Ruckus Exposed
This article is for those out there who love music but just can’t find the cash to buy all those awesome new CD’s that come out every month. I find myself in that situation all too often and always go to one place for my fix: the internet. Over the years my approaches to free music have changed as new downloading sources are opened and shut down. First was Napster, Kazaa, Morpheus… these all turned to shit in about a year though as more and more viruses and fake songs were put up. Then I found out about torrent sites. These are awesome. I’m pretty anal about always having whole CD’s instead of singles, and I could always find everything I wanted to listen to. Not only that, there are never viruses and there are a ton of sites to search for music on. The only downside was that stuff downloaded way slow. When I got to UMBC as a freshman, I was introduced to DC++. CD’s in 30 seconds, movies in like 5 minutes; I was in heaven. It didn’t have everything, but I still had torrents as a backup.
Finally, this year, I found the greatest downloading source of all: Oink. It was a private torrent site that literally had everything. Not only that, it was faster than DC++, and since it was private there was really nothing to worry about. All of this changed very fast though. Two of my friends got caught on torrent sites by recording industries, and had to pay fines to the school as a punishment. DC++ got shut down. As icing on the cake, Oink got shut down by 3 or 4 organizations that attack file sharers and some major lawsuits are on way (google oink and you’ll get a bunch of stuff). So, as of about a month ago I was dry out of luck for music downloading. Enough reminiscing though, let me get to the real dirt.
Perhaps browsing myUMBC a couple of months ago, or in conversation with other students, you probably read something about a program called Ruckus. It’s like Napster or Rhapsody, where all of the music you get is protected, so technically you don’t own any of the music. When I heard about this, I wasn’t interested at all. What use is the music if I can’t put it on a CD or on my ipod? In addition, I would have to download a program to listen to anything I get. Despite my disinterest, I decided to give the program a try, and found that protected music aside, it is a pretty good program. It has all the music I want, and everything downloads as fast as DC++. It’s almost a hobby of mine to always find a way to find loopholes in programs though, and it took only about five minutes to find this one. Now this isn’t good news for mac users, because ruckus doesn’t work on a mac, and some might not like it because a little money is involved, but I found a program that will de-protect all of the music you download from ruckus. Once the license is removed, you own the song and you can do with it what you want. The program is called soundtaxi, and you can get it from http://www.soundtaxi.info/. For a one time fee of about 15 dollars, you can get the simple version, which is what I have, and it will convert songs at a kind of slow, but manageable speed. The better version costs 10 dollars more, and will convert things as fast as your computer can handle. Whether you want fast conversions or can handle slow ones, this program is awesome and will well pay for itself. For about the price of a CD, you get all the music you want, and it is completely safe because you never need to share music.
So, if you have a PC and like downloading your music, this is by far the best way to go. Download the ruckus program and register on the site with your UMBC email (this is the only way you can use it), and then get the soundtaxi program, and you will be in music downloading heaven. [8^)
Not to sound totally clueless but are torrent sites most dangerous if you’re on a college network? So when I use u tor rent (see how I spelled it? That’s how I keep The Man from catching on, I’m sneaky) at home am I relatively safe compared to my college friends?
beware that programs such as sound taxi a.) are made to take the drm protection off of files you OWN the license to, so using the program to strip “borrowed/rented” music is against the terms of usage and b.) don’t invest too much money in them because Microsoft will only have to change a few things and package it in a security update with other things you actually need and you’re program will be rendered useless (this is what i’ve gathered from a few days of similar research)
I don’t see how you can go from OiNK to this latest in a series of failed attempts to curtail downloading.
1. Music can only be played via their software, not your music player of choice and not on your operating system of choice.
2. While there is considerable selection, it is nowhere near complete and nowhere near what is available on elite music trackers.
3. The DRM-laden songs prevent transfer to a portable music device, like my iPod. Even if you do use software to (illegally) remove the DRM, the files are not .mp3 but .wma, a format that is not compatible with iPods.
4. Even after going through all the trouble of freeing the songs, they are still in poor quality. If you decide to transcode to .mp3 to put the songs on an iPod, your quality will go down even further.
If we’re going to be illegal anyway, why not skip the hassle and go for the best?
Why Ruckus is Not a Solution
The best solution (after how long searching on Google) you can come up with is a program that you have to fork over fifteen freaking dollars to get the “basic” version? Come on, give me a break. Let us know when you find something better.
