The Recording Industry Association of America filed suit earlier this month against 405 students from 18 universities for illegally sharing files over the emerging Internet2 network.

ISU students, however, have escaped the latest round of lawsuits

Iowa State was not included on the list, although it could be on the confidential list of 140 other schools whose students are not being sued but have had letters sent to their presidents informing them of illegal file-sharing activity on campus.

RIAA President Cary Sherman says he believes the lawsuits are justified and will help curb file-sharing.

“A lot of our efforts are designed to educate the public, and students in particular, that file-sharing without permission is illegal and risky,” Sherman says. “These lawsuits are getting a lot of publicity, which means that the message will get out far and wide.”

Internet2 is a specialized network that connects more than 200 U.S. campuses at extremely high speeds. According to the AIT Web site, Iowa State is connected to the network, although access is not available to the average student.

The program targeted in the lawsuits is i2hub, which is comparable to the file-sharing program KaZaA on steroids — songs can be downloaded in seconds. According to the i2hub Web site, Iowa State is not part of its network of campuses.

“Internet2 is an amazing network that holds great promise. We can’t let it be hijacked for illegal purposes from the outset. The use of i2hub for music piracy on Internet2 is something that needs to be addressed immediately, before bad habits take hold,” Sherman says.

Kim Smith, professor of journalism and communication, says Internet music will bring about great changes in the music industry, and as legitimate online music services pick up, the quality of music will improve.

“Number one, I think more and more artists will be their own distributors,” Smith says. “You can see that happening now — what the Internet does for all of us is it makes us producers and distributors of information.”

Smith says he believes the lawsuits are legal, but are poor business decisions.

“Under the law, they are justified … are they justified in doing it from a business point of view? No, I don’t think so,” Smith says. “I think they’re being very shortsighted, given that they are creating a lot of negative publicity for themselves and they’re directly going after those most likely to buy their product. The industry needs to take a look at how they’re thinking about this.”

All of the lawsuits the RIAA has filed against individuals have been settled out of court. Kenneth Sturgis, senior in psychology, says he believes the legality of file-sharing is still undetermined, and the RIAA is not justified in filing suit until there’s an actual court ruling on the issue.

“It actually has to come to trial,” Sturgis says. “For me, file-sharing is finding a lot of stuff that’s not really out there [on DVD], such as Mystery Science Theater 3000 … but if there’s someone who’s just downloading huge amounts of files protected by intellectual property rights, until it comes to trial, they can still do that.”

Despite such criticisms, Sherman says he thinks filing suit against file-sharers is the best action the RIAA can take.

“Respecting the property rights of creators is the key, and that’s why we’ve taken the steps we have,” he says.