Syracuse University students will no longer have to pay to use Ruckus, the school's legal music downloading service, since the service switched to a free system about two weeks ago.
Ruckus, a for-profit business that provides the service to SU, initiated the change in an attempt to attract more student users.
Ruckus' new business model offers students music for free and generates revenue from additional services, such as optional movie and television downloads. SU pays nothing, but offers Ruckus the use of its network and maintains servers for the company.
"We want to drive 50 percent of the population into the service, and we can with this model," said Brad Vaughn, vice president of campus sales for Ruckus.
Vaughn said Syracuse had approximately 1,000 subscribers before making the service free, a number that leapt to 1,600 shortly afterwards.
"We're growing at 100 subscribers per day," he said the Friday before the free system was announced to students through an e-mail on Feb. 13. One week later, Vaughn reported the total number of subscribers had grown to 2,000.
Whether Ruckus can overcome the apathy of Syracuse students regarding the service and their fondness for illegal file sharing remains to be seen. When the program was introduced in its fee-based form at the beginning of the fall semester, results were less than expected.
"In my mind, the adoption wasn't large enough to have a significant impact on reducing the complaints (of illegal file sharing)," said Gary McGinnis, director of client services at Computing and Media Services.
Debbie Beishline, a computer consultant at CMS who handles copyright violation complaints, said while the university is not liable for the actions of students on the Internet, the primary motivation for signing on with Ruckus last semester was to keep students out of trouble.
"It's not costing the university anything. Why not offer that to the students?" Beishline said. "The last thing that we want to do is have our students being subpoenaed."
While the majority of reported violations are for music downloads, other media are problematic as well. Beishline said she received 24 complaints of students downloading music, 17 for movies, 10 for games, five for audio books, four for software and two for television shows in October 2005. Although the breakdown varies from month to month, music downloads seem to account for roughly half of the copyright violations occurring at SU.
But there is hope for Ruckus's free model. In November, while other schools were still offering Ruckus to students at $15 per semester, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute made it available for free by subsidizing the per-student cost.
The excitement generated there far surpassed the reaction on other campuses.
"It was phenomenal," said Max Yates, RPI's student body president. "We had something like 1,000 (users) by the day that it opened, because students found out that they could register early."
Due to its limited funding, the school had to cap registrations at 3,000, a number they easily reached, even with a student body of more than 7,000 students, according to The College Board.
"We actually have a waiting list," Yates said, "Ruckus monitors usage, and if they see that somebody has not used the program in two months, then they replace that user's access with somebody on the waiting list."
By comparison, Syracuse has more than twice as many students, half as many registered Ruckus users and no limits on registration.
One reason for the contrast in user registration might be the severity of the illegal file sharing problem on each campus. According to Yates, RPI had 32 lawsuits filed against students for copyright violations in 2005 alone, prior to introducing Ruckus. Beishline said she was not aware of any such lawsuits at Syracuse.
Other non-technical schools that have recently switched from the fee-based model are experiencing similar unenthusiastic receptions. Michigan State University was the first school to shift over to the free version of Ruckus in mid-January. Although the move more than doubled their former subscriptions, administrators still found the numbers lackluster, said Katherine Ball, a communications manager at MSU's Academic Computing and Network Services.
Allison VanSciver, a sophomore graphics major, signed up for Ruckus last semester after getting in trouble for illegal file sharing the year before.
VanSciver said she was irritated by the Ruckus's limited selection, awkward interface and having to renew licenses for the music. The last straw came when she got an iPod for her birthday that was incompatible with Ruckus's encrypted files.
"The idea of a free music service attracted me, but it wasn't all it was cracked up to be," she said.
She said she later deleted the software, saying she was tired of not being able to find songs.
Even though the service is now totally free, VanSciver said she will not go back.
"Just the fact that they're making it free right now shows that people don't like it," she said.
VanSciver's roommate, Lauren D'Angelo, disagrees. Both girls signed up for Ruckus around the same time, but D'Angelo found the service much more suitable for her needs.
"I don't have very eccentric music tastes; everything I like is fairly mainstream," she said. "Basically anything that I wanted, they had."
However, D'Angelo was not optimistic about its future on the campus as a whole.
"I don't think students will jump on board," she said, in agreement with her roommate. "If they wanted to try it out, I think they would have paid $15."
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