For about a year now, Rensselaer students have been using Ruckus, especially after the hefty settlements imposed on students last year. Ruckus is a legal downloading service for RPI students. “I believe Ruckus had made a great turnaround in avoiding illegal downloading and sharing. It provides students with a lot of options and has instantaneous downloading capabilities,” said Sadra Azizi ’09, chair of the Student Senate Committee on Student Life.
Rensselaer has been such a successful launching site for Ruckus that it is now used as a model for other schools. The void that RPI has had in the past with the retirement of i2hub and other programs has been alleviated slightly by Ruckus, with over 3,000 subscriptions at Rensselaer.
According to Ruckus Senior Account Manager Claire Brunton, “RPI’s uptake has been the fastest at any school Ruckus has ever launched at.” The Ruckus contract has been updated to serve the whole RPI student population, whereas previously, students were put on a waiting list after the first 3,000 subscribers.
The Union Executive Board, which now oversees the music service, voted to extend a three-year agreement with Ruckus, with no charge to students, the Union, or RPI for this service.
Since last November, when the service began at Rensselaer, service improvements have been extensive. The acquisition of 200,000 new songs to reach a total library of close to 1.7 million songs is most notable of these advancements.
The business model that Ruckus is using will also allow “more community features such as song recommendations based on individual preferences, student music reviews, publishing student play lists and more information for individual students” said Rick Hartt, director of the Union.
This year alone through http://www.Ruckus.com, the music providers website, about 1,000 new RPI students have registered for Ruckus. More than 3,000 students overall use this service to date, about one third being freshman. Since last November, about four million songs have been downloaded by RPI students. Being on campus is also not a necessity to use the service, connecting through a VPN client is sufficient when using the service off-campus.
Up to two PCs can use the same user account for unlimited downloads from Ruckus. “Ruckus is my primary program for playing music, but re-licensing is a headache because you have to be online,” said Senator Ikenna Okoli ’07.
Although students often run into licensing problems using two computers, the Department of the Chief Information Officer still takes service complaints and answers technical question related to Ruckus.
Many students, like Jared Sweeney ’08, are happy with the service. “I like the genre options, so I can get songs from artists that I never heard of, but they are still awesome songs. The only thing I have a problem with is burning music or putting it on my iPod.”
In order to download unlimited Ruckus songs to an MP3 player, there is a charge of about $20 per semester for “Ruckus to Go.” Many students, however, have already devised many methods to bypass the fees of Ruckus, from rerecording songs on the laptop by connecting the output to the input line, to using the now popular converter program simply created here on campus.
More than 100 colleges have signed up for Ruckus, which will have more improvements to come in the near future. With the many restrictions of copyright laws and the RIAA, students have a lot to fear using illegal methods (Limewire, etc.).
Not only will the access be limited but college careers can come to a screeching halt at the fifty thousand dollar settlements from law suits.
Ruckus still has some way to go before it meets all the needs college students have, but it is still within reach of the dream of having access to the entire world’s music anywhere anytime—for free. It is perhaps for many their only legal digital jukebox.