This seems to be the easiest solution to the Ruckus thing. I googled a bit and came up with this. However, this seems to be a much more convoluted process than that which bojangles offers.
I really wrote the article based on my experiences with all the programs. Yes, Oink was by far the best program, but now it’s gone and whatever replacement it has I would need to find another invite to. Ruckus takes a close second though. The download speeds are about the same (cd in like 2 minutes), and the selection is huge. In response to Michael Steelwolf, all of those things apply to ruckus alone, not the soundtaxi program. Everything is converted directly to unprotected mp3 that can be easily put into iTunes and then on an ipod. And while I know that a little bit of quality is lost, but I personally can’t even tell the difference.
The main and most important difference between this method of getting music and all the other downloading ones is that NO UPLOADING IS REQUIRED
continued because i didn’t mean to post that yet………..
What gets everyone in trouble with illegal downloading is the uploading part of sharing, which recording companies only need to catch you doing for less than a second to push a lawsuit on you. With ruckus, you download the protected songs, and convert them with nothing ever being uploaded. Nobody can track files that you are converting on your computer, so unless the program stops working, you’re pretty much free to get as much music as you want and never have that feeling that somebody will catch you. And for 15 dollars…. the price of ONE cd, you get as many as you want. Its also nice that the ruckus site has all the track listings, album pictures, and plenty of links to other cds from the same artist and other similar music. I would say before you bash this method, at least try it… there is a trial version of soundtaxi that converts like 30 seconds of the song, but it gives you an idea of how easy it is to convert everything. I definitely hated ruckus before I gave this a try… but that changed.
@bojangles
Do they have this Ruckus technology for Macs, too?
To Michael,
I understand that software like Soundtaxi seems like such a hassle and going for the best stuff and skipping the middle step sounds like a good idea,but from someone who has gotten caught downloading music, soundtaxi is a nice fix. I was downloading through a so call “secure” torrent site, and no one ever thinks they are going to get caught, but people do, I did. And paying the $100 fine, being kicked off resnet, and making a educational poster sucks. And the consequences of getting caught again… $400, 4 week resnet suspension, university probation, I like to think I saved myself $385 by paying the $15 dollars to illegally use soundtaxi, instead of taking the risk of getting caught going for the “better stuff”.
Not sure if this will work for macs… I’m pretty sure that ruckus is exclusive for windows (which is whack), because it needs windows media player to run. I know you can run windows on macs though, so if you’re up for the hassle of dual operating systems or another mac program that allows windows native programs, then there’s no reason this wouldn’t work.
and to justaguy…. nice point
@justaguy:
There is no way you could have gotten caught torrenting, especially if you were on a private tracker. The very nature of torrents means that without serious (and illegal) packet-sniffing, nobody on the outside could have figured out what it was you were downloading or uploading to send a letter to UMBC.
What the SoundTaxi users are doing is basically ripping internet radio, only at lower quality thanks to transcoding the .wmas. If you’re happy with that, more power to you. But don’t call it a “legal alternative to downloading” and don’t say it even comes close to OiNK. Also, just so I don’t come off as lauding something that is no longer available, check out what to use instead of OiNK.
…to clarify…
I realize nobody here is saying that the whole SoundTaxi deal is legal, but Ruckus itself has been hailed by some as being a wonderful new thing. What I’m trying to point out is that this “wonderful new alternative” only becomes useful once you move back into that legal gray area, thus defeating its initial purpose. And while it is safer, it doesn’t compare to other, non-sanctioned offerings, so the end result is not that students stop pirating music, it’s that they use the service because they feel it’s easier to pirate it this way without getting caught.
@Steelwolf
1. I think that link you posted might be dead…
2. I’m just curious: what have you looked for that you couldn’t find on Ruckus. Rockin’ a Mac, I don’t even really know what the selection is on there, so I’m not judging, just trying to get a better idea of what this service is like.
3. And you said that the quality is really bad when you use the program? Do you think this is something most people notice right away? Have you heard other people’s opinions on this issue?
@Steelwolf
First point is, people get busted with torrents all the time. All you have to is connect to the tracker and you get a listing of IP’s for people that are connected, thats all completely public information. You also post out what chunks of data you’re looking for, and what chunks you have. When that information changes, its pretty obvious you’re actively sharing. Bittorrent is NOT a security-driven P2P protocol in the least, pretty much because it was never designed to be. As for the private trackers, well, its pretty obvious that the RIAA has insider accounts on a lot of these sites, such was the case with oink, so, thats not too good of a defense either.
