The Recording Industry Association of America sent another round of pre-litigation settlement letters to 18 Penn students last week.
The RIAA - the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry - sent 569 letters to 26 institutions in total, making this the largest wave of letters since its campaign targeting college students launched in February 2007.
The RIAA has been focusing on curbing illegal downloading on college networks, and as of now, 114 Penn students have received pre-litigation letters, according to an RIAA spokeswoman.
To avoid facing a federal lawsuit for copyright infringement, 37 of these students have settled, agreeing to pay fees between $3,000 and $4,000.
The remainder of the cases are "still pending," said the RIAA spokeswoman.
The students who received letters last week were given 20 days to respond to the RIAA.
If students do not settle, the RIAA will subpoena the college to release the names of the students to take further legal action.
To catch student offenders, the RIAA monitors file-sharing sites and tracks downloads to individual IP addresses.
The RIAA then requests that universities forward notifications of copyright infringement to the corresponding network users, a request with which Penn - but not all colleges - complies.
With regard to the most recent wave of notifications, the University will, as has been the practice for the past year, "continue to forward the letters as soon as we receive them from the RIAA," Information Security Specialist John Lupton wrote in an e-mail.
According to Lupton, the Office of General Counsel "decided that the letters should be forwarded to the person whom our records indicate was using the IP address at the date and time specified in the notice, whether that person be a student or employee."
Other institutions have raised questions about the RIAA's method of reaching students.
As of now, only two universities - Marshall University in West Virginia and the University of Oregon - have contested RIAA subpoenas.
Penn students have been targeted in five waves of pre-litigation letters over the past year.
Seventeen Penn students received letters last April, 31 in September, 16 in November, 32 in March and 18 this past week.
