“Despite negative feedback from other universities, the Undergraduate Assembly has faith that a new music downloading service will be a hit at Penn. Ruckus — a service that provides free unlimited music downloads to students — has been dropped by some schools that have used it. But UA members believe that an updated version of the program will yield different results on campus,” Beth Sussman reports for The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Sussman reports, “The body passed a proposal this week that, pending approval from Provost Ron Daniels, would provide the free service for students who use computers with Windows. Ruckus allows songs to play on the computer to which they were downloaded, but the files cannot be transferred onto MP3 players for free, and the service will not work on MacIntosh computers.”
“But some Mac users feel excluded. ‘They’re leaving out a whole group of people that they, in theory, would want to be using this system,’ Engineering freshman Maddy Yasner said. ‘If it’s that important to them, then they should think about the whole school — not just those who use Windows.’ Yasner uses a Mac and said she downloads her music legally from the iTunes service,” Sussman reports.
Full article here.
iTunes U is a free, hosted service for colleges and universities to manage a broad range of audio, video and document content and make it available quickly and easily to students, faculty, staff, and alumni through the iTunes Music Store which works for both Mac users and Windows sufferers. iTunes U also provides your students with the best legal solution to acquire, manage, and listen to music and videos from the Internet. Use your school colors, logos, and photography to make iTunes U familiar to staff, students, and alumni. iTunes U looks like your college or university but it acts like iTunes. More info here.
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Cornell Student Assembly to vote on funding Mac- and iPod-incompatible Napster for another year – November 01, 2005
Why are Brown University’s Mac students being forced to pay for useless Napster? – September 06, 2005
this isnt a huge deal, many universities do that, i am going to one now, since it has more then 15k people attending, and a large number being mac users, (I would say about 1/3). They are being excluded. They have some service just for windorws users. Since this is happening all over, how is this really news?
Smart people make a lot of stupid rules.
Bottom line: The University gets percentage, the don’t realise that a percentage is only of value when it’s a percentage of a large enough number in the first place.
And I seemingly can’t type for shit today. That should be; A percentage, and; theY don’t realise
Just try excluding people for being Jewish, or Muslim, or left handed, or red headed or gay or liberal and you’ll have these people up in arms. But exclude them for their choice of computers and they say “meh.”
The hypicrisy of Universities proves that a college education is not what it used to be.
Ironically, the “magic” word is study. LOL!
Lil billy, go back to class and quit complaining
It is nice to know that even fifteen years after graduation, the UA continues its tradition of excellence in decision making.
One of the great things I learned at Penn was to embrace all people regardless of their beliefs or backgrounds, and yet the UA knowingly excludes folks when they know by going with another choice such as iTunes and iTunes U, they can embrace all.
One of Penn’s brightest professors, Dr. Fader, is a proponent of the subscription model. Fader is a brilliant marketing mind and the best professor I ever had. He believes in a concept called the “celestial jukebox” which is an potential evolution of today’s subscription model. So the university does have “ownership” in seeing subscription models work. But you should not do this at the expense of alienating a large segment of your student population.
And all this from the school that turned me onto Macs and FileMaker. I will remember this later this year when they call asking for a Penn Fund donation.
iTunes is free. If it’s so great and people are happy with it, then who cares about a free Windows only service?
“yet the UA knowingly excludes folks when they know by going with another choice such as iTunes and iTunes U, they can embrace all.”
iTunes is quite exclusive itself. You could use the same argument that the school is excluding a segment of their students if they only offered iTunes.
Unless they prevented the students from downloading and using iTunes, then they are not doing anything wrong. Perhaps the better place to direct your misguided anger is toward the service itself.
“I will remember this later this year when they call asking for a Penn Fund donation.”
Interesting thought. Perhaps a polite e-mail to the alumni association might help change their minds?
Who said that educators were educated – that looks to be the case at the University of Pennsylvania – or at least there not very good retailers or marketers!
I get it now – they just want the students to study not dick around with music (i.e iTunes and iPod’s) – I guess University of Pennsylvania isn’t the party school I through it was after all!
