Penn State students revolt against Napster, DRM invasion

Buying into some digital right management scheme or another is a little tricky, especially when you’re doing on behalf of diverse student body. Penn State students react, see The Register:

At the heart of the Penn State/Napster service is something the organizations are calling a “tethered download.” As romantic as that sounds, it’s not all that convenient. Students can download – or stream – all the songs they like for free but can only use or play the tunes while at Penn State. After their four tuition-paying years are up, their tethered downloads disappear.

Student can opt to pay 99 cents to burn the songs on a CD, but even then there is another catch. Napster is a Windows-only service, so all the Mac fans out there receive squat for their $160 contribution to the IT fund.

“They are throwing the labels what is left of our IT fee and then once you leave Penn State, you won’t even be authenticated as a user,” he said. “They are deciding for us what service we want, and we are paying their bills.”

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