Four Ohio State students received a rude awakening Monday night when University Police barged into their residence hall rooms in search of evidence of an illegal file-sharing network.

“I thought they were coming in for a drug raid,” said Josh Cavinee, a sophomore in aeronautical engineering.

“They came in, patted me down and made me sit in the corner,” he said. “It’s a good thing we didn’t have drugs here.”

A group consisting of a computer crime specialist, a detective and a university police officer went to each four residence hall rooms Monday night – armed with search warrants – looking for the evidence.

Patrick Muckerman, a freshman in computer engineering, said he was asleep when the police came in searching for a computer.

They had first searched Muckerman’s roommate’s computer before they woke