The Recording Industry Association of America announced on Wednesday that it plans to file copyright infringement lawsuits against 405 students at 18 universities across the country in its most recent crackdown on illegal file sharing.

The latest round of suits, which are not directed at any Georgetown network users, specifically targeted students downloading music files from Internet2, an advanced high-speed network between certain colleges and universities. The network was created for academic purposes, but has been used increasingly by students to rapidly download music and movie files.

“This special, high-speed Internet technology designed for important academic research has been hijacked for illegal purposes,” RIAA President Cary Sherman said Thursday in an online chat with college newspaper editors. “Students who choose to engage in this illegal behavior should know that they are not anonymous.”

The exact charge against the students is direct copyright infringement, which carries a minimum penalty of $750 per work infringed. The RIAA most often settles suits for between $3500 and $4500, however.

Sherman said that the RIAA chose to file lawsuits only in the most egregious instances of file downloading. One student who became a target of the RIAA’s lawsuits had downloaded over 13,000 mp3 files using Internet2.

The RIAA also said it had collected evidence of illegal file downloading at 140 other schools and intends to send letters to their presidents alerting them to the illegal activity.

Sherman said that students can expect the RIAA to file more lawsuits of the same nature in the future, though he said that these lawsuits would most likely address new infringements and not those currently under scrutiny.

“People who continue to engage in illegal uploading and downloading after they’ve learned that the use of . Internet2 for this purpose is illegal are appropriate targets in future rounds,” Sherman said.

Georgetown University is not a contributing institution to the Internet2 network. But Georgetown Law Center Professor Julie Cohen said that the RIAA has not exhausted its lawsuits against students who download from conventional Internet services.

“They have various tools to trace files back to IP addresses,” Cohen said. She also said that while most service providers will not provide the RIAA with its customers’ personal information without a subpoena, the RIAA can file “John Doe” lawsuits to obtain the information.

Cohen said that it is Georgetown’s policy not to release the personal information of students using its Internet services without a subpoena.

While Wednesday’s lawsuits mark a shift to new types of targets for the RIAA, the organization may still choose to sue students who download music from sources other than Internet2, as it has done in the past.

Cohen said that any Georgetown student sued by the RIAA should know that there are resources available on campus. The university has established a task force for dealing with such suits against students. She also suggested that targeted students contact the university counsel’s office.

Amid the protests generated among students by the RIAA’s lawsuit campaign, Sherman maintains that he has the interests of musicians and their audience at heart.

“The bottom line is that we all have something in common – a love of music,” Sherman said. “Respecting the property rights of creators is the key, and that’s why we’ve taken the steps we have.”