RIAA and MPAA sue college students for illegal file trading on Internet2

RIAA and MPAA both said that they will file lawsuits against students that illegally share files through p2p networks on Internet2. RIAA said it will sue 405 college students from 18 different colleges, and the MPAA will do the same against an undisclosed number of college students.

Both associations target college students that share files through their school's high-speed Internet2 networks. The RIAA lawsuits will hit users that shared a total of 1.5 million files through i2hub.

College students seemed to believe they were shielded from RIAA lawsuits by trading music files on the closed Internet2 network, built by a consortium of universities to aid with university research, Sherman says. The RIAA limited this round of lawsuits to no more than 25 students at any one university, but the two trade groups have evidence of copyright infringement using i2hub at 140 colleges in 41 states, he adds.

Since September 2003 RIAA has filed more than 9000 lawsuits against p2p users. More info about the new suits from RIAA and MPAA at PC World