Universal goes back to school in effort to stem file swapping.

Universal Studios and Universal Music Group are trying to give universities an extra shove in cracking down on illegal file swappers by promoting a technology they say will make it easier for colleges to track down violators.

But universities are resisting, saying the new system could ensnare innocent students.

The software program, co-developed when the companies were corporate siblings, is being marketed as a time-and-money-saver that automates the process of locating and punishing students who have downloaded illegal files.

(Universal Studios' film and theme park operations were among the assets purchased by General Electric Co.'s NBC unit. Vivendi Universal retains the music division.)

Although the companies have not officially rolled out the software, known as the automated copyright notice system, university officials are worried that it does not give students a chance to explain the illicit files before shutting down Internet access.

Jim Davis, associate vice chancellor for information technology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the school chose to implement its own system in late April because it felt Universal's system could unfairly target students.

"Their system strives to automate more than we did," Davis said. "We left manual some steps that are key to understanding the situation so we don't go after a student wrongly."

Steven Fitzgerald, chief technology officer at California State University, Northridge, said he would also be cautious about implementing a mostly automated system.

"I'm very concerned about having an automated process, because you don't know how they determine the IP address they got on their list," Fitzgerald said.

Officials at Universal Studios and Universal Music Group either did not return calls or would not comment.

Universities regularly get takedown notices from copyright holders that include the title of an illegal file and an Internet Protocol address, Davis said.

The university must then locate the illegal file on a computer, often a complicated process of matching network connections and machines. Typically, a school then determines whether illegal file-swapping occurred and will then shut down Internet access to that computer. The student must talk with administrators before access is restored.

ACNS automates much of the process, including an option to block the user's access to the Internet before an administrator manually validates the shut-off.

Although the software is flexible, for it to be useful it must make assumptions about the guilt of the user, said Chris Hoofnagle, deputy counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center in Washington.

"The downside is that there's no way to determine if a student is actually engaged in infringement," he said. "There's no due process."

The Recording Industry Association of America blames illegal downloading for a drop in CD sales to $11.2 billion in 2003 from $13.2 billion in 2000. For movies, the practice isn't yet as widespread.

At this early stage, the RIAA isn't officially involved in the Universal technology, but it is supportive.

"It's encouraging to see that individual copyright owners are undertaking initiatives to make the notification process easier," said Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman.

Other record companies said they were aware of the technology but hadn't been approached by the Universal companies.

Universities are considered a hotbed of this illegal file swapping. "It's a factor of bandwidth and idleness," Hoofnagle said. "There are students with lots of free time."