Penn State may have reversed its unofficial policy of not monitoring content when it busted 220 file-sharing students last week.

For months, administrators have said they would not examine specific content to catch students who are illegally sharing music files. But Michael O'Connor, Undergraduate Student Government (USG) information technology director, said the university violated this unofficial policy when it used a software program to catch the students and shut down their dorm network connections.

"If they're not planning on abiding by the policy, they should plan on telling students that," O'Connor said.

Russell Vaught, associate vice provost of Information Technology Services, said the university's position was not violated when officials used the program Direct Connect, a program anyone else could use, to catch the students.

Vaught compared the situation to a thief who advertises on his front door that he has stolen property.

"It's the difference between me peeking in your window [or] you putting a sign on your house ... that says 'Hey, we've got stuff in here. If you want it, come on in,' " Vaught said. "We're required by both university policy and the law to respond to a complaint, and that's what we did."

Rodney Erickson, executive vice president and provost, said officials did not examine content being transmitted through the network, but determined that the students were obviously sharing copyright-infringing material.

"There is a big difference between running the same program the students were using [in order] to identify violators and actually examining content as it flows over the network," Erickson said in an e-mail. "We simply connected to a public port on their computer just as any other person on the network could have done."

Erickson sent an e-mail to all students two weeks ago warning them about the consequences of illegal file sharing.

O'Connor said it does not matter that the university's position on monitoring content is not a mandated policy. He also said it does not matter if administrators originally meant they would monitor content through software available to everyone but not through internal means.

"The problem is not with the semantics of the policy but the spirit with which the policy was [formed]," O'Connor said.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently sued four college students for billions of dollars for the unauthorized copying of digital music.

"Which would Penn State students rather have? The RIAA sue them and haul them into court," Vaught said, or Penn State to "shut them down and tell them to take it off their computer?"

"We probably did them a favor by shutting them down," Vaught added.

USG is forming a committee to investigate the actions taken against the 220 students.

Town Sen. Kristen Kofmehl said USG needs to take a stance on the issue because it is a large one that affects most students.

"I would wager a guess that most students at this university have participated in file sharing of some sort," Kofmehl said.

Senate Vice President Erin Ferris said people should know why the 220 students are being held accountable while others aren't, and if more students will be caught.

Vaught said if this very serious situation gets out of control, U.S. Congress could impose equally serious penalties against students caught file sharing.