More than a year after the demise of the now-infamous server created by current Duke Student Government President Elliott Wolf-which provided a space for the sharing of music and movies-Duke students can once again find free music in cyberspace.
RuckusNetwork.com, a music-downloading service, announced Monday its intention to open its site to all college students, or anyone with a valid ".edu" e-mail address.
Having contracts with four major record labels, Ruckus allows users to legally tap into a diverse library of songs they can download free to their PCs.
"We have been growing our library of music, and it is currently over 2 million songs," Chris Lawson, the site's director of corporate development, wrote in an e-mail Monday night. "Ruckus not only has an ample music library, but great tools to help discover new music."
Ruckus began in 2003 in an effort to fulfill a want among college students for cheap music downloads. The site's creators forged collaborative efforts with a number of colleges across the country, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to create monthly subscription servers.
Since then, Ruckus has worked to expand partnerships with more universities and major record labels in order to lower price and expand resources.
The site's switch to open availability was made possible by a changeover to an ad-based revenue model.
"Because we have been successfully serving legal files to college students for three years now, we were able to gradually replace the fees associated with the service... with revenue from advertising," Lawson said.
But despite the boon of Ruckus' new announcement, the service has some drawbacks.
Unlike the downloadable music from iTunes or pirated music servers, users won't be able to transfer music to iPods-the files, which are encoded in a Windows Media format, can only be downloaded to users' computers.
For a monthly $5 fee, students will be able to transfer the files to non-Apple MP3 players with PlaysForSure compatibility.
Ruckus President Michael Bebel defended the site's restrictions in an interview with Forbes.com, saying Ruckus' popularity is proof that students are willing to work within a restrictive framework.
"We're playing a role primarily as a discovery tool, where the world of music is available to these students with a community wrapped around it of their peers," he said in the interview.
The site is not limited to music downloads-for a fee, students can gain access to film and television files. Lawson said Ruckus is working to expand the social network that the site provides.
The prospect of downloading free music and movies is not a new one for most Duke students, who in Fall 2005 rapidly took advantage of what began as Wolf's private server.
Soon known simply as "Elliott's," the server, at the peak of its popularity, clocked as many as 3,500 computers logging on to share a variety of media files.
But when Judicial Affairs caught wind of the setup, Wolf's server was quickly shut down.
Wolf, a junior, said the creation of sites like Ruckus are a sign of changes that still need to be made in file sharing.
"The prevalence of both legal and illegal file sharing is making it clear to copyright owners that consumers want to view content online, and that it's in their interest to provide it online," he said. "More has to be done by copyright owners to lift restrictions on their content."
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