Can Ruckus Stop the Commotion? Free Downloads Offered to Students

A new attempt to stem the tide of illegal downloading on college campuses has digital music provider Ruckus offering free downloads of MP3s from a catalog of 2.5 million songs for any student with a ".edu" email account. The downloads are licensed for use on the Ruckus player software, as well as compatible MP3 players. The music may not be burned to CD. (99 cent purchases are available for those who wish to burn CDs.) One university giving the service a try is the University of Georgia.

The program, however, leaves out a few important details regarding its origins. I believe that once uncovered by the student body at large, these omissions may lead to the rapid demise of the service.

I was surprised to find that the Ruckus service is compatible with "many MP3 players," but not the iPod or iPhone products from Apple. According to Ruckus' website, users must have a "PlaysForSure" compatible MP3 player in order to take their music files with them. That led me to ask: What is PlayForSure?

It turns out that PlaysForSure is a standard owned by Microsoft. The PlayForSure logo sports a small Windows icon in the middle, and the PlayForSure website sports a Microsoft copyright logo on the bottom of the page. It would seem, when all this is brought to light, that Ruckus and the free music downloads are an attempt by Microsoft, through creative licensing with the major record labels and negotiation with possibly unsuspecting universities, to wrestle away some of Apple's MP3 player market share, where iPod is king. While universities are likely quick to come on board with this program, seeing it as a legitimate way to stem the tide of illegal downloading on campus, thereby reducing the universities' exposure to secondary liability, I highly doubt that they are fully aware of the program's pedigree.

The article cited above from the University of Georgia raises more legal questions. Please read on in the next post for that discussion.