Exciting times for P2P filesharing: Limewire, Ares, Pirate Bay, Mininova, amongst others are pushing the industry to never-before imagines heights. You can get almost any music track or movie for free whenever and wherever you want. So the concept of introducing Ruckus – a music-download service that offers fast downloads for students – as a valid alternative seems insulting and downright laughable.

Ruckus doesn’t work in the same way as P2P filesharing and simply offers users DRM-protected music files, which is not what they’re looking for. P2P Filesharing is the sharing of files, not the handing out of files by some centrally controlled agency – called the RIAA, incidentally, as they are the ones behind this proposed shift – will not cut the mustard.

Nonetheless the colleges and Universities are pandering to the whims of the RIAA and big business and ‘encouraging’ the use of Ruckus instead of traditional P2P filesharing applications. Will it work? Of course not. Do they know that? Yes, I think they do.