As many as four MSU students could be spending a minimum of $750 for each song they illegally downloaded on the university server.
The Recording Industry Association of America announced Thursday that 762 illegal file sharers were being sued for copyright infringement. About 30 of those are students from 26 universities across the country, including MSU.
The MSU students probably haven't heard word of the lawsuits yet because they haven't received their subpoenas, said David Gift, MSU vice provost for libraries, computing and technology.
Earlier this year, four MSU students settled lawsuits with RIAA for about $3,000 per person. Five others haven't decided whether to settle or take their cases to court.
All nine were cited this spring as part of a "John Doe" lawsuit of 69 unnamed university students.
The last round of lawsuits included more than 500 downloaders nationwide. RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said the number of lawsuits are increasing because the association is aggressively looking for copyright infringements.
"We are intentionally trying to expand the scope of this program," Lamy said.
The association looks for users of peer-to-peer file sharing programs such as KaZaA and LimeWire.
Since the last round of lawsuits, MSU's Internet policy has not changed at all, Gift said.
"We cooperate fully with both Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints and with subpoenas," he said.
Other schools have avoided lawsuits with subscriptions to music downloading programs.
Cornell University has had a few RIAA warnings, said Bill Steele, electronic communications editor of Cornell News Service. But this year, Cornell paid $30,000 for a year-long Napster subscription.
The total cost was $210,000, Steele said.
Students can download music to their computers, but files dissolve after a certain amount of time.
So far, there has been little response except from Macintosh computer users - the Napster platform isn't compatible with the computers or iPods.
Next year the charges at Cornell could be about $20 per student, a deep discount from the $10 per month the service normally charges, Steele said.
MSU's undergraduate student government has considered adding similar programs, said Patty Smith, ASMSU Student Assembly vice chairperson for student affairs.
"The idea has been tossed out, but there's nothing in the works at the moment," he said.
