According to a recent report by RIAA and MPAA, both groups will file separate lawsuits against individuals who have committed copy infringement, apparently over the new Internet standard – Internet2, using their school networks. RIAA said it would file 405 lawsuits against college students for allegedly committing the crime. MPAA will also sue college students, but has not reported the exact figure thus far.

"The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America on Wednesday separately will file lawsuits against college students that are allegedly using an Internet2 peer-to-peer service for illegal file trading.

The RIAA will file copyright infringement lawsuits against 405 college students, while the MPAA will do the same against an undisclosed number of college students. Both groups are targeting college students who have allegedly used their schools' high-speed Internet2 networks to trade files illegally using the Internet2 P-to-P service called i2hub, the trade groups announced separately this week.

In addition, the MPAA says it will also name defendants in a number of lawsuits it filed previously against unnamed P-to-P users.

The students in the RIAA lawsuits, from 18 colleges across the U.S., used i2hub to share a total of 1.5 million files, the "overwhelming majority" of those files copyrighted, according to Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA.

On Monday, at 4:23 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, there were 7070 users connected to i2hub sharing 99.2TB of files, according to the MPAA. "Ninety-nine terabytes is enough storage space to hold all the movies that are available in a local Blockbuster store, yet people are swapping those movies entirely free," says Dan Glickman, the MPAA's president and chief executive.

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.

"I2hub has, for some reason, been thought to be a safe zone to engage in illegal activity," Sherman says during a press conference. "What we wanted to do is puncture that misconception and let people know that when you are on the Internet there's really no such thing as a safe zone for lawlessness."

I2hub issued a statement Tuesday, saying its creators do not condone copyright infringement. "Students across the globe utilize i2hub for many reasons--help on homework, exam reviews, sharing ideas, and some have even found their significant other through the network," says the statement, e-mailed by Wayne Chang, chief executive officer of The i2hub Organization."

Full Story @ PC World