Industry combating illegal infringement

   KRT-Despite efforts to educate students about copyright laws, illegal online music swapping persists on college campuses.
   In recent years, many universities have worked with the recording industry to combat piracy.
   But the Recording Industry Association of America says such efforts have not curbed the problem.
   The group has filed 261 lawsuits against people, alleging copyright infringement.
   Colleges have high-speed Internet access, so students can download songs in seconds rather than the 10 to 30 minutes with dial-up access.
   That makes computer labs and dorm rooms havens for online music file-sharing, which eats up the universities' bandwidth, or Internet capability, creating technical headaches.
   "We pay for our Internet access based on the amount of bandwidth we use," said Debbie Schroeder, assistant vice chancellor for information technology at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
   Universities also do not want illegal activity on campus, even though the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 limits universities' liability.
   To teach students about copyright rules, Nebraska and Iowa universities have used flyers, posters or computer messages.