As promised, the recording industry yesterday filed a new round of federal copyright infringement suits against unidentified college students across the country accused of illegally downloading music from the Internet.

At the same time, the motion picture industry began filing similar complaints to stop college students and others from downloading movies.

Four suits landed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, all sparse on details.

Two suits filed by music producers represented by the Recording Industry Association of America identified 31 defendants, presumably all students at Carnegie Mellon and Pitt, only as "John Does."

The movie industry also sued two local "John Does," although another suit did identify someone by name: Charles Jackson of Elm Avenue in Sharon.

According to the suit, Jackson illegally copied and distributed the movie "White Chicks."

Attorney James Corbelli, who filed the suit, said he couldn't comment, but the Motion Picture Association of America said it had tried to get Jackson to stop before resorting to a copyright suit.

Spokeswoman Kori Bernards said the industry has filed similar suits before, but "this is the first time we're naming people."

Last November, the MPAA announced that it was expanding its legal campaign against film piracy, contacting downloaders and asking them to settle with film companies. Those who refused are now being singled out in federal lawsuits like the one against Jackson.

The suits against John Does, meanwhile, are targeting college students identified only by their Internet user addresses on campus.

The recording and movie industries are working together, Bernards said, because they say they face similar issues of online theft.

"Our goal with these suits is to make people aware of the piracy epidemic across the country," she said. "They think they're anonymous but they're not. And they're stealing copyrighted material."

CMU and Pitt said yesterday they were awaiting subpoenas asking them to turn over the names of those involved. Both universities said they will cooperate.

The RIAA is specifically targeting those who share music files on i2hub, a file-trading service on the Internet2 network created by universities for academic research. The network is unavailable to the public.

Internet2 allows users to download files at high speed -- about 20 seconds for a song and five minutes for a movie. RIAA President Cary Sherman said Tuesday that Internet2 has been "hijacked for illegal purposes" on college campuses.

Sherman said the lawsuits are targeting the most egregious users of i2hub at 18 universities.