About 220 Penn State students were caught last week illegally sharing files online and will have their cases decided before Judicial Affairs, university officials said.

The students were using direct connect file sharing methods, which allowed them to create a network and download material without the downloads counting toward the students' university bandwidth limits officials said.

About 175 of those caught last Monday were from the University Park campus, Clifford Rodack, network administrator for residence halls, said.

He added direct connect is a way for people to find out what other files people have on their computers. Once students get the internet protocol (IP) address of someone with a file they want, they connect locally to that person and download the file. This method does not count against the university bandwidth limits of 1.5 gigabytes for uploading and 1.5 gigabytes for downloading each week, he said.

Those caught had their dorm room Internet connections shut off immediately and received e-mail from the Security Operations and Services (SOS) office concerning what happened. It said their access was shut off for "processing and distributing copyrighted materials."

The students are still able to use computer labs, but dorm connections are disabled until the case is decided before Judicial Affairs.

The students should not be expelled from the university when they go before Judicial Affairs, Rodack said. Judicial Affairs would most likely deal with all the cases at once since there are so many students involved, he added.

"Lots of universities are getting instances like this. It was a matter of time before it hit Penn State," Rodack said.

Judicial Affairs is working with the Recording Industry Association of America and is following the Digital Millennium Copyright Act closely, Rodack said. Federal law mandates Internet service providers shut off the connection until the complaint is resolved.

Josh Grodin (freshman-mechanical engineering), whose connection was shut down last Monday, said everyone connected to the network that night was caught.

"I wasn't even downloading anything or sharing at the time, I was just connected. They took a snapshot of what I was sharing at the time," he said.

Jason Steiner (freshman-aerospace engineering) was also among those on the network. "I was kind of surprised at being caught," he said. "I was sitting there online and all of a sudden I wasn't, with no idea why."

Rodack said the university informs students about illegal file sharing with posters, Web sites such as Rescom's and by sending e-mails, like the one sent in March to all students in dorms from Rodney Erickson, Penn State executive vice president and provost.

Erickson's letter detailed federal punishments for illegal copying. If more than $1,000 worth of illegally obtained material is found, criminal penalties may include fines up to $250,000 and up to 10 years in prison for "flagrant cases of infringement."

Rodack said it can take only one complaint against a student before dorm Internet connection is shut down and he or she is investigated. "We're not trying to get students in trouble," Rodack said. However, he said students need to know the law and what can happen to them if they are caught.