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Hofstra University Signs Music Download Licensing Deal

Posted on: Thursday, 4 August 2005, 00:00 CDT

Aug. 4--In a move to reduce piracy of copyrighted material by students, Hofstra University will offer students inexpensive, high-speed access to music and movies under a deal signed yesterday.

The deal with Ruckus Network Inc., of Herndon, Va., should also take the drain off campus computers and decrease viruses, spyware and adware obtained from illegal downloading, said Laurie Harvey, Hofstra's director of student computing services.

Ruckus, which launched last fall, targets college students by charging a per-semester fee and offering high-speed downloads on campus.

Ruckus hosts songs and movies on its computers on campus and directly connects those computers into the university's network, allowing subscribers to download songs in less than 10 seconds and feature-length movies in five to 10 minutes, Ruckus spokesman Josh Weiner said.

Ruckus charges $14.95 a semester for access to 1.2 million songs and $19.95 a semester for access to movies, or $29.95 a semester for both. The service has access to 4,000 movies, offering dozens of movies at any given time and regularly rotating the lineup.

The cost of the service is reasonable, said Taylor Long, a senior entertainment editor at The Chronicle, Hofstra's student newspaper. But Ruckus would have to offer many indie bands that are available through illegal music sharing networks to attract college students, Long said. "There's a huge market for those underground music and movies."

The recording industry has continued its crackdown on music and movie downloading -- popular among college students -- and recently filed another round of copyright infringement lawsuits.

Universities have been discouraging students from illegally downloading music for years, with some even limiting the amount of data students can transfer each week. Hofstra deliberately slows the transfer speed to make illegal downloading inconvenient, Harvey said.

Some schools provide Ruckus for free. But Harvey said a Hofstra student advisory committee recommended an opt-in, fee-based service.

Students would have access to the songs and movies through the Ruckus software as long as they subscribe to the service. They could also copy songs to Windows Media-compatible music players such as the Creative Zen or iRiver, but must renew the songs' licenses via the PC every 30 days. Ruckus also links directly to buy.com, which sells songs for 99 cents or less, allowing purchasers to keep the songs permanently.

At least two other services target universities, including Ctrax and Napster, which pioneered illegal downloading and transformed into a legitimate music service. Napster now has 56,000 university subscribers through its university site licenses, a fraction of the approximately 16 million college students nationwide.

"It's an uphill battle with these services," said Michael Goodman, a senior analyst with Yankee Group, a technology research and consulting company in Boston. "You're talking about the segment that is most closely associated with piracy."

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Source: Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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