More will follow, warns the RIAA's Sherman. "We've started this as an education campaign, and now we're beginning to do searches. At some point after that we will be more aggressive in terms of enforcement," he says.

Some would say they've been plenty aggressive already. In January, a federal judge in Washington ordered Verizon Communications to reveal to the RIAA the identity of an Internet subscriber suspected of illegally exchanging copyrighted files - a huge blow for critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a controversial law passed in1998 that gave copyright holders greater power in pursuing copyright infringement cases. Meanwhile, the RIAA has been lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would allow copyright holders to disable file-sharing operations using technical means such as file-blocking or even, critics contend, hacking.

None of this has made the association exactly popular. But it's not only fringe protesters and Web vandals who have been put off by the RIAA's approach. Some members of the university community bristle at the way the RIAA is interpreting a clause in the DMCA that protects Internet service providers from liability if their service is used to share files illegally. This clause is thought by many to exist because of the legal difference between selling Internet access to individuals for their own personal use and giving them a computer and Internet connection to use for work. Universities believe that the safe harbor includes them because they function as ISPs, where students plug their own computers into university networks for Internet access.

"I think that their tactics have been rather heavy-handed," says Paul Morris, CIO of Drake University, who was surprised to learn that Drake's security policy was cited as a model in the letter the entertainment industry sent to universities. "I don't see that the RIAA has any legal basis to take action against universities. They do have a strong ethical case, and I think if they approached this as an ethical issue rather than a legal one, universities might be more receptive."

The industry's vigilance, however, should come as no surprise. The stakes are high. "They're so afraid of losing control of the revenue stream from copyrighted files that for them the sky is falling," says Evan Bauer, a principal research fellow at the Robert Frances Group and former CTO for global infrastructure at Credit Suisse First Boston. "It's good for them if they can create blind panic, especially in the legal department."