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.
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“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.”