SAN DIEGO -- The Recording Industry Association of America says it will file copyright infringement lawsuits Wednesday against 405 students at 18 colleges nationwide, including UC San Diego.

The lawsuits come in response to an emerging epidemic of music theft on a specialized, high-speed university computer network known as Internet2, RIAA officials said.

"By taking this initial action, we are putting students and administrators everywhere on notice that there are consequences for unlawful uses of this special network," said RIAA President Cary Sherman.

Along with UCSD, the lawsuits are expected to target students at the University of Southern California, UC Berkeley, Harvard University, Princeton University, Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lawsuits are also expected against students from Boston University, Columbia University, Drexel University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the University of Pittsburgh, according to the RIAA.

Combined, the students being sued have illegally distributed more than 1.5 million total files, including more than 930,000 songs, the RIAA alleges.

The RIAA, on behalf of the major record companies, said it chose to limit the number of lawsuits to 25 per school at this time, and that the lawsuits being filed this week are against some of the most egregious abusers of Internet2 technology.

The association added that it has evidence of "i2hub" infringement at another 140 schools in 41 states.

Although those schools were not included in the initial round of lawsuits, letters were being sent to each university president alerting them to the illegal activity, RIAA officials said.

"We think that any policymaker or campus administrator would be outraged to learn that a special, high-speed Internet technology designed for academic research has been hijacked for illegal purposes," Sherman said.

Separately, the Motion Picture Association of America Tuesday announced several lawsuits against "John Does" accused of Internet theft on college campuses, an emerging problem due to the availability of advanced shared networks like Internet2.