Ruckus.com, a company that offers music and downloads legally to college students, has been using ""suspect"" advertising to gain members, affecting thousands of UW-Madison students this past week, according to University Housing Director Larry Davis.
This fall, Ruckus deceived thousands when a company employee created a character named Brody Ruckus, a ""student"" from Atlanta who promised in a Facebook group that, ""If this group reaches 100,000, my girlfriend will have a threesome."" Three hundred thousand members later, Facebook officials realized Brody Ruckus was a fraud, and pulled his profile and the group off the site.
Ruckus.com walked away with the e-mail addresses of 300,000 students, which the company then used to send unsolicited messages informing students about Ruckus.com's products.
Thousands of students have created accounts through Ruckus' website, including many UW-Madison students. Just last Thursday, Oct. 5, Luke Behnke, a 2004 UW-Madison alumnus and one of 5,396 members of the Facebook group ""University of Wisconsin-Madison: Partying Harder Than Your School Since 1863,"" posted a message on the group's discussion board titled ""Ruckus music.""
The message introduced Ruckus.com, claiming it had become a ""partner"" with UW-Madison and encouraged students to go to Ruckus.com and get ""FREE unlimited download access just for being a Wisconsin student!""
Other e-mails and Facebook postings circulated UW-Madison this week, stating the university had launched an agreement with Ruckus, promoting its service on campus. However, UW-Madison never signed any agreement with Ruckus and has no plans to establish a partnership with the company.
""The students were kind of duped into marketing promotions from the company,"" said Brian Rust, communications manager for Division of Information Technology. ""They can promote their service, they just can't make it seem like the university had bought into it.""
Rust says ruckus.com is using deceitful advertising to gain members, that the program only works on Windows, and that music cannot be uploaded onto iPods or other portable music players. Also, like many programs claiming to provide free music downloads, Ruckus.com is not free. Unless a university agrees to pay an up front aggregated fee, which UW-Madison is not doing, a minimal fee is required for students to continue membership, according to Rust.
Rust encouraged students to be careful before signing up for promotions.
""Students need to be weary when they get a promotion that just mentions the university,"" Rust said. ""That doesn't mean that the university has anything to do with it.""
