If you supported Brody Ruckus’ efforts to have a threesome with his girlfriend through Facebook, you may have been taken for a fool.

The online music downloading company Ruckus allegedly fabricated the student and his group “If this group reaches 100,000 my girlfriend will have a threesome” to obtain student e-mail addresses to improve business. The company used a Georgia Tech e-mail address after reaching an agreement with the school to use its music service on campus.

Mike Bebel, CEO of Ruckus, said one of his younger employees in the marketing department created Brody Ruckus and his “threesome” plan so he could have the largest group on Facebook, not to collect e-mail addresses.

“This was one person’s idea executed without the knowledge of anyone else in the organization,” he said. “It took off beyond our wildest imagination. We have a stringent policy against spamming and privacy. Contrary to what has been reported, we never collected e-mail addresses and used them for spamming purposes.”

Bebel said the incident became more of an issue than it should have been because of misreporting, but admits the company has become wiser as a result.

“It was a lesson about what not to do when promoting a service,” he said. “It has the heading of ‘learning exercise.’ At the core we stand for high integrity and what’s right with respect to copyrights and how things should be handled. We now have protocols in place to ensure this sort of thing won’t happen again.”

Three days after Ruckus created the group, more than 100,000 Facebook users had joined. Brody then promised to post pictures of the threesome if 300,000 joined, which soon happened and a Web video if it became the largest group on Facebook.

Bebel said he was choosing what action to take with Brody Ruckus when Facebook itself caught on and deleted him and the group.

“By the time we came to decide what we were going to do, Facebook had already deleted it” he said. “We were deciding whether we should let it run its course as these things often do.”

Many University students described the incident as “amusing” and “interesting,” but others found it less tasteful.

“That’s despicable. I find it really frustrating and dishonest that they would use something so foul to get e-mail addresses,” said freshman Stephanie Blank.

More than 100 Facebook groups have since sprung up in response to Brody Ruckus’ removal, including “Bring Brody Back” and “Brody Ruckus is a FRAUD.”

The company caused more controversy days after the account deletion, however. It sent messages to University of Wisconsin- Madison students saying they were eligible for unlimited free downloads. University officials said they never agreed to the deal.

When 1,100 students began downloading from Ruckus a day after receiving the message, the UW’s network slowed because of lack of bandwidth, and was forced to limit Internet traffic.

Bebel attributed this incident to a misunderstanding.

“The message was not worded appropriately,” he said. “The person who wrote the original message wrote as if we had a direct relationship with Wisconsin.”

Ruckus has a partnership with 12 schools but not Wisconsin specifically. It has since apologized and hopes to develop a future partnership.

Washington University and Ruckus signed an agreement that went into effect this semester. As of now, the University has not contacted the company regarding the two incidents, but will be looking into it according to Vice Chancellor for Students James McLeod.

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