The following FAQs have been compiled from the most commonly asked questions regarding Ruckus at Penn State. If your question is not answered here, please let us know. All FAQ information is courtesy of Ruckus; please visit the Ruckus Help Site for a complete list of FAQs.
Over the last several years, the University has periodically reassessed its partnerships with online music services and trends in the industry. There was significant deliberation in making the decision to change to Ruckus. Some of the important factors in this decision were:
Penn State is concerned that some individuals don't understand that downloading music over computer networks without purchasing copyright permission is both unethical and against the law. The University believes it has a responsibility to do something to change that. Penn State will continue to try to educate the academic community on this issue and will continue to enforce its strong policies against copyright infringement. At the same time, the University wants to provide legal alternatives to illegal downloading. This service is directly aimed at helping students understand the issue and providing them with an alternative. See the following sites for guidelines, tips, and resources:
Penn State's contract with Napster ended on May 31, 2007, so if you plan to continue to use Napster, you will need to renew your account with a paid subscription. Students who do not elect to renew their Napster subscriptions after May 31 will need to generate a copy of their playlists - and manually re-download their tracks via the Ruckus player.
To renew your Napster account, visit the national site at: http://free.napster.com/.
The University is providing a legal choice. Students are free to use any music service they wish, as long as it's legal. There are other sources of alternative legal music sources available online. See http://campusdownloading.psu.edu/ for tips and resources.
Yes. When the contract with Napster terminates on May 31, 2007, use of Napster will begin to count against student’s bandwidth in the residence halls.
There are no plans to continue making Napster available in the labs at this time. However, if interest is expressed for it to be installed on the lab machines in the future, ITS will try to satisfy this request.
Ruckus does not have a streaming option, so the service is unavailable in the lab environment at this time.
As a partnered university with Ruckus, Penn State is able to offer on-campus students the option to download thousands of tracks, without their exceeding residence hall bandwidth limits. In addition, since Ruckus is available to Penn State free of charge, funding that had originally been used to support Napster can now be used to develop multi-media services and emergency reporting services throughout the University's campuses.
It's your Penn State e-mail address, the e-mail address you use to register with Ruckus. Be sure to enter your entire address in all lower case.
Advertisements are a part of the Ruckus network. While some music services charge subscribers monthly fees, Ruckus can offer access to their library of over 3 million tracks without charging fees in most cases, because it offers advertising space on selective pages.
Yes, Ruckus plans to continually expand its movie library. Furthermore, students can suggest films that they would like to have in the Ruckus library. To suggest a movie (or musical track) simply go to Ruckus, choose "help" and then fill out the form with your suggestion on the "Ask a question" tab.
Any enrolled student, whether part-time, full-time or graduate student, can get a free Ruckus subscription.
Students who already have a Ruckus account can log in and resume using Ruckus. If you don't have an account, follow these instructions:
E-mail them to yourself! For those of you who are switching from Napster to Ruckus who want to save your playlists, follow these simple steps.
E-mail them to yourself, so you'll always have them! For those of you who are switching from Napster to Ruckus, and who want to save your playlists, follow these simple steps:
Once you have the e-mailed copy of your list, you can use it to know which tracks to re-download using Ruckus.
For users who would like to have a list of all of the tracks in their Napster library, please follow these instructions:
Once you have the e-mailed copy of your music list, you can use it as a reference for which tracks to re-download using Ruckus.
To use Ruckus, you must have:
Currently only the Ruckus Web site is compatible with the Mac. The community features of Ruckus.com, such as adding friends, reviewing, recommending and our articles will still work on your Mac, however playing Ruckus subscription music and movies will not.
Yes! Thanks to DRM, the encryption software that legal downloading services use to protect media files from being illegally shared, you can now have unlimited music. . . to go! This new feature makes Ruckus a convenient and legal alternative to p2p downloads.
In order to use this feature, you must:
Playsforsure
Logo Note: Not all players are compatible for this feature.
When purchasing a player, look for the "Playsforsure" logo that
is compliant with both audio downloads and subscription. Microsoft provides
a list at Playsforsure
Subscription Enabled Players; however, just because
your player isn't listed doesn't mean it's not PlaysForSure Subscription
compatible. Look for the Subscription-checked logo on the box or on
the manufacture's information page on your player. Ensure the PlaysForSure
logo is checked for Subscription.
Ruckus-compatible MP3 players are available at Penn State's Computer Store.
Ruckus will work with many MP3 players, but unfortunately not iPods. To see if your mp3 player will work with subscription services like Ruckus, see the MP3 Player Page.
Apple has not licensed their DRM technology to any company. DRM, or digital rights management, is the encryption software that legal download services such as Ruckus use to secure the media files so that they can't be illegally shared. Apple has created their own proprietary DRM technology and has decided to stay with a closed system. Apple is the only company that can play back encrypted media files on the iPod.
The music you download from Ruckus can not be burned. The license agreements Ruckus has with record labels prohibit burning songs to CDs. Ruckus offers two options for burning: eMusic and Buy.com.
Ruckus offers a limited subscription to eMusic where you can download a certain number of songs per month from the eMusic site that can be burned to CD. You can subscribe to this service by clicking on the My Account link when you are signed into the Ruckus site.
Ruckus also has a partnership through Buy.com to offer burnable songs at 99 cents a track (or less!). You can purchase burnable songs through the Ruckus page by clicking on the green $ next to the track you are interested in.
The Ruckus subscription music is available for your computer or compatible mp3 player.