Also, to be clear, filesharing is sort of a grey area in a lot of ways. Using this SoundTaxi application is not. Its clearly stated in the DMCA that circumventing encryption techniques (DRM included) is illegal. Just thought I’d make that clear to everyone, that while theres a lot of ways to take on the RIAA and win (most cases that are not settled with the RIAA end up being dropped by the RIAA), you’re not getting around it if somehow its discovered that you were using the SoundTaxi application. I’m not even trying to give advice, just, those are the options, you pick the path
Its really hard to find now, but an alternate, free program that can be used to remove the DRM protection is called Fair Use 4 WM, its a really easy program to use and works really fast.
@Andrew
First point is, it’s extremely simple to encrypt your headers so it’s not obvious you’re using a BitTorrent client. After that, looking at the “posting out of chunks of data” is not public information, it’s packet-sniffing. I realize at UMBC they get more leeway with spying on your data but certainly from a public internet connection,there is absolutely nothing they can or will do to you. If the RIAA sends a letter to Verizon saying such and such an IP was downloading, they will throw it away, as it has been determined in court that they are not responsible for what goes on on their networks.
Second, you don’t sound very clear on the nature of OiNK - not a single user was “busted” because of their IP addresses, and will not be. The only way they were able to take the site down was by finding the person who ran it, and even that is questionable legally. They are saying that linking to pirated content is illegal, after which he replaced the site’s page with a link to a Google search for the same stuff. Many other public and private sites operate in countries where linking to pirated content is expressly legal. At that point there is zero way they are going to take anybody down - certainly not individuals.
@treeveins
Just checked, it’s not dead. Link. Try that; I probably screwed up the other one.
Ruckus is simply riding the wave of educational institutions trying to avoid being sacked by the RIAA who are willing to accept an inferior product simply because it’s industry-endorsed.
I am a big quality fan, so things that aren’t natively above 192kbps (like many songs on iTunes, sadly) isn’t really my thing. There’s just too much that gets lost in the .mp3 format, especially if they don’t use variable bitrate encoding. Even if you aren’t the biggest of quality fans, transcoding (converting from one lossy format to another, in this case .wma to .mp3) wipes out a lot of the frequencies, so much so that you can immediately identify transcodes by looking at their sound spectra.
@ steelwolf
How would one go about “encrypting their headers”…?
and
If you wouldn’t mind sharing how you currently download music that would be nice… at umbc that is, because I know that I am a lot more safe at home.
Has anyone found a better and less expensive way to get stuff out of the DRM?
could you post what the loophole in Ruckus is?
I use a program called “FairUse4WM” and a program built around it called “WMAUtility” Google for it but its going to be hard to find, the program gets taken down everywhere its put up.
Ruckus has hardly any broadway soundtracks, and you have to redownload the songs every 30 days. dumb.
@ the last anonymous
you’re dumb.
Ruckus has an effed-up electronica selection. 15 Merzbow albums and no Autechre… sheesh.
@bojangles:
Many bittorrent clients such as uTorrent have a setting you can enable that will encrypt the flag that says, “I’m using bittorrent.”
As to the second part, not on a public forum. It’s pretty easy to find how to contact me if you like, however.
Dont tempt me please, I just got caught downlaoding on uTorrent, even though I “encrypted my headers” It doesnt work! We’re all doomed to the horrors of ruckus
you sir have broken rule 1 and 2. please stfu.
@SteelWolf:
“First point is, it’s extremely simple to encrypt your headers so it’s not obvious you’re using a BitTorrent client. After that, looking at the “posting out of chunks of data” is not public information, it’s packet-sniffing.”
No it isn’t. RIAA has a program that emulates BitTorrent, but instead of using the information about the pieces you have and the pieces you are looking for to download the files, they use it to keep track of what you, by your ip address, are looking for. This isn’t packet sniffing, it’s emulation, at best. To the tracker, they look no different than someone who is downloading just like you are. UMBC is not involved in this sniffing, they just capitulate to the companies asking for information about who had what ip address at what time.
“I realize at UMBC they get more leeway with spying on your data but certainly from a public internet connection,there is absolutely nothing they can or will do to you.”
UMBC doens’t get more leeway than a normal internet provider, they get LESS because they’re a state agency and therefore require a search warrent to sniff your data. Countless court cases have held that while a normal corporate provider can surrepetitously search your data if they think you are doing something, a state agency acting like an ISP, like UMBC, needs a warrent. They can shut your network connection off while they get that warrent, though.