In 1999, Shawn Fanning made history when he launched Napster, the Internet's first peer-to-peer music sharing program.
Since that time, file sharing has become wildly popular on our nation's college 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 collective 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 seven 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 many other hardworking 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 administration alike for their affiliation with, and use of these illegal file sharing programs.
Last year, the RIAA sent letters to 700 colleges nationwide, informing those students who ignore warnings and continue to engage in illegal downloading of music they will be sued. While hailing the efforts of those schools subscribing to legal downloading services, the RIAA called online theft of copyrighted works on campus computer networks "an enormous problem" for the music community.
So, while some may think the problem is abating, illegal file sharing remains a serious issue for all schools, including University of Pennsylvania.
Despite the actions being taken by the industry and the approximately 150 schools currently subscribing to legal downloading services, the problem isn't going away. In fact, last week, the RIAA issued copyright-infringement complaints directed at students at the 25 colleges and universities where the problem appears to be most prevalent.
According to industry observers, 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. Not surprisingly, one third of the illicit activity is taking place on college campuses. Furthermore, the growing popularly 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. And, 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 - Ruckusr, from Ruckus Network, Inc. - is now available, free of charge, to every member of the University of Pennsylvania community and to students at every school across the U.S. 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 2.5 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 University of Pennsylvania and the students for this service: $0. Ruckus pays for the music that we deliver out of our advertising proceeds.
For the administration at University of Pennsylvania, as we've demonstrated at more than 100 colleges and universities across the country, Ruckus solves a fundamental computing and content distribution problem: The University of Pennsylvania now has an attractive legal media downloading option that has proven to be a hit with students interested in discovering and sharing new music.
Illegal media consumption and distribution has to stop. Otherwise, content creators 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.
Our experiences with other schools lead us to believe the University of Pennsylvania experience will be a great one. We'd appreciate your ongoing feedback and suggestions so we can continue to make Ruckus work for everyone.
Michael Bebel is the President and CEO of Ruckus Network. He can reached through Chris Lawson at clawson@ruckus.com.
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