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Preliminary results from UCLA’s “Get Legal” campaign indicate that although students have begun to use the program, it has gotten off to a slow start.

Get Legal, a program designed to combat online media piracy, involves a one-year agreement with digital-media vendors CDigix, iTunes and Mindawn, to provide UCLA students with legal avenues for obtaining entertainment media.

Since the program’s inception on April 4, media options provided by CDigix have been the most successful, with about 500 students using the CTrax service and 100 more signing up for its other services, said Jonathan Curtiss, manager of technological development for UCLA Student and Campus Affairs.

CTrax is a free subscription downloading service for students through which songs can be downloaded to a computer. However, songs must be purchased before they can be burned onto a CD or moved to a portable media player.

CDigix also offers a video service through its CFlix program.

Curtiss said though the number of CDigix users may seem low, he considers it encouraging as Get Legal has not yet waged a thorough advertising campaign.

He added that he is hopeful these numbers will grow rapidly once Get Legal has a marketing campaign in place.

CDigix officials are also happy with the initial number of students using CTrax, said Betty Yee, a second-year undeclared student and marketing intern for CDigix.

Students have slowly started to use Get Legal’s iTunes service as well, where songs still cost the standard 99 cents, but 5 percent of sales are donated to both the undergraduate and graduate student governments, Curtiss said.

About 90 individual song purchases have been made through iTunes, Curtiss said, which translates to $4.50 in donations to student government.

Jenny Wood, former president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, said USAC did not expect any large donations this year from Get Legal and had no specific plans for the money, but added that she still thought the program was beneficial.

Mindawn – a service through which new artists, including students, can upload and sell their music – has also reported some sales, Curtiss said, though he could not comment on the strength of those sales.

Despite slow student participation, some have been working to promote Get Legal’s alternatives for media downloads.

Pavan Tripathi, last year’s USAC-appointed representative on Get Legal’s B-Legal Committee and resident assistant in Hedrick Summit, said he has encouraged many students in his building to use CTrax.

“It’s been pretty popular in my building,” Tripathi said.

Yee, who advertised CDigix services at a table on Bruin Walk this quarter, said she talked to approximately 30 students about CDigix and many seemed interested in CDigix’s services.

“People who actually used (CDigix) said it’s pretty cool,” Yee said.

Tripathi attributed the slow student response to Get Legal this year to the timing of the campaign’s release.

“It was a little late in the game this year,” Tripathi said. “Students had already gotten into their routines.”

But Curtiss said Get Legal is planning a new advertising campaign that will start at new-student orientations this summer.

This new campaign will consist of fliers and signboards around campus, advertisements in the Daily Bruin and possibly a table on Bruin Walk.

Curtiss added that Get Legal will be introduced to incoming students this summer during the dean of student’s presentation on filesharing at their orientation sessions.