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February 2005
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CAMPUS NEWS |
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Legal Music and Movie Downloading Offered to Students
These words echoed across campus this past few weeks with news of a new downloading service. As of Monday, February 7, AU students are now able to access a whole new world of cyberspace. AU has teamed up with a file downloading company called Ruckus Network to offer students a free music and movie downloading service, in hopes of minimizing the amount of illegal downloading that occurs by AU students. Ruckus offers more than 100,000 music files and a limited number of movies to its users. Offering 50 movies per month, Ruckus is the only legal service to provide free, downloadable movies. Ruckus also allows local content to be posted on the Web site. For example, student bands or a cappella groups are able to download their music files to the server in order to share their music with the online community, with the approval of Ruckus. Executive Director of Housing and Dining, Julie Weber, hopes that Ruckus' presence on the university’s server will give students more of an incentive to use it. "It's all on the intranet. The downloading is not going through the Internet portals, so it will not affect our Internet speed at all," Weber said. Weber noted that the service still has some “kinks” that need to be resolved. As of now, music files downloaded from Ruckus cannot be burned to a CD, nor can they be saved to a personal computer. This is viewed as a setback, because students usually download music (illegally) and play it from their computer using iTunes, Windows Media Player, or MusicMatch Jukebox. Even though the service allows legal downloads, there are still some restrictions, which AU hopes to improve by the fall semester. American University is not the only campus that’s has turned to legal downloading services in order to limit the amount of illegal downloading. Other Ruckus users include the University of North Carolina, Northern Illinois University, and North Carolina State University. George Washington University teamed up with Napster in order to provide students with 99 cent music downloads. However, rumor has it the fad has not quite caught on. This semester, students on campus can enjoy Ruckus at no charge. But beginning this fall, the service will cost $50 per semester through the student activity fee. -Ashley
Ferrell ‘07 |
“American U.
Joins the Ruckus!”