Helping you legally download

In 1999, Shawn Fanning made history when he launched Napster, the first peer-to-peer music sharing program on the web. Since that time, file sharing has become wildly popular on our nation's college and university campuses with millions of songs being downloaded each day. The illegal downloading phenomenon has been well documented: In the early days, it caused campus networks to slow to a crawl, while also raising some serious security risks and legal issues, causing a colossal clash between college administrators, students and rights holders.

The problem has arguably reached epidemic proportions. Legal music sales have dropped precipitously over the last six years, and the music industry has felt the impact in its collective wallets. It is important to remember that the music industry is a large community consisting not only of the corporate suits who control the major record labels, but also many other hard working people including sound engineers, producers, technicians and, of course, the musicians.

These losses have prompted the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to take action, bringing lawsuits against college students and administrations alike for their affiliation with and use of these file sharing programs. Recently, the RIAA sent letters to 700 colleges nationwide, informing those students who ignore warnings and continue to engage in illegal downloading of music that they will be sued. While hailing the efforts of those schools subscribing to legal downloading services, the RIAA called unauthorized transfer of copyrighted works on campus computer networks "an enormous problem" for the music community. Further, the music industry itself has invested in technology of its own design, deployed across the Internet, to pinpoint illegal file sharing activity and to discover the IP addresses of those who participate.

So, while some may think the problem has come and gone, illegal file sharing remains a serious issue for all schools, including Princeton. Despite the action being taken by the industry and the approximately 150 schools currently subscribing to legal downloading services, the problem isn't going away. In fact, industry observers estimate that currently, more than 25 million songs are illegally downloaded daily. This translates into roughly $4.5 billion worth of pirated music annually, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). More than a third of the illicit activity is taking place on college campuses. Furthermore, the growing popularity of illegal movie downloads is adding new fuel to this fire.

One may question the logic and effectiveness of suing the very people who ultimately may be the music industry's best customers. There has to be a better way to legally share and distribute digital content. To that end, the most popular and most trusted online digital media service for college students — Ruckus — from Ruckus Network, Inc., is now available at Princeton through a partnership between Ruckus and the school's administration and Office of Information Technology. This changes the landscape in a very significant and very positive manner.

As the first legal peer-to-peer file sharing service on U.S. college campuses, Ruckus allows colleges and universities to provide legal music and media for both entertainment and academic purposes. Ruckus delivers more than 1.7 million songs to hundreds of thousands of students nationwide. Additionally, faculty can use Ruckus to easily and inexpensively deliver music to their classes. The cost to Princeton and its students for this service: $0. Ruckus pays for the music that we deliver out of our advertising proceeds.

For the administration at Princeton, Ruckus solves a fundamental computing and content distribution problem as it has done at more than 100 colleges and universities across the country; including Georgia Tech, University of California at Berkeley and University of Oklahoma. Princeton now has an attractive legal media downloading option and can reduce its external bandwidth usage through the available Ruckus cache server.

Illegal media consumption and distribution has to stop. Otherwise, the creators of the content that we all enjoy will no longer have an economic incentive to continue. Fortunately, attractive and proven legal options that have mutual benefits for students, faculty and administrators, as well as the support of the music community, do exist. We are working closely with Princeton's administration to bring Ruckus to your school community quickly, safely and inexpensively. Our partnerships with other schools lead us to believe the Princeton experience will be a great one. We'd appreciate your ongoing feedback and suggestions so we can continue to make Ruckus work for everyone. Mike Bebel is the president and CEO of Ruckus Network, Inc., a college-oriented online media service now provided to the University. He may be reached at mikeb@ruckus.com.