By Elizabeth Ward, '08 |Staff Reporter

As digital music becomes more popular, so too does the trend of music downloading. Music downloads fall into two categories: legal and illegal.

According to About.com, the majority of downloading happens on peer to peer networks. A P2P network is one that allows individual users to share files among each other instead of one main network. Before 2003, downloading free music from P2P networks was not much of an issue, although it was illegal in that year, Recording Industry of America began filing lawsuits against P2P users.

Download.com indicates the current most popular P2P networks based on total number of downloads are Morpheus and Limewire. Downloading either of these P2P networks is free and legal. The problem comes when users download copyrighted material, music, movies and TV shows, without proper permission from labels, producers and networks.

Downloading music from the Internet doesn’t have to be illegal. Some networks like I Tunes offer legal downloads that allow users to upload their music for 99 cents a song eMusic, another popular legal downloading engine that mainly focuses on independent artist’s and labels, offer fixed downloads per month based on selected packages.

So why do students download illegally? “Students are the most engaged users of digital media,” says Chris Lawson, director of corporate development from Ruckus. “Until now, they have not had legal way to acquire the music that was also free.” 

Ruckus now offers all college students free licensed music from major and Indies labels, as well as movies, TV shows and music videos.

With all that Ruckus has to offer, why are Morrisville students still downloading music illegally? Some students complain that Ruckus does not support their mp3 players, such as Apple’s iPod. “We would love to be compatible with iPods, but currently Apple has kept their platform propriety and will not allow Ruckus or any other services' music to be played on them,” Lawson said.  “Hopefully that will change soon.” Ruckus does support some portable players and mobile devices currently.

Morrisville State College first began to offer Ruckus service in the fall of 2005 to students with school laptops free of charge. 2006 is when Morrisville starting offering Ruckus to all of its students free of charge.

Vice President of Technology Services Jean Boland is working hard to make sure that students take advantage of this legal service.  “The recording industry does issue subpoenas to identify downloader’s of music and videos,” Boland says. “Morrisville has been subpoenaed.”

Another way Morrisville College hopes to attract students is by upgrading the basic Ruckus service. “We hope to look at videos,” Boland says. “We will upgrade our wireless in the summer of 2007 and look into it; If we offer something to our students, we want to be able to support it.”

All current and incoming students at Morrisville are also able to put Ruckus on one other computer of choice and receive the same service. The steps that Morrisville and Ruckus are taking must be working, as Morrisville students have downloaded almost half a million songs, Lawson says.

Now that Ruckus is available to all colleges and universities nationwide, Morrisville students can now send their college friends in other states their Ruckus recommendations and start sharing their music immediately. Ruckus now has over 2.5 million tracks and growing.