MSU-endorsed download site shuts down

Ruckus.com — once dubbed by MSU “the premiere digital entertainment network designed specifically for college students” — quietly and abruptly shut down during the weekend.

Targeted to college communities, the site offered free music downloads to students and faculty at participating universities, which included MSU. Songs were available with 30-day renewal licenses, but were not transferable to MP3 players or CDs.

On Saturday afternoon, however, the site was shut down, displaying a final message to its users.

“Unfortunately, the Ruckus service will no longer be provided. Thanks.”

MSU was notified Monday by Ruckus’ parent company, TotalMusic LLC, that the Ruckus service had shut down, effective immediately.

Jason Herskowitz, vice president of product management for TotalMusic, said the economy made it difficult for the service to continue.

“The overall state of the economy forced our investors into making some tough decisions,” Herskowitz wrote in an e-mail to The State News.

The Ruckus program was promoted to MSU students as a way to download music free and legally to their personal computers. In 2005, prior to its partnership with Ruckus in 2006, MSU was ranked No. 1 in the country among universities for illegal music download complaints.

Since 2003, however, MSU has seen a decrease in illegal download complaints. Last year, the university ranked 150th in complaints after being ranked 7th in 2007.

Randall Hall, who is in charge of MSU’s network acceptable use policy compliance, said Ruckus was responsible for some of the decrease in complaints.

A legal alternative to music downloading programs such as Limewire or BitTorrent “definitely helped,” Hall said.

Three years ago, MSU announced its partnership with Ruckus and promoted the service to students, as well as faculty and staff. The partnership allowed Ruckus to house servers in MSU’s data center, but no money was exchanged between the university and the company.

Hall said since its inception, 24,000 users from MSU had registered for the Web site.

Justin Covington, a journalism and political science sophomore, said he tried the service as a freshman.

“It was cool and stuff, but I’m a big iPod person,” he said. “If I can’t have it with me, I’m not going to use it. So I uninstalled it. It was good for what it tried to do.”

Erika Baker, a prenursing sophomore, said she registered for the service last year but never used it. However, she said the site’s shutdown could affect a number of students.

“I know a lot of people who used Limewire on MSU’s system and got caught,” she said. “Ruckus was their alternative.”

Hall said the university is still looking into the details surrounding Ruckus’ demise. However, he said similar services will be offered to students in the future.

“The real loss here is the benefit the students were getting,” he said. “I think it was a tremendous service.

“We’ll be looking into other legal alternatives.”

Staff writer Nick Krizinski contributed to this report.