The Recording Industry Association of America sent 17 pre-litigation letters to Penn yesterday in the hopes that the University will forward them on to students and staff members.
The letters threaten to sue recipients for copyright infringement if they do not settle with the organization within 20 days.
University Information Security Officer Dave Millar wrote in an e-mail that Penn had received the letters for 17 campus IP addresses and would distribute them to the corresponding students.
Other schools, like the University of Nebraska and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have been less willing.
Wisconsin refused to send the letters without a subpoena, while Nebraska billed the organization for the university's time.
But while the University will forward the e-mails, it will not release the identities of students unless it receives a subpoena from the RIAA, Millar said.
The move marks the third wave of pre-litigation letters sent by the RIAA since the end of February.
The letters are a new tactic being used by the RIAA, which most recently sued eight Penn students in the fall of 2005.
Instead of filing lawsuits against students, the organization has recently been sending letters addressed to specific IP addresses to university IT departments, which are then asked to match the IP addresses to individual students and forward the letters.
In total, the RIAA has sent over 1,200 letters to over 40 colleges across the country.
Each letter explains that, if the student does not settle the claim within 20 days, the RIAA will file a lawsuit in federal court. The minimum statutory damages for each copyrighted recording is $750.
Letters have not yet been distributed to students, and University officials did not say when students could expect to receive them.
A spokeswoman for the RIAA said the goal of its lawsuit campaign is to deter users of file sharing software from sharing copyrighted files. To this end, "anyone that's engaging in the activity [no matter how many files they share] is at risk of coming in contact with our enforcement action," she said.
The RIAA is planning to send out 400 of these letters per month.
Of the first batch of 400, sent Feb. 28, 198 students have settled, and RIAA officials said they are pleased by the response.
"We think people are taking note of this issue; conversations are being sparked across campuses that weren't seen before," the spokeswoman said.
Penn was one of 22 schools to receive letters in this most recent round. Ohio University received the most, with 50, and other university recipients include Cornell University, Brown University and the University of Michigan.
"As much as I hate these guys coming after students, downloading songs for free is illegal," said Wharton and Engineering junior Ravi Mishra, "It's one of those things where it's pretty hard to take sides."
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