“…Seniors Joe Jarzab and Chad Lindell have peppered the Penn State campus with flyers, urging students to boycott buying music and to block the music labels’ domination of music royalties. The students mobilized after Penn State earlier this week announced a deal with Napster to provide free music downloads to collegians as part of a DRM-laced program. The university is paying the Napster service fee out of its annual IT budget - a fund to which students must contribute $160 per semester.

“What we have been trying to do is get the students aware of what is going on here,” Jarzab said. “A lot of people are questioning why we don’t get to keep the music, and they want this stopped.”

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.” An update on this story is here.