Last week Penn State announced it would offer students the Ruckus music service this fall, replacing the Napster service it has offered since spring 2004.

Both were available free to Penn State students, but Ruckus is free to college students across the country while Penn State paid for Napster out of students' IT fee.

Comparing the two services, Ruckus appears to be a step down for Penn State students. It's a relatively small step, though.

Like Napster, Ruckus uses digital rights management software to restrict the burning of the songs you download. Like Napster, you will have to pay 99 cents per song to copy the song onto a CD or transfer it to another device.

Like Napster, Ruckus relies on Windows technology so it is not compatible with Macintosh computers or the world's most popular music player, the iPod.

In terms of selection, Napster and Ruckus are relatively similar. Napster offered 3 million tracks while Ruckus will offer 2.75 million. Ruckus also offers some video downloads, but their current offerings are rather paltry.

One area of contrast is the user experience. Ruckus pays for itself through advertising, which there is plenty of throughout the site.

You can browse music through the Ruckus Web site, but you will need to download the Ruckus player to download the music.

And you will have to download music because, unlike Napster, you are not able to stream music.

Napster's music selection was never all that comprehensive and many songs were available for purchase only. It is unclear how many students even take advantage of the Napster service because of its limitations.

Still, Penn State's Napster experiment may have been a success because the RIAA has yet to sue any Penn State student for illegally downloading music.

Now that the university will no longer be paying for Napster, perhaps Penn State could use the extra money in the IT fee to fund an iTunes-compatible service or improve other campus services like ANGEL.

If not, Penn State should lower the fee because students should not be paying for a service they're not receiving anymore.