Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette
	Alvin Fong in his Carnegie Mellon dorm room yesterday -- "I'm doing my best to try and not think about [the possible lawsuit]. It's hard. It was like my life exploded."

Alvin Fong is feeling all the stresses one normally experiences in the week before final exams at Carnegie Mellon University -- plus one extremely unusual one.

He could be facing a lawsuit by the $12-billion recording industry.

Yet unlike most of 400-plus college students nationally who are possible targets in this latest battle over Internet copyright protection, Fong and some of his peers have resolved not to worry in isolation.

They formed a campus support group of sorts to share information, resources and, assuming they find a lawyer, a little advice on how to confront a deep-pocketed legal foe.

The accused are listed only as "John Doe" in federal lawsuits alleging music piracy that were filed around the nation April 13. The industry has only the students' Internet protocol addresses and plans to subpoena schools for their names.

	Online Graphic: File sharing at a glance

Adding to the uncertainty is that industry lawyers asked some schools, including Carnegie Mellon, for more names than they intend to sue -- at least in this round.

Fong, 18, a freshman information systems major from Danbury, Conn., says he is convinced that he will be sued.

He learned he was a possible target while checking e-mail on campus a few weeks back. Waiting among notes from family and friends, he said, was a message from Carnegie Mellon telling him of an impending subpoena and reminding him that his entire recording collection must be preserved as evidence.

"My first thought was 'Oh my God. What am I going to do?' I was also pretty angry," said Fong, who denies he pirated any music. "I'm doing my best to try and not think about it. It's hard. It was like my life exploded."

He said the group is seeking a reasonable middle ground with the recording industry and believes those guilty should face Internet access restrictions and community service, not stiff fines. Settlements have averaged about $4,000, observers say, but Fong says he's heard of penalties as high as $17,000.

"I have no idea how I would pay that amount," he said.

"Most of us are just trying to make ends meets," he said. "We pay for college by working part time or in the summer, and now this is jeopardizing some of our college educations."

He said too many students, fearful of the Recording Industry Association of America -- called RIAA -- agreed to settlements costing thousands of dollars without fully understanding their rights.

The RIAA says the accused are egregious violators, averaging thousands of shared songs, but Fong said he doesn't understand the basis for accusations against him that apparently involve his computer use on March 18. Fong said his only activity that day was related to his studies.

"I may have downloaded a few songs, cut them up and used them as sound [to accompany] animation," he said.

The association, representing major labels, says piracy is largely why the industry's retail value dropped from $14.5 billion in 1999 to $12.1 billion last year, or 172 million fewer CDs.

"This is not a victimless crime," said Jonathan Lamy, spokesman for the Washington, D.C., group. "Recording companies have laid off tens of thousand of employees. Half the songwriters in Nashville are no longer in the business of writing songs because they cannot make a living.

"Record stores, particularly around college campuses, are closing," he said.

Fong's support group wants to attract not only the 25 students being sued at Carnegie Mellon but also those at other schools, including 16 defendants at the University of Pittsburgh. The group can be reached by contacting him at afong@andrew.cmu.edu, Fong said.

Eighteen schools face subpoenas, ranging geographically from Harvard University to Ohio State University to the University of California at Berkeley.

Fong said the group was briefed Sunday by a university representative and also has heard from organizations including the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties organization that has criticized the recording industry lawsuits.

The RIAA is seeking those it alleges shared music files on i2hub, a file-trading service on Internet2, which was developed by universities for academic research. It is generally unavailable to the public.

Internet2 lets people download files at rapid speed -- 20 seconds or so for a song and five minutes for a movie.

Industry officials say the 405 defendants distributed more than 930,000 songs. The average number of files shared was more than 2,300, or close to 175 CDs. Some shared up to 13,600 mp3, or music, files and 72,700 total files, including audio, software and video.

Some siding with the industry call the lawsuits a reasonable way to combat lost business. But they have not been playing well on campuses.

In an editorial titled "Free the Music," the student newspaper at Columbia University said the recording industry was "needlessly suing average Americans" and suggested it instead should adapt to life in the digital age.

Wendy Seltzer, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said her group believes that offering more attractive pay music services makes better sense than lawsuits. But that may be of little consolation to those being sued.

"The way the law is right now, most people end up settling, and that's going to be best for them," she said. "It's expensive for them to fight a copyright case."