Changing the face
of digital downloads
January 12, 2006
Media for college students is more than just watching or listening. Students use media as a type of shorthand in describing themselves to friends and finding others with similar tastes. Ruckus, an interactive digital entertainment system, brings this and more to MSU students, faculty and staff.
How?
Michigan State University’s agreement with Ruckus provides students, faculty and staff a way to legally download virus-free digital songs, access movies, and create a personal friends network to exchange and share downloaded tracks. Ruckus is currently providing their music download service at no cost to any current MSU student accessing the Ruckus Network on campus. Off Campus students, faculty and staff can access Ruckus for a nominal cost. With Ruckus, students can see what their friends (and friends of friends) are listening to and watching. They can also share their interests with others. The truth is, most of us find music through our friends. Ruckus makes it that much easier.
How does it work?
Ruckus is currently absorbing the cost of its basic music download services to students accessing Ruckus on campus. In addition to student who live on-campus, any current MSU student visiting campus can download songs to their laptop to play later at home. With the free basic service, songs are tethered to the student’s computer to play for a period of 30 days. Before the end of 30 days, students can simply renew the song and it will continue to play for another 30 days.
In addition to the basic service, Ruckus has a variety of other services which can be purchased for an additional charge. On campus students can have access to a library of Hollywood movies and television shows with Ruckus’ movie upgrade. For those wishing to play their downloaded songs on portable players there is “Ruckus-To-Go” where music can be downloaded to PlayforSure Subscription Enabled compatible players. For a list of portable players compatible with "Ruckus-To-Go", go to http://www.playsforsure.com
Purchasing songs is also available with Ruckus. Tracks or entire albums can be purchased and later burned to a CD. Ruckus player is not compatible with Macintosh or Linux operating systems. Additional information is available at http://techbase.msu.edu
Faculty and staff of MSU can access Ruckus under a special subscription service.
Background
Ruckus was selected from over a dozen vendors for their ability to form relationships directly with each student, minimizing MSU’s investment of resources. With Ruckus, students will be able to legally share music, movies and television shows; create playlists; send personal media recommendations to friends and neighbors; and browse classmates’ profiles and media libraries. Students can build their personal libraries from Ruckus’ collection of over 1.5 million songs, thousands of Hollywood movies, and hit TV shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives. Ruckus eliminates copyright infringement thanks to its exclusive licensing agreements with the top multimedia distributors nationwide.
Michigan State University is the second Michigan University or college to enroll in the digital entertainment network. Michigan Technological University (MTU) announced a similar agreement with Ruckus in July 2005.
Why the need?
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), instituted a formal campaign to launch lawsuits against users for illegally downloading copyrighted music in 2003. Before these lawsuits, the legality of file sharing was widely debated. As peer-to-peer file sharing grew in popularity, so too did the RIAA’s efforts.
Although file sharing among college students is only a fraction of file sharing globally, if not controlled universities could be forced to make file sharing on campus computers impossible. MSU, therefore, became significantly interested in educating, informing and providing options for legal file downloading to the MSU community. In MSU’s pursuit of a solution, legitimate commercial services resonated as the ideal avenue to pursue. This option would provide MSU students, faculty and staff an ability to individually subscribe to the service. Subscribers would form a direct relationship with the chosen vendor, paying for items without involving MSU.
Try it now! Go to ruckus.com
