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.
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.
Some universities that have used Ruckus experienced dissatisfaction with the service and have since replaced it with different programs.
American University began offering Ruckus as a legal music-downloading option for students in spring of last year.
However, the university ended its relationship with Ruckus in August 2005 after less than half of the student body signed up for the service and many students who used the service expressed discontent.
Ruckus "was too hard to use. Whenever you downloaded something, there was a timer, so you could only listen to it a certain number of times before you had to re-download it," American University junior Rich Ching said.
American University now offers rival service Napster to its students.
Ruckus has since changed its business model, and the service that the UA plans to provide to Penn students is the updated version.
"We've just seen a tremendous amount of uptake in usage and better feedback," Vice President of Campus Sales for Ruckus Brad Vaughn said.
UA members are optimistic about the new business model.
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.
In addition, Ruckus recently revamped the media player used to listen to downloaded songs.
By the end of the spring, Ruckus is expected to be in use at about 50 universities across the country.
And many Penn students are eager to use the service.
"You don't have to worry about getting arrested now," said College freshman Benjamin Alisuag, who said he illegally downloads music onto his PC using file-sharing software Limewire.
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.
Alumni and faculty will be offered a subscription to Ruckus for $5 a month.
Administrators say they're ready to do the necessary implementation.
"We're very early on to the actual nitty gritty details," Vice President of Information Systems and Computing Robin Beck said. "We have a good concept that we now have to make into a plan and reality."
