The recording industry has a new target in the sights of its legal department: college students.Eight Brandeis students were among the 91 students at 33 schools across the country who found themselves in those sights last May when the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents most major record labels, announced a new wave of lawsuits against file-sharers hosting copyrighted music.

Though the move was not by any means the first of its kind-hundreds of people have been sued in past years, many college students among them-it was only the second in which the accused were using a program called i2hub, which is used almost exclusively by college students. I2hub, a peer-to-peer file sharing program, operates over the speedy Internet2 network that connects most colleges and universities.

The program was previously thought to be relatively safe from such suits because only those with on-campus connections can use the program. The recording industry has not disclosed how it accessed the network.

Out-of-court settlements reached in early May for a previous round of suits ranged from $12,000 to $17,000, though many previous cases were settled for about $3,000.

Brandeis network use policy prohibits sharing copyrighted files, but enforcement of that policy is not common. Library and Technology Services often takes action against users who use an abnormally high amount of bandwidth, however, and that bandwidth is almost always being used for file-sharing programs.

"It is quite typical for the top 50 users [of bandwidth] to consume 50 percent of the total network bandwidth through the use of [peer-to-peer] programs," the LTS Web site reports.

Despite the prevalence of lawsuits, including the first round of i2hub-related suits that were filed against 405 students last April, usage of such file-sharing utilities has been on the rise.

"This is an emerging epidemic," RIAA President Cary Sherman told The Washington Post in April. "We cannot allow a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules do not apply."

A study by research group BigChampagne found that the average number of file-sharers on the Internet at any given time has nearly tripled in the past three years, increasing from $3.1 million in June 2003 to $8.63 million in June 2005.

And a separate survey by the Business Software Alliance revealed that while 70 percent of students were less likely to download files because of recent media reports and industry legal action, over half still believed that it was OK to swap the copyrighted digital contents of their computer hard drives.

But reactions to the lawsuits suggest that these upward trends are not likely to reverse direction.

Lauren Becker '08 began downloading files from the Internet this summer using the peer-to-peer software LimeWire, which does not operate on the Internet2 network. She said she used the program selectively, choosing mainly hard-to-find song remixes and albums that she couldn't obtain on CD.

"There were select songs [that I wanted where] I just didn't want to have to pay for the whole CD because that is ridiculous if you just want that one song," she said.

Becker is undeterred by the possibility of being sued and said the repeated actions of the industry will accomplish little.

"I would not be focusing on 'uh-oh, somebody's downloading music'," she said. "I don't even pay attention to [the lawsuits] ... that doesn't even phase me anymore."

Amanda Kelly '08, who shares music with Apple's iTunes software over the campus network, said she is wary of the economic consequences of file sharing.

"I know someone who [doesn't share the music of] an a cappella group just because that group doesn't get any funding so sharing it would be a disadvantage for the group itself," she said.

Sitting in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium, Edlyn Hernandez '06 and Mara Minsia '06 weighed similar concerns about file sharing. Neither shares their music online.

"I just dislike [illegal downloading] because it's ruining the artists who are working behind it, who are printing the [album covers], everything," Hernandez said.

Minsia countered, arguing that while file-sharing may hurt well-known artists, it can help new groups who don't yet have name recognition.

"You'll spend 15 dollars on that new Jay Z CD because you know Jay Z's music is great, but maybe on that new artist that you haven't heard of you might not want to spend 15 dollars," she said.

But both agreed that fee-based download services such as iTunes and Napster might strike a satisfactory balance between individuals eager to obtain digital media and the artists who produce it-particularly those who have not reached a mainstream audience.

But users of pay services still download only a fraction of the number of files distributed through free networks.

In an interview with The Washington Post, BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland called the fee-based market "still quite fledgling," estimating that even if every user of the peer-to-peer software KaZaa were to switch to iTunes, the shift would represent a "small fraction of a percent" because of the huge number of people using other file-sharing software.