News for and about the Internet2 community

["Michelle Pollak" <>]

SHIBBOLETH 1.1 SUCCESSFULLY USED BY PENN STATE STUDENTS REGISTERING FOR
NAPSTER 2.0 PREMIUM SERVICE

WASHINGTON, D.C. - January 27, 2004 - Internet2(R) today announced that its
Shibboleth authentication and authorization technology, developed by the
Internet2 Middleware Architecture Committee for Education (MACE) -
Shibboleth Working Group, has been successfully used by thousands of Penn
State students during the registration process for free access to Napster
2.0 Premium Service.  Penn State launched the first of its kind music
service pilot program on January 12, 2004.

"We chose Shibboleth because not only could we integrate our existing
information architectures the way we wanted to with it, which was critical
to us, but also because we had successfully used it before," said Kevin
Morooney, Penn State's senior director of Academic Services and Emerging
Technologies.  "Shibboleth enables us to preserve the anonymity of
transactions and help protect our current infrastructure (by signing and
encrypting transactions), which was essential to developing a registration
process.  A good test for Shibboleth was when it was first introduced to
Napster and it passed their intense scrutiny."

To identify which students qualify for access during the pilot, Penn State
uses Shibboleth to transport eduPerson attributes, developed by a joint
EDUCAUSE and Internet2 effort led by MACE-Directories Working Group, to
determine if a student is eligible to use Napster.  Students registering for
the service are routed by Shibboleth to the existing Penn State campus
authentication system to log in as they would for any other application.
Napster then assigns new user information to that student based on the
attributes it receives from Penn State's enterprise directory via
Shibboleth.

"Shibboleth gives applications anywhere the basis for authenticating and
authorizing users by extending institutional sign-on and directory systems
to work between organizations," said Bob Morgan, chair of the Internet2 MACE
committee and Senior Technology Architect at the University of Washington.
"Penn State and Napster demonstrate that Shibboleth works well today as a
powerful, secure, and user-friendly inter-realm Web resource access control
solution for colleges and universities that builds on campus infrastructure
already in place."

"Napster made a decision at the outset of the Penn State project to work
with Shibboleth and we now have a tested, working solution that we can
utilize at other campuses," said Bill Pence, Napster's chief technology
officer.  "Working closely with the Penn State technology team, Napster and
PSU created a seamless experience for students so they could use their
existing university accounts and passwords to access Napster."
More than 17,000 Penn State students living on 24 different campus locations
across the state have the opportunity to register for the Napster service
during the pilot phase.  Penn State plans to make the service available to
all 83,000 students during the fall semester.

Shibboleth version 1.1 is an open-source, standards-based software solution
meeting the needs of organizations to exchange information about their users
in a secure and privacy-preserving manner.

Additional universities are currently in conversations with Napster to
provide similar music services to their students and are considering the use
of Shibboleth for authentication and authorization.

# # #

About Shibboleth
Shibboleth is an Internet2 project designed to develop architectures, policy
structures, practical technologies and open source implementations.
Shibboleth 1.1 runs leveraging the Apache Web server versions 2.0 or 1.3+,
Microsoft IIS, or Tomcat, and has been successfully deployed on Red Hat
Linux, Solaris, Windows 2000, and other operating systems.  For more
information about the Internet2 Middleware Initiative and Shibboleth, visit:
http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/.

About Internet2(R)
Led by more than 200 U.S. universities, working with industry and
government, Internet2 is developing and deploying advanced network
applications and technologies for research and higher education,
accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet.  Internet2 recreates the
partnerships among academia, industry, and government that helped foster
today's Internet in its infancy.  For more information about Internet2,
visit: http://www.internet2.edu/.

About Penn State
The Pennsylvania State University enrolls approximately 83,000 students at
24 campus locations across Pennsylvania. As the Commonwealth's only land
grant institution, Penn State has a diverse mission integrating teaching,
research, and public service in many academic disciplines.

About Napster
Napster(R) is the world's most recognized brand in online music.  Napster
has content agreements with the five major record labels, as well as
hundreds of independents.  Napster delivers access to the largest catalog of
online music with well over 500,000 tracks spanning all genres and artists
from Eminem to Miles Davis.  Napster is a division of Roxio, Inc., (Nasdaq:
ROXI), the Digital Media Company, provider of the best-selling digital media
software in the world.  Napster has offices in Los Angeles, New York and San
Diego.

Contact:
Michelle Pollak
Internet2
(202) 331-5345


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