While I fully respect and support the First Amendment rights of the staff in publishing the editorial titled “Ruckus’ behavior unacceptable” (Nov. 3, 2006), I also believe in the importance of fair and accurate communication by the media. Your editorial contained a number of inaccuracies detailed below.

Ruckus Network, Inc. delivers a fully licensed and therefore legitimate music and media downloading service to college students throughout the United States. Our popular music downloading service is free to the students of the colleges and universities that we serve. Since 2003, Ruckus has demonstrated that legal downloading can be a positive experience. In so doing, we have successfully supported the rights of the creators of the music and media that we distribute. Many of our staff members are recent college graduates who have joined Ruckus because they love our service and believe in our objectives. Many of them are musicians themselves.

In the Brody Ruckus matter, one of our young marketers attempted to create the single largest group on Facebook. He based the Brody Ruckus profile on a close personal friend and proceeded along the lines outlined in the aforementioned editorial. When he communicated to management his success in building a huge group around this profile, we determined that the appropriate course of action would be to let the Brody character fade away. Soon thereafter Facebook deleted the profile. Contrary to what has been reported in other media outlets, and as noted in Student Life’s news story written by Josh Hantz on the same day as the editorial in question, Ruckus did not use this profile to market the Ruckus service.

Also, please know and understand we did not collect e-mail addresses or spam any of the members who joined the group. Ruckus Network, Inc. has had a comprehensive and strictly enforced privacy and e-mail policy in place since day one. In the final analysis, I understand that the creation of the Brody Ruckus profile was ill-advised and I can promise that this tactic will not be repeated.

While your editorial suggested otherwise, the events at the University of Wisconsin-Madison were completely separate and totally unrelated to the Brody Ruckus matter. In the UW case, we included the school in a new “pilot” program that has been successfully launched at a select number of schools around the country. The program is designed to test and prove student demand for free legal media.Unfortunately, in this, we made several missteps. First, our communication to the UW students stated that we had a direct partnership with their school; we should have made it clear that Ruckus was seeking a partnership with UW and that their participation in our pilot program would help. Second, we assumed that UW’s network could handle the demand created by the students who signed up for the Ruckus service during the pilot. Unfortunately, this was not the case and the substantial usage of our service significantly slowed the UW network. Third, our outbound communication to our new users at UW suggested that the network problems might be solved if Ruckus and UW had a direct partnership because we could place a server directly on the campus network to further improve its performance. I discussed these issues directly with a senior UW administrator immediately after the incident and apologized for any difficulties that we caused. It was not our intent to harm the University of Wisconsin and we have learned some valuable lessons. As a result, we’ve adjusted our pilot program protocols to ensure a more mutually rewarding experience for Ruckus, the universities and their students.

As the president and CEO of Ruckus I take full responsibility for the integrity of our actions and I apologize for any inconvenience or confusion that may have been caused. Finally, I look forward to working collaboratively with school administrators, faculty and students as we continue to make the Ruckus service available to colleges nationwide.

Michael Bebel is the President and CEO of Ruckus Network, Inc. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]

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