Ruckus, Brown's chosen provider of free and legal music downloads, is finally going to be at least somewhat compatible with Macs. With more students using Macs, this is great news - but there's more the University could be doing to prevent music piracy.
For those who haven't used it yet - and, since according to Ruckus' director of campus sales, only 2,663 Brown students have registered, you're likely among those who haven't - Ruckus is an advertisement-supported online service that provides free music downloads for college students. Brown partnered with Ruckus in September 2006 to attempt to reduce the frequency of students downloading music illegally. For those students with PCs, Ruckus presents a reasonable way of getting music legally, easily, quickly and free.
Brown's affiliation with Ruckus, though, seems unnecessary. Ruckus is available, for free, to anyone who registers with a valid .edu e-mail address - Ruckus makes its money through online advertising, not by charging Brown a membership fee. While we understand the University's interest in preventing students from using its network to download music illegally, this formal affiliation does little more than provide free promotion for Ruckus.
Furthermore, as a replacement for illegal downloading of music, Ruckus is only partially successful. Its main weakness concerns the digital rights management scheme tied to all downloaded songs - which prevents users from burning those songs to a CD or putting them on an iPod. Most consumers want to own their music, and the restrictive model that Ruckus follows, which is more like a music rental system, can't meet that need.
If University officials are serious about getting students to stop downloading music illegally, they shouldn't present Ruckus as the only option. Instead, they should inform students of all the legal alternatives for downloading music - including Ruckus, Napster, the iTunes Music Store, Amazon.com and others - and then, in the typical Brown spirit, let students select the service that best meets their needs.
It may even be financially viable, in the long run, for the University to offset the costs of the administrative wrangling that results from online music piracy by subsidizing these legal alternatives. It could even consider paying for a service that would allow students to actually own music they download. If students can put music on their iPods and burn CDs for their friends, they wouldn't need to illegally download at all.
Record companies and music services should also better accommodate students' changing computing habits, creating new options to which universities can subscribe.
Some of us want to own full albums and listen to them over and over; others want instant access to individual songs but don't care as much about putting that music on an iPod. Some will settle for streaming audio; others want pristine, CD-quality sound. We're a diverse student body, and our media downloading options should reflect that.
