Who says today's teens and young adults are apathetic? More to the point, who cares? And anyway, it's just not so; give the youth of today an issue near and dear to their hearts, show them a real injustice being perpetrated that highly offends their core set of values, and they'll protest as loudly as any generation before or since. Don't believe us? Then just take a gander at what's happening with the students down at Cornell University, for example; we guarantee you'll change your tune.

See, Cornell is one of those poor sucker schools who got more or less blackmailed into signing up with Napster for music subscriptions for all its students in hopes of staving off "Illegal Campus Fileswapping" lawsuits by the RIAA. As we mentioned a couple of months ago when this phenomenon really started to take off, there's a slight problem with a school telling its students, "here, we got you Napster subscriptions, so go wild and keep it legal": Napster isn't Mac-compatible, and with Mac use among students in higher education reportedly on the rise in a big way, that means what probably amounts to a sizeable minority (one estimate at Cornell is "close to 20 percent") of the student body won't be able to partake.

True, the marginalization of Mac users is nothing new; heck, if we ever got treated like first-class citizens our heads would probably collapse with the sudden pressure change. But what about iPod users? By all accounts, the iPod holds a commanding lead in portable digital music player sales each quarter, so it's reasonable to assume that the majority of Cornell students with players just happen to have iPods. And Napster isn't compatible with iPods, which means that Cornell's little plan to keep itself out of court wound up ticking off an Apple-loving majority as well.

Now, while the service is currently free to students (it's reportedly being paid for by a grant from, of all companies, Sony-- so much for Sony Connect), this whole stinking situation is more rude and clueless than unjust. But since Cornell plans to force all students to pay for Napster starting next year, some people are getting understandably riled up about it. Faithful viewer David Poves points out an article in The Register describing a "small revolt" that's simmering at Cornell, with the university newspaper getting "bombarded with letters from current and past students... complaining about the anti-Apple stance of Napster." And rightfully so; who wants to be taxed $20 per year for a mandatory entertainment service, especially one that they can't even use?

Even more insulting is the way in which Cornell is telling Mac users to shell out 149 clams for Virtual PC so that they can run Napster; surely if the school is going to choose a mandatory service that requires additional software for a fifth of its student body to use in the first place, then it should provide that software itself. Not that any sane Mac user would actually want Virtual PC running in the background just to listen to music anyway, but it's the principle of the thing, you know?

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how the kerfuffle eventually turns out. We're not suggesting that students are about to handcuff themselves to the gate in front of the Bursar's office and sing "Kumbaya" until they get tear-gassed and clubbed into submission all because of a $20 yearly music fee, but it's nice to see people telling The Man that it's not cool to assume everyone's a Windows user or that iPod users are rich enough to buy their own freakin' music and still help foot the bill for everyone else. Fight the powers that be.