One thing for sure – the School of Marketing sucks!
And what about the School of Design – what’s design?
No wonder our country is in trouble. Penn is one of our oldest an best regarded schools. If that is the best they could come up with, OMG…
Using the argument that is used so much here at MDN, let the numbers speak for themselves. If people want iTunes, they can download it for free. If they want to use Ruckus instead, they can. The choice is up to them. The better service will be shown by whichever is more popular. If Ruckus is used more often by the majority of people despite only being available to some of the students, then the conclusion is obvious; people want Ruckus more than iTunes.
Additionally, this service is free to the university and the students, so what good reason do you have for their not offering their students the choice?
Penn State also does something similar. They give “free” Napster to all their students. Of course the students are paying for it, just hidden in another fee. Given the number of Macs/iPods I see on campus its utterly ridiculous Penn State to go to Napster.
Their answer BTW, when asked about Mac support is to install Virtual PC on your Mac to run Napster!
Michigan State University started using Ruckus this year too. No idea as to why. I can’t try it out because I use a mac, but I have not heard one person say they use the service. Maybe it is awesome and I should switch to Windows to use free* stuff, maybe not
Pog: “Penn State also does something similar. They give “free” Napster to all their students. Of course the students are paying for it, just hidden in another fee.”
No, that’s different. With Napster, the university has to pay Napster a small fee which gets passed on to the students, usually bundled in some type of “technology fee.” With Ruckus, there is no fee that the university has to pay. Thus, it really is free to the students.
Yes, thanks for pointing that out realist, I noticed that after posted. The Penn State system is far more evil than this clearly.
Thanks God it’s not a French university !
Typical Ivy League elitism.
With Ruckus, there is no fee that the university has to pay.
That makes no sense. The article says the service is free to the students. Someone has to pay something. If the students aren’t paying directly, then it has to be paid by the university, recouped through student fees.
That’s the biggest gripe I have. No student should be forced to pay a fee to support a service they’re incapable of using.
University of Pennsylvania — instructing the best and brightest to run companies and governments, alike, where the Enrons and U.S. Congress are prime examples of instititutions in need of intellegent graduates inculcated with a healthy dollop of common sense — but I digress.
Niffy
LordRobin: “The article says the service is free to the students.”
Well, no. What the article actually states is this:
Universities previously had to pay subscription fees for their students, but the service will now be offered for free to both Penn students and the University.
“Someone has to pay something. If the students aren’t paying directly, then it has to be paid by the university, recouped through student fees.”
The first statement is correct, however, that does not make the latter a true statement. Ruckus offers many different fee-based models, for music and videos. They are probably willing to lose money with the free model in hopes that users will upgrade to the fee-based models. This is not an unusual concept. The one advantage they may have over other competitors that employ a similar strategy is that they may not need to pay the music labels much since users are very limited as to what they can do with the songs.
checking out the right side of Apple’s iTunes U page, seems like a very comprehensive and slick program. No-brainer to me. Couldn’t some professors, employees, and students band together and go the iTunes U (mw) ‘way’?
Several clarifications:
The UA is like the Student Council, so it is a body of students making this recommendation.
Realist is correct that iTunes is still exclusive to an extent. But I argue it is more inclusive than any other option. At least it covers Windows and Mac users. I offer my apologies to the Linux and Unix folks for my insensitivity in my previous statement.
My only concern is related to the Penn State argument in the comments. My wife and brother-in-law both attended Penn State and the Napster fee is hidden in the semester’s technology fee. I would be distraught if Penn is going to do the same thing related to forcing students to pay for something that they cannot use. Eventually, colleges and universities need to just find a way to accept that students should be the ones held accountable if they choose to pirate music. That is a choice that the individual needs to make. Instead of university-wide licenses on Napster, just include a mandatory seminar during orientation that talks about copyright infringement. I believe that piracy is wrong and I pay for 100% of my music and content using the iTunes system. Others will not agree. Such is life…
iTunes U gives no kickbacks.
Will Apple never learn how real business operates?