Penn students are now only a mouse click away from all the free - and legal - music they can download.
But they aren't supposed to have it yet.
As news slowly spread over the weekend that Ruckus - a music downloading service spearheaded by the Undergraduate Assembly - is available, students began registering for the site, which allows them unlimited digital music from its library of 1.5 million songs. As of Tuesday morning, 48 students had signed up - up from 34 the night before.
So why introduce it with such little fanfare?
Because Penn is still working out the legal kinks with Ruckus.
Even though negotiations are ongoing, Penn officials purchased Ruckus servers that give students access to the service - yet they had not planned to announce it until the talks are complete.
Making the service available for Penn students has been a major UA project over the past year.
University administrators had been negotiating with Ruckus over the summer, and student leaders had hoped to formally unveil the program as students returned to campus last week.
"They're really not ready to announce it . because contracts are not signed," UA Chairman and Wharton senior Brett Thalmann said. He said administrators fear that any premature use of Ruckus could derail the negotiations.
"They didn't want huge publicity about it being launched," Thalmann said. "It [potentially] hurts Penn's side of the negotiations."
Thalmann added that the site will likely be personalized for Penn users when the legal negotiations are complete.
Officials from Ruckus did not immediately return phone calls for comment.
UA members themselves did not know Ruckus was running.
"We were at a weekend retreat," said College junior and UA Treasurer Sunny Patel. He added that he and other members were just hearing that the service was available yesterday.
According to Thalmann, plans to promote Ruckus include alerting all college house ITAs of the system, sending out a school-wide e-mail announcement and creating of a UA-led marketing team.
Thalmann also spoke about Ruckus when he introduced the UA during freshman orientation.
"I just heard about it at the Undergraduate Assembly," said Engineering freshman Chris Pynn. "So I went and signed up."
Whatever the numbers, UA members are just happy to finally be online.
"I'm just really glad," said College junior and Vice Chairman of External Affairs Jason Karsh. "This is a two-year project [that] has finally come to fruition."
