The 220 students caught last week trading copyrighted material received a slap on the wrist from the Office of Judicial Affairs after promising not to share illegal material again.

Barbara Copland, associate director of Judicial Affairs, said the students' case was examined and decided last week because those involved were anxious to get their Internet connections back. Also, the university did not want to be involved in any lawsuits, she added.

The students were not officially charged or sanctioned, Karen Feldbaum, associate director of Judicial Affairs, said. Feldbaum said Judicial Affairs decided to deal with the students as if they received an off-campus violation, though all of the students caught live on campus. This was due to the time of year and the number of cases involved all across the university system, she said.

Typically, on-campus violations are treated more severely than off-campus incidents.

Judicial Affairs will keep a record of the incident that notes the students were spoken to about the code of conduct violation, Feldbaum said, but it was not an official warning.

"Some may see it that they are getting a break," she said. "And they are."

Having students lose dorm Internet connections so close to finals is not what Judicial Affairs wants, she said.

Usually the regular Judicial Affairs process takes longer than this case did, sometimes weeks, she said.

Joe Baughman (freshman-electrical engineering) said he lost his Internet connection for seven or eight days. After receiving the notice explaining his violation, Baughman was required to go to the Computer Building to sign a document agreeing to delete all illegal material from his computer, and that he will not download such files in the future.

Baughman said Judicial Affairs did not mention what penalties he would incur for additional code of conduct violations, except they would be "harsher: up to and including expulsion and anything the courts can do, like fines and jail time."

Jason Steiner (freshman-aerospace engineering) said he had to sign the same paper.

Neither Judicial Affairs nor the Penn State Computer and Network Security Office checks to see if students did in fact delete the files, he said.

Earlier this week, Steiner said more than 1,000 people used the program Direct Connect to share copyrighted material. Security Operations and Services investigated those who were online the afternoon of April 14, and recorded which copyright-violating material students were sharing at the time.

Penn State does not refer students caught sharing copyrighted files to the recording industry or police, Copland said. Students are investigated by the university for code of conduct violations, she said, not for criminal activity.