists, burn CDs and download audio books.

Through the program, students can share their music libraries with other people in their apartment or residence halls legally. They also can transfer music they have downloaded to the Apple iPod, one of the leading portable digital music players.

Apple's iTunes offers students a diverse selection of more than 700,000 songs drawn from all five major labels and more than 450 independent labels. It is available for the Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems.