Dozens of college students at schools in 11 states were sued Wednesday by the recording industry, which accused them of illegally sharing music through the Internet.

The Recording Industry Association of America praised efforts by universities to crack down on file sharing.

But network filters currently in place at other universities to stop illegal file sharing won’t be installed at Iowa State any time soon.

Doug Jacobson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, said a newer system developed by Audible Magic will not be brought to Iowa State.

“Iowa State has certainly taken the position of not putting any filtering in place,” Jacobson said.

Mike Bowman, assistant director of Academic Information Technologies, said the number of complaints the university has received from the Recording Industry Association of America is down from last year, but it is still receiving 20 to 25 complaints every month.

“The only real measurement we have in terms of activity is in the number of complaints we receive from the artists’ industries,” Bowman said.

The CopySense appliance from Audible Magic, which is in place in at least two U.S. universities, can be used to control data flow and monitor file sharing, according to the Audible Magic Web site, www.audiblemagic. com.

CopySense is a technology that allows selective content blocking, allowing the network administrator to separately block commercial music, commercial film and TV, electronic games and software or sexual content from peer-to-peer file transfers, according to the company’s Web site.

Bowman said Iowa State currently uses software that shapes data flow on the network.

“We are using a software package that can be used to set priorities on different types of trafficking. [File sharing] is given a lower priority than other network traffic,” Bowman said.

Audible Magic maintains a database of copyrighted material that is constantly updated so its filter will be able to correctly identify files that should not be passed freely, according to the company’s Web site.

“In layman’s terms, it would be the equivalent of listening in on the telephone for a particular song to be played,” Jacobson said.

Because Iowa State has such a large network and flow of data, the monitoring device would need to be large, he said, meaning it would also cost around $40,000.

Vignesh Vijayakumar, senior in computer engineering, helped run the search engine StrangeSearch before disabling it due to complaints of illegal file sharing.

“I took it upon myself to shut down StrangeSearch after a lot of people got caught,” Vijayakumar said.

More complaints are being received from the movie and software industries, Bowman said. However, he said he didn’t know if it was a result of increased file sharing or the industries gaining new technology to allow them to track illegal transfers.

Vijayakumar said he would not be worried if a system like this was installed on the ISU network. He said music is available legally for relatively little money online, but he said it wouldn’t be long before someone found a way around the CopySense appliance.

“I can’t wait for another week when someone will crack this. Barely weeks after Apple iTunes came out, it was cracked,” Vijayakumar said.

— The Associated Press contributed to this article.