At the end of the spring semester, the Student Senate sent out a survey to gauge the opinions of students, faculty, and staff on perhaps obtaining a campus-wide music and video service. Looking into such a campus-wide service was prompted in good part by lawsuits brought against 28 RPI students for files they were allegedly illegally sharing on i2hub using Internet2.
The survey results, which can be seen in the accompanying informational graphic, seemed to widely favor getting a music service; the opinions on the details of such a service, however, were much more varied. Of the 8,253 survey invitations sent out, 1,962 people responded for a 23 percent response rate.
Meanwhile, the Campus Action Network has said that they will offer a trial of the Ruckus Network to the RPI campus, according to Claire Brunton, an account manager for Ruckus. The agreement is still pending RPI’s approval, which had not been given as of this writing.
The Ruckus Network has both audio and video services, as well as additional features on a personalized site. According to Grand Marshal Max Yates, pricing for the campus-wide open service Ruckus offers is per user and semester. Audio services are just under $15 per semester while movie services are just under $20 per semester. Both music and movie services would be $30 per semester for each user under their campus wide open service. The average of the prices that survey respondents said they’d be willing to pay monthly for a music service was $5.10.
Final details of what services the trial of Ruckus might provide were still being planned since RPI approval had not yet been given. If and when an agreement is finalized look for updates in The Poly and on its website.
Ruckus uses Microsoft Digital Rights Management on its files according to Brunton. Their website and some of its streaming services are Mac compatible. The Senate survey found that about five percent of the campus uses MacOS and about five percent uses Linux.
Though Ruckus’ files use Microsoft DRM, 67 percent of the survey respondents preferred MP3 as the digital music format. Almost 90 percent of survey respondents wanted to be able to burn music to CD and almost 85 percent wanted to be able to download songs – both of these abilities, however, would require an additional cost to a Ruckus user, according to the GM.
Jeffrey Armstrong, Esq., the attorney who represented RPI in the copyright infringement lawsuits filed in April, said that there have not been any substantive changes to the cases as of June 20. The suits were brought by companies who are part of the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America and alleged that the holders of the Internet Protocol addresses were illegally sharing music/movie files that they did not have rights to be sharing.
As an internet service provider, RPI was subpoenaed in these suits to give the names and addresses of the students associated with the IP addresses at the corresponding date and time enumerated in court papers. If the students settle before the companies amend the suits to include the true names of the defendants, their names do not become part of the permanent public record.
One of the students who was being sued that was contacted by The Poly said that his attorney was working on a settlement. The final details, however, were still not set as the settlement papers had not yet been received.
The suits brought by member companies of the RIAA and MPAA were also brought against file sharers at many other universities. The April RIAA suits included students at 18 schools and in late May, an RIAA press release said that new suits were filed against sharers at another 20 schools. The motion picture companies had also filed suits against students at several schools in April.
Dean of Students Mark Smith pointed out via e-mail that students should be aware that, “For Rensselaer, the Electronic Citizenship Policy accounts for violations to copyright and file sharing.” He added that he did not expect any new changes to the policy.
