Full disclosure: I am an employee of Ruckus, and I just wanted to comment.
Ruckus is not a subscription service. We offer Ruckus to students free of charge (through its ad-supported model), making it the only free and legal digital entertainment service for college students. There is absolutely no cost to the university and no cost to the student, including ZERO ?pass through? costs, differing from other services like Napster.
Our main goal here is help curb illegal file sharing and downloading practices, while still offering a viable music discovery alternative to college students, providing 3 million tracks through our deep relationships with major and independent music labels.
News.com reports that language that would require universities to send off money to the Napster or Ruckus music subscription services if they can’t stem P2P filesharing on campus is unlikely to be changed before a House vote on the measure.
Debate on a massive Democratic-sponsored higher education spending bill (PDF) began around 1:30 a.m. ET and continued late into the evening on Wednesday. But no amendments were expected to be introduced to change the antipiracy sections embedded in the 747-page text.
House Education and Labor Committee aides said final votes on the amendments and the entire bill are expected to begin at 9:45 a.m. ET Thursday.
A really outrageous aspect of this is that it would pull federal student loan funding from students at schools that don’t comply, thus even totally law-abiding students could be terribly hurt by the rule.
