By Jason He

Gargoyle staff reporter


Posted Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007, The OG, arts & news

IT'S USUALLY NOT too surprising when you see the words free, legal, and music in the same sentence.

There are many places on the Web where you can legally download free songs, but virtually all of those songs are from artists you've never heard of and probably never need to hear of. That's not to say that all freely available tracks are no good — a very select few are decent.

But what caught my attention about Ruckus.com was its large collection of songs that you actually hear people talking about and listening to. I registered for an account and did a test search for The Fray, whose album “How To Save A Life” has been very popular for quite a while now.

All of the songs on that album were available for download. To see how well the whole process worked, I selected my two favorite — “How To Save A Life” and “Over My Head.” Download speeds were incredible, and within the next half-minute or so, I was able to play those songs in both Ruckus' own client (which is required to download the songs) and Windows Media Player 11. The tracks were pretty high-quality, too: 192Kbps Windows Media Audio files.

But, of course, there is a catch. Three catches, actually.

For starters, you have to have an e-mail address ending in “.edu” to even sign up. Uni students need not worry about that, though, since “@uni.uiuc.edu” addresses qualify.

Secondly, these tracks are copy-protected (DRM'd, in other words). You can only play them back on your computer — you won't be able to burn them to a CD or transfer them to another device right after downloading. For a small monthly charge, you gain the rights to transfer them to a compatible portable device — but, unfortunately for many, the iPod isn't one of them.

DRM is far from flawless — and to consumers, that's a good thing. I remember reading a news article once with a quote that went something like, “Trying to make digital files not copyable is like trying to make water not wet.”

The RIAA should already know this (and hope that you never do so), but there are ways to strip the DRM from the tunes you download from Ruckus without resorting to recording whatever comes out of your computer's speakers with a microphone.

Tunebite, for instance, re-records your DRM-protected songs at an accelerated rate and converts them to unprotected music files that you can play back on other devices and burn to CDs. Still, even with their “high-speed digital dubbing” technology, it can easily take hours to “convert” just a few albums' worth of songs.

I'd imagine that the most commonly asked question about Ruckus is how the service could possibly be legal. Well, it is legal — it's ad-supported, and luckily, I found that the ads aren't very intrusive. With browser add-ons like Adblock for Mozilla Firefox, users could even enjoy an ad-free experience.

As you might expect, removing the DRM from the songs you download isn't exactly legal, and the RIAA definitely wouldn't be happy with it — but in the end, only your conscience could (or would) stop you from doing it.

Oh, and that third catch — Macintosh users are, at first, out of luck. Because of the DRM, the required Ruckus download client is available for Windows only. If you remove the DRM, the songs suddenly become playable on Macs (and iPods, and basically anywhere else music files can be played).

Overall, Ruckus sounds like the perfect thing for college students (and privileged high school students like us who have .edu e-mails). According to the Daily Illini, though, Ruckus actually started three years ago. It was originally a paid service available only to students of the 100 or so colleges it partnered with. Back then, it wasn't a very big success, as students generally weren't very interested in it.

But on Jan. 22 Ruckus announced its service would be available without charge to all college students nationwide.

Even though Ruckus' basic service is now free, it's unclear to me whether people will actually care much about it. Students who currently subscribe to services like Napster, Rhapsody, or Yahoo! Music Unlimited — which do just about everything Ruckus does, except with a monthly fee — will probably find it relieving that they could save an extra several bucks each month.

I'm sure the majority will appreciate the free songs, but be turned away by the fact that the songs won't play on their iPod — after all, few will probably hear about or bother to look for DRM removal tools. For those students who just want to listen to songs on their computer, though, this is seriously awesome.

As for those who have an iPod and also find out about Tunebite (and have the patience to wait for downloaded songs to un-DRM-ify), they'll never need the iTunes Music Store again!

Note: The Gargoyle does not encourage music piracy and claims no responsibility for users' actions with Tunebite or other tools used to remove digital protection from copyrighted material.

RELATED

— Ruckus Network press release: Free, Legal Music Downloading Service Ruckus is Now Available to All College Students