It is with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to Ruckus; the service is no longer available as of February 6 at 5:30 pm. The Ruckus website (http://www.ruckus.com/) displays a message: “Unfortunately the Ruckus service will no longer be provided. Thanks.” A similar message appears when attempting to access music already downloaded from the site and saved to a Ruckus playlist. Little more information is available at the moment regarding the circumstances surrounding the closure of the site and the discontinuation of the service; TechCrunch.com’s repeated attempts to reach Chief Operating Officer Michael Bebel have gone unanswered.
Ruckus was a valuable asset to this campus, helping to deter students from pirating music by offering them an acceptable and legal source of music. By providing students an alternative to illegally downloading music, it helped everyone; the Dean of Students Office had less work legislating issues regarding copyright laws, and the concern that students could be prosecuted for violating such intellectual property laws was diminished. Given that this campus has had past trouble with students being prosecuted and paying fines for illegally downloading music, it would appear to be a worthwhile effort to find a similar provider of music content for RPI students.
We understand that the service provided by Ruckus has been on campus for several years now and it may not be easy to find an alternative right away; however, The Poly hopes new options will be explored. Wired hinted in December of a new service, Choruss, being created by Warner Music Group, but it is still in the planning stages. In the short term, Internet radio provider Pandora (http://www.pandora.com/) provides an interesting mix of music; however it doesn’t allow offline listening, and there is little choice over which songs are played. There are also sites like Seeqpod (http://www.seeqpod.com/) and Sad Steve (http://www.sadsteve.com/), which support personally-created playlists from libraries of music.
We encourage students to refrain from downloading music illegally and to respect Rensselaer’s Policy on Electronic Citizenship while new, legal sources for music are considered.
