ACUHO-I News Blog

Rukus, the free music downloading service promoted by the music industry as the way to limit illegal downloading by college students, has folded. Rukus abruptly halted services on February 6. An annonymous employee told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the business model, a downloading site funded by ads, was no longer working. Music industry representatives complained that students contributed to Rukus’ end by choosing other free, and illegal, downloading services instead. College officials said the restrictions on Rukus music–it couldn’t be transfered to a portable device or burned to a CD–made the service unattractive and unusable for students. They said these seemed to be strictures from another era, before digital downloading became commonplace.

Oddly, now that Rukus is gone, college and university officials are in a bind. The Higher Education Act, renewed by Congress last year, requires institutions to offer an “alternative” to illegal downloading. The langauge doesn’t make clear whether simply pointing students to iTunes or Amazon.com would fulfill this requirement, or if colleges and universities must be more aggressive, offering music services for their students. When the law was written, music industry officials suggested institutions contract with Rukus to fulfill this requirement, but this is no longer an option.

What institutions should do–or must do– to comply will be ironed out in the coming months. The Department of Education is begining the rule-making process now. If you would like to help shape any of the language in the Higher Education Act, contact the Public Policy Advisory Committee.

Some institutions, frustrated with the RIAA’s demands on their time and resources, are taking their student records and going home. So says a Chronicle of Higher Education article that reports some institutions are “fighting back” –passively–by not forwarding the RIAA’s prelitigation settlement letters (without an institution’s records, the RIAA doesn’t know which student is guilty of sharing) and automatically deleting network access logs regularly, as the institution can’t provide what it doesn’t have. A few have taken a more aggressive approach, by going to the courts.

The dissenting schools, and those who continue to cooperate with the RIAA’s demands, cite the money and human resources it takes to work with the RIAA, and the recording industry’s lack of reciprocity. The new College Opportunity and Affordability Act (Higher Education Reauthorization Act 2007) includes provisions that require schools “to the extent practicable” offer legal downloading alternatives;  explore anti-sharing technology; educate students about file-sharing and report on their efforts to the government. The recording industry’s lobbyists seem to have had something to do with this. Institutions, of course, feel this has become a rather one-sided friendship.

The RIAA, apparently not satisfied with a potiential law that may obligate institutions to buy its products, counters that the institutions’ previous compliance, and the continued cooperation of others, shows their requests don’t present an undue burden. After all, once you’ve run a gauntlet once, you’re happy to do it again and again!

How will your institution comply, if HERA 2007 is signed into law (it almost certainly will be)? How do you deal with piracy, downloading and RIAA requests now?