Ruckus Network, a college-sponsored digital media content service, closed its doors on February 6, leaving users, particularly students, wondering whether the concept of protected digital music is flawed. The users who enter the website of Ruckus are displayed a message stating that the company’s services will not be provided anymore.

Ruckus was one of the many attempts that people in the music industry made in order to provide a sort of conciliation between their revenues and users’ ease to download and store digital media content. Ruckus wasn’t the first web-based music service that tried to counterattack music piracy among college students, as other platforms, such as SpiralFrog, have also tried to minimize the effect of using Bit Torrent websites.

Along with the piracy concerns, some students have also complained about their colleges sponsoring digital music libraries. Many of them stated that it is not right that all students pay for a service that they might not want to use after all.

Yet, Ruckus solved many of these issues back in 2006, when it chose to give up subscription fees and went for contracts with ad agencies and sponsorships from colleges and universities. This meant that users, exclusively students, were given free access to the website’s content.

Even so, the music downloaded through Ruckus couldn’t be neither transferred to MP3 players nor burned to CDs, which made the files usable on the user’s computer only.

Some companies in the music industry are already developing online platforms that aim to offer users the possibility to do whatever they want with the files that they download. For instance, Warner is preparing an online offer that will let users download music in an array of formats for a standard price tag and without the typical restrictions.