As the summer was drawing to a close, a new lawsuit was filed against four RPI students for alleged illegal file sharing. This suit came as the Student Senate’s work to look into a music and movie sharing service for the campus was progressing. As of the beginning of this week, plans called for a music-only subscription for the approximately 2,900 on campus students to the Ruckus Network to be sponsored for the first year by the Campus Action Network.
The subscription service could begin on September 15 and carry through the academic year. Since it is being funded by CAN, the service for this academic year will not result in a raise to the activity fee – such a raise was the basis of many concerns that were voiced about acquiring such a service last spring.
CAN agreed to give RPI around $50,000 in order to sponsor a trial with a file sharing service such as Ruckus – enough to fund a one-year subscription to Ruckus for on-campus students. For those wishing to access the movies on Ruckus as well, they can opt in and pay $19.95 per semester.
Other students not covered under the contract can access some of the Ruckus services such as parts of the school customized website and listen to the Ruckus Radio feeds. If they want to opt into the download service, they can pay $19.95 per semester for just movies or $14.95 for just music. To get both of these services, an opt-in student would be charged $29.95 per semester. There are also monthly rates for faculty, staff, and alumni wishing to opt in.
Ruckus uses Microsoft Digital Rights Management on its files. Their website and some of its streaming services are Mac compatible. A Student Senate Survey found that about five percent of the campus uses MacOS and about five percent uses Linux.
That statistic was one of many released over the summer by the Senate from the survey it conducted at the end of the spring 2005 semester. In general, the results 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.
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.
The final details of the contract with Ruckus are still being worked out between the Division of the Chief Information Officer, Ruckus, and the Senate.
While the details of the service were being worked out over the summer, a new lawsuit was filed against four unnamed RPI students for alleged illegal file sharing in late July by motion picture companies. Similar to its predecessors last spring, it identifies four John Doe defendants by IP addresses and their names and contact information were subpoenaed from RPI.
All of the students identified by IP address in the suits were contacted by the Dean of Students Office. This latest suit brings the total number of students who were sued by either recording or movie companies since last spring to 32—7 members of the class of 2005, 8 from 2006, 11 from 2007, and 6 from 2008.
The case against 24 students filed by the recording industry has been dismissed without prejudice according to court papers electronically obtained by The Poly. One of the original cases brought by the movie companies was also dismissed. This often means that there was a settlement accepted by all parties and the names of the individuals never became public record.
One student who did settle agreed to pay over $4,000 and admit his or her actions were wrong. The student also had to delete his or her illegal files and also agree to not share his music with others.
Dean of Students Mark Smith pointed out that they held an optional forum during Navigating Rensselaer and Beyond to discuss file sharing and other technological issues. He explained “The consensus is that file sharing—specifically for music, movies, etc.—is fairly widespread and is almost part of the college culture.”
He also noted that of the students sued, the lowest number of shared MP3s was 929 and the highest was 13,564. Including all shared files, the low count was 990 and the highest amount was 18,065.
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.
Smith added, “It was typically those [schools] that had some sort of paying service … that were not in the original group” of schools who were targeted with suits; and avoiding more lawsuits was identified by the Senate as part of the reason why they began looking at such a service.
Yates said of the plans to try out Ruckus, “We’ve been working on this all summer, so we’re really excited to see that students will soon have a legal and responsible alternative for downloading music.”
