Across the country, thousands of college students are being granted access to free music downloads because of the ad-supported Web site, Ruckus.com, owned by Ruckus Network.

Advertisers interested in the college-age demographic help fund the service by paying to get their marketing on the Web site and in the networking community. The belief is that although college students are too poor or just unwilling to pay for music, they may have the means to spend their money on many other services.

“Being a music major, [I think] the music library has a pretty good selection,” said Dusty Selman, freshman in liberal arts and sciences-open option. “But it would be nice to be able to download a song or music piece for free instead of paying $50 to buy an entire opera on album.”

Copyright infringement is always on people’s minds when referring to downloading media, but Ruckus has contracts with all the major labels and many independent labels as well. Nathan Steffen, senior in civil engineering, said corporations have many new ways to encrypt music and ensure the media stays on the students’ computers.

“Most companies put coding on their songs that only let people listen a certain number of times or on a specific computer,” Steffen said. “If somebody tries to trade the music with someone, the files will stop playing on the new machine. Stuff like Rhapsody and Napster have subscriptions and code their music to stop playing when the subscription expires.”

If a loophole to get around the media coding is found, legal actions are sure to be swift and harsh, said Jeffrey Blevins, assistant professor of journalism and communication.

“I don’t know how you could possibly be able to continually enforce it,” Blevins said. “It’s really quite a vexing issue that hackers try to maneuver around. When they do get caught though, people find it best to make examples of a few people in both civil and criminal cases.”

The goal of the service is to provide music and media to college students by offering free downloads to minimize piracy.

Currently more than 100 schools, including Princeton and the University of Southern California have contracts with Ruckus, but the company wants to expand its entertainment network to all college students, according to the technology Web site Redherring.com.