Ruckus offers free, legal files
March 26, 2007 by CAROLYN CRIST
Filed under News
Downloading music legally may move up on the trend charts due to a new program that allows universities across the nation to offer free and legal music downloads.
A group of University administrators has discussed the possibility of offering Ruckus, a downloading company that offers legal music for free on campus. But no official decisions have been made.
“The University group is looking at ways of raising awareness to students that downloading is illegal,” said Bert DeSimone, communications director for Enterprise Information Technology Service. “The Student Technology Support group has a user’s guide on its Web site about illegal downloading. We want to support legal alternatives.”
Although DeSimone said he thinks there is a legal problem with students downloading music, it does not affect the network’s operation.
“The system rates activities like peer-to-peer file sharing and limits it in favor of other activities,” DeSimone said. “More bandwidth is given to the research mission of the University, so there is no problem with cluttering.”
The Student Government Association is working to establish an agreement with Ruckus and make it a part of the University infrastructure. The suggestion is in the investigative stage.
“The administrators are talking about the University’s moral and legal viability as an institution and how it relates to downloading and file sharing,” said Matt Winston, assistant to the president. “The record industry has asked us to be wary of it for many years now.”
Winston said the program’s main goal would be educational.
“As you might imagine, there are a lot of students and non-students who don’t think downloading movies or records or TV shows is illegal,” he said. “Others know it is illegal but say it’s not very illegal by equating it to speeding 10 mph over and think that no one will catch them.”
The Motion Picture Association of America and International Registry of Artists and Artwork have said that universities in particular have the technology and the campus environment that fosters illegal downloading, Winston said.
“This tremendous Internet network highway has allowed students to speed, but we didn’t build this great technological infrastructure for people to do illegal downloading,” Winston said.
“We created this network because UGA is a research institution. There are professors who exchange great
volumes of information, and this is the most efficient and effective way to share information across the globe,” he said.
But the program remains under consideration while the administration investigates fees and program effectiveness.
“We’re still in the shopping stage, but our primary responsibility is to examine current processes and ensure that they are in full compliance with the law,” Winston said. “If we are notified that people are using Internet privileges to break the law, they go to student judiciary.”
But Winston said he wants students to realize that administrators are on their side.
“We are not the police and are not watching you and telling you what you should and should not do, but we will hold you responsible,” Winston said. “The music industry wants us to read e-mails and such, but we refuse to do it.”
Until the University offers campus-wide coverage, students can sign up themselves and download Ruckus for free.
Since January, Ruckus has offered 2.7 million songs from major, subsidiary and independent record labels to any student with a “.edu” e-mail address.
“Ruckus is actually better than free because the music is paired with tools to share new music,” said Chris Lawson, director and corporation developer for Ruckus Network. “When music is downloaded, the artists’ rights are protected, and they actually get paid. I think artists’ rights have proven to be very important to students.”
