The Recording Industry Association of America won its first lawsuit against illegal file sharing Friday. A federal court ordered Minnesota resident Jammie Thomas to pay $222,000 for sharing copyrighted music on the Internet, according to The Associated Press. “We think we’re in for a long haul in terms of establishing that music has value, that music is property and that property has to be respected,” said Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, to the AP on Friday. According to the AP, six major record companies brought suit against Thomas. Thomas denied using the Kazaa software, one of the many peer-to-peer downloading networks, to download the songs in question. “I hope this raises some awareness in the student body,” said Will Harris, Student Government director of communication. “This is a case that sets precedent nation wide.” SG made an effort to offer students alternatives to downloading music illegally when it introduced Ruckus.com to the University in April. The Web site is geared toward college students to obtain free legal music. The University signed a contract in August with Ruckus that made the partnership official and gained an on-campus server for residential students, according to Mark Kraner, director of Contracted Auxiliary Services. Kraner said by having an on-campus server, outside bandwidth will decline. Upon hearing news of Friday’s case, Harris hopes this inclines students to use Ruckus. There are 1,635 University students using Ruckus. Darcy Rohwer, undecided freshman, is one of those students. “It’s just kind of what you have to do,” she said. “It’s not a bad option if they’re going to give you the music for free.” While anyone can sign up for the Ruckus service with a University e-mail address, only residential students are allowed into the on-campus Ruckus server, said Kraner. When some students learned about the ruling Friday afternoon, some were not inclined to change their ways. “One case isn’t going to make everyone change,” said Caitlin Thorpe, mass communication freshman. “They’re going to have to bust more people.” Thorpe said not everyone is going to stop downloading music because of one person, and she feels the chances of it happening to her are slim because of the number of college students who still illegally downloading. Harris said Chancellor Sean O’Keefe has made it clear that he will take a hard-line on file sharing. Sheri Thompson, Internet Protocol communications and planning officer, said illegal downloading on campus has consistently gone down. She said peer to peer Web sites are not allowed in the computing labs on campus, but they are available in residential halls. IP Services monitors the bandwidth coming in and out of sites that have high bandwidth. “The RIAA monitors network flows. Then we get a letter,” she said. “We don’t target anyone in particular.” Some students are still getting their music the illegal way. “I use LimeWire for single songs, but otherwise I use torrents,” said Luis Erazo, anthropology sophomore. Though Erazo has heard of the Ruckus system, he said if students can use the downloaded music on other devices besides computers, it would be more relevant. While the Ruckus system is intriguing, the problem of Digital Rights Management protected music are steering some students away from the opportunity. DRM is used as a redistribution tool for CDs to prevent piracy, which is a major issue with digital music. This technology can limit some downloaded music from being played on certain music players such as iTunes or Windows Media Player or moved to some portable devices such as iPods or Zune devices, according to Ruckus.com. This problem is what steered Mandy Briseno, communication disorders junior, from using Ruckus. “What’s the point of using the system if you can’t burn CDs or move them to your iPod,” Briseno said. She said she uses iTunes but rarely buys whole albums – just songs. She removed LimeWire because it was creating problems on her computer. Harris is aware of the DRM problem and sympathizes with students but also realizes that problem is out of the hands of SG and Ruckus. “Apple has chosen not to allow our, or anyone else’s for that matter, technology,” said Chris Lawson, director of corporation development, in an e-mail interview. “We are hoping that Apple and the iPod do allow Ruckus’ users to be allowed to add their library in the future.” Lawson said a new portable service called Ruckus-To-Go works on most other portable players and several dozen popular cell phones. He said tracks and albums are also available DRM-free on Ruckus, but they have to be bought. Some students would embrace the system more if the DRM factor did not exist. Daniel Meke, mechanical engineer senior, was intrigued by the idea of Ruckus but quickly lost interest because of inability to burn CDs to his iPod. “It’s rubbish,” he said. “Free is free.”
—-Contact Adam Pfleider at [email protected]