Ruckus offers compatibility with Ruckus to Go on Plays For Sure Subscription compliant players for download and subscription. See Ruckus' list of such devices.
However, you can put them on your Windows Media compatible portable player with the Ruckus-to-Go service.
You may however purchase the music you have on Ruckus through Buy.com.
There may be more than one firewall running on your computer that could be blocking Ruckus' access. Click on the Start button, then go to Programs. Check to see how many of the following you have listed: Norton Internet Security, Zone Alarm, Tiny Firewall, Sygate, Kerio, or BlackICE . In addition to any of these firewalls, Windows also has a firewall that should be checked.
You may need to know where you installed Ruckus to when you go to unblock the program. By default, the Ruckus Player program is installed to
C:\Program Files\Ruckus Player\Ruckus.exe
Ruckus recommends that you unblock the program instead of individual ports. The Ruckus Player goes out through the normal http (80) and https (443) ports. However, the Bonjour library used for My Neighborhood file sharing binds to whatever port is available.
Be sure to inspect your Windows default firewall; it may be blocking access. Check out our guide on unblocking Ruckus through Windows Firewall.
To unblock programs see this guide
To unblock Ruckus with Symantec Client Firewall, open up Symantec Client Firewall. Go to Client Firewall, Configure, then Programs. Scroll down the list of programs until you see Ruckus. Select Ruckus, then click on Modify and select Permit.
To unblock Ruckus with Zone Alarm, open up Zone Alarm. Go to Program Control and click on the Program tab. Ensure Ruckus is checked green for all four categories.
To unblock Ruckus with Sygate, open up Sygate. Go to Applications, right click on Ruckus, and select Allow. Click OK.
If you still see problems, please let Ruckus know which firewalls you have installed and how you connect to the Internet.
The answer provided here is intended for the Windows default firewall. For other firewalls such as Norton Internet Security and Zone Alarm, see the Ruckus Firewall Guide.
Set your firewall to make exceptions for Ruckus.exe and mDNSResponder.exe.
You can have two computers set up for your Ruckus account. If you buy a new computer, you can switch your Ruckus downloading privileges from your old computer to the new computer. However, Ruckus only permits one such switch every 30 days per customer. If you want, you can copy media files from the old computer to the new computer, although it might be easier just to download them again.
Switching computers is easy. When you log in to the Ruckus Player on the new computer, you will be asked if you want to switch computers. Click OK to agree and you're set! If you have already switched computer within the last 30 days, the Ruckus Player will tell you that you cannot switch computers again yet.
The search bar on the Ruckus player only searches the song library you have downloaded on your computer, not all the songs available via Ruckus. You will need to go to the actual Ruckus Web site to search for songs you wish to download. Note: it is be possible that the song you are searching for is not available at this time on Ruckus. If you would like to suggest a song, simply go to Ruckus, choose "help," and then fill out the form with your suggestion on the "Ask a question" tab.
If you would like to listen to a song with Ruckus you will need to download the music. However there will be no charge for this, as long as you have registered with Ruckus, and you are enrolled as a student at Penn State. If you decide you don't want to keep the track after you listen to it, you can easily delete it to free up some hard drive space.
Review this FAQ. If you don't find the answer to your question here, consult Ruckus’ support page.
Faculty and staff can choose any legal music service for personal use. Staff and faculty are entitled to register with Ruckus at the reduced rate of $8.99 per month. See Penn State's Legal Media Downloads or Ruckus Network, Inc. for details.
Napster subscriptions automatically renew unless cancelled. To cancel, contact Napster at 1-800-839-4210.
Regarding use of music services in the office or during work hours, department environments and policies vary. Ask your supervisor or department administration for permission.
Faculty needing assistance with incorporating course materials into a music service, or with transitioning to Ruckus from a previous music service, should contact the Penn
State Music Service Coordinator.
If you live off campus, you will have access to Ruckus. To get movies, however, you will have to go on campus and connect to the campus network. (Note: not all campus connections will allow Ruckus. Please follow up with your campus helpdesk on network availability.)
Make sure you have typed your username and password correctly. Be sure to use your full Penn State e-mail address (such as abc123@psu.edu). If you still cannot login, you may need to reset your password. Remember that Ruckus usernames and passwords are case-sensitive.
Try typing in the password letter by letter rather copy/paste. Sometimes copy/paste adds in extra 'blank' characters that you won't see, but the Ruckus system does.
From Mozilla, go to Edit..Preferences. Click on Navigator..Helper Applications. In the box on the right, you should see "File Types: application/vnd.ruckus.download . Click on it then click on the edit button. Change it so that When a file of this type is encountered, Open it using the default application.
Click OK. Then OK again.
Open up Firefox and go to Tools..Options. Click on the Downloads icon. Under File Types, you should see an entry for the RUCKUSDOWNLOAD file. Click RUCKUSDOWNLOAD file then click on the Change Action... button.
If it is marked as Save to Disk, change to it to Open them in the Default
application (which should be Ruckus)
Click OK, then OK again. You should now be able to download songs in the
Ruckus Player.
To see that Ruckus opens from Netscape when you click to download songs:
6.3: What should I do if I tried to open a song from the Web site directly into my player and nothing happened?
Please contact Ruckus support .
6.4: I'm not able to minimize my player all the way. Is there a way to do that?
Yes, Select the "EDIT" pull down menu from the upper left hand corner of the client and choose "Preferences" then check the second box from the bottom labeled "Allow Main Window to be minimized to taskbar."
