Calling it a "response to an emerging epidemic of music theft" the Recording Industry Association of America, better known as the RIAA, announced it would file copyright infringement lawsuits against 405 students on 18 different campuses across the United States today.

The lawsuit differs from earlier RIAA legal actions against file swappers because it focuses on users of Internet2, a high speed wide area network used by universities to research next generation Internet applications. The network was used to set the current world record for data transfer last year, and is run by a non-profit consortium of 200 schools in concert with companies such as Intel, Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems.

The RIAA claims that a single P2P file sharing system, called i2hub, is responsible for turning the incredibly fast network into a hotbed of audio file swapping between students "because they mistakenly believe their illegal file-sharing activities can't be detected in the closed environment of the Internet2 network."