By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Posted: 07/11/2003 at 16:07 GMT

A small faction of anti-pigopolist soldiers have launched an attack against Penn State University's new campus-wide music deal with Napster.

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.

"That is a concern," said Tysen Kendig, a university spokesman.

Kendig, however, assured us that Napster has some Mac software in beta that would allow songs to be played on Apple computers. Interesting.

Jarzab charges that university money could be better spent on upgrading computers or other IT services instead of funneling large stockpiles of cash back to the record industry.

"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."

Jarzab has littered the Penn State campus with flyers, trying to alert students about where their RIAA payments end up, pointing out that artists receive the teeniest fractions of the fees. Penn State workers have dutifully removed the posters each night.

Penn State sees this service as a way to temper illegal music downloads. It has tried in the past to stop students from sharing copyrighted files but "that hasn't worked," Kendig said.

So how did it come up with this bright idea?

Well, it turns out that Penn State President Graham Spanier is serving as co-chair of the Committee on Higher Education and the Entertainment Industry, along with Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Yeah, we get the higher education gag too.

Somewhere along the line Sherman managed to convince this university official that selling students DRM-infected songs was a good idea. The two gurus believe Penn State could be the first in a long line of universities rolling out similar services.

Hoping to assuage some fears, Penn State urges that this is just a pilot program and that some changes may be made. It will roll out the beta this Spring and hopes to have a full service up and running by next Fall. ®

These kind of deals, without the input of the student body, seem suspect to me. I don't know what the rules are there about negotiation of what businesses are allowed to get money from the univ. there, but some "behind the door" deal, that takes money from students, even if they are not downloading as part of a tech fee, and puts money into the pocket of Napster, seems to bear more investigation.

Investigation should be only the start. This is out of control for any industry to be paid for something that is a limited product for a limited time. With todays current price of CD's each student cpuld buy five cd per semester and then share them with every one who wants one buy burning them, and actually see thier cd collection grow for one price. The Corporations need to stay out of our learning centers period.

The RIAA is totally out of control, with their lawsuits and trying to shove their products down everyones throats. What is it going to take to stop these idiots?

Questionable but apparently legal. Penn State also has a newspaper deal.

http://live.psu.edu/story/4586

"The new concept is similar in approach to another venture Penn State launched five years ago called the Student Newspaper Readership Program. Penn State developed that ground-breaking program to provide all students with free access to newspapers. Since that time, hundreds of other colleges and universities around the United States have launched similar readership programs, often partnering with two of Penn State’s original partners — The New York Times and USA Today."

Penn State was also the first university to make an exclusivity deal for beverages when they made a deal with Pepsi in 1992. A couple links on the Pepsi deal.:

http://www.flagpole.com/Issues/01.06.99/strangebed.html

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2003/09/09-10-03tdc/09-10-03dnews-01.asp

"I'll tell you what you want and what you don't want".....

I've attended two universities and student input into the business done on campus is pretty much null. The faculty of universities do what makes the university and in turn them money and nothing else.

Well if you can't see the hand writing on the wall you must be blind!!!!!!!

The student body has no ability to influence the college or university administration in terms of how the institution is run.

When I was in school, the student union was taken away to be replaced by a college admin. controlled student center. The student run radio station was taken away to be replaced by a station controlled by the admin. The students were disenfranchised at every turn. What recourse did we have? None, save the option of transfering to another college. And guess what. Most kids didn't know or care that much. And in four years, anyone who might have squawked about it had graduated anyway, and those left never knew the difference because as far as they were concerned, this is how it had always been.

You pay for an education. Everything else is optional, and under the control of "Not You". It becomes sad and scary when the people in charge of a college care more about the money or saving face or avoiding "issues", than standing for integrity, and being firm in the face of inequities. Students tend to be a little radical, and very idealistic, thank God, while the adults in charge of institutions of higher learning tend to be conservative and pragmatic. I'll take idealistic any day.
~zippy.

I dunno. I still believe that the copyright laws state that 'copyrighted material cannot be copied in any form for monetary gain'. I'm certainly not gaining any money from sharing these files (which may or may not contain copyrighted material), so leave me alone!

It's the naive & idealistic who don't know their limits, and because of that, accomplish a great deal that older, more experienced and knowledgeable people never would have tried in the first place.
~zippy.

If in fact they are more far-reaching than that, then I am choosing not to understand them

Dont they call it a interlocking directorate, or is it a Riaa/Penn State governing council circle jerk with the Penn State students being the pivot man? It looks like sweetheart deals are in the works... Even our Government does it, look at Haliburton and Cheney.

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL PIRACY grrr makes me want to swear up a storm I'll tell you that.. I wonder what would happen if for one semester the students wouldn't sign up for classes???????? Dag that means they would lose a bunch of bucks doesn't it? If students protest like that then they might get some say so.. it's their money that's paying for their education not the universities!!!!

Not many prople are willing to put their education on the line for some unjust music industry war.

I think Penn State was going to try to lead the next university trend, and failed to realise that unlike newspapers and pepsi, not everybody likes the RIAA. Newspapers are cheap, and pepsi is something tangible, but Napster is
A: Controlled(only RIAA)
B: Not cheap
C: not exactly tangible...(you don't get to take it with you)

Soon this won't be just about DRM and force fed bull from the RIAA , It'll be things like this think how you would feel if you went to your favorite diner and they said you can only have your steak done one way and thats the only way they'll make it Hmmmmmm sounds familiar doesn't it, not exactly what you'd really want huh' unless these bullys are stopped this will only be the beginning soon choice will be a thing of the past.

Penn State has got it all wrong... Supporting the RIAA (through napster) is NOT in their best interest.
Remember MIT's LAMP system? IMHO, if a college is going to encourage "legal" filesharing, that is the way to go about doing it.
The LAMP code is open source, and I'm sure Penn State already has most, if not all, of the required infrastucture, leaving only the acquisition of a blanket license. Recall how cheap said an ASCAP/BMI blanket license was (per student) at MIT: a mere 60 cents!
That said, this is certainly a viable alternative to dealing with napster...
But will Penn State ever realize this? Probably not. Not while the college still has ties with Cary Sherman...

As a Penn State Alumni, I fully support these protestors and their cause.

Yes, the powers in control rarely hear the students, but we alumni do. And as donation-giving alumni, I think the administration at Penn State should be concerned. Alumni contributions are vital to a university's budget. Penn State should also realize that their current students will soon enough be their suporting or perhaps, non-supporting alumni.


I for one am going to alert as many Penn State alumni chapters of the going-ons around campus. (You'd be surprised how many of us are out there.) And write the Penn State administration about my outrage as an alumni. There will be no check this year for them.

GO PROTESTORS GO! FIGHT FIGHT WIN WIN!

Folks, it is VERY important that we get our students involved and up in arms against these RIAA tactics.

Joe and Chad are HEROES! Leflaw, send em a free t-shirt (the spiffy black ones!)

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy

Soulee,

I'm an Alumni also. I've already started writing letters and contacting Alumni Chapters. I'm encouraging all of them to write letters, cease to donate, and help out the student movement against the RIAA.

Writing letters to Congress and also the PA government about the Shady deals between Spanier and Sherman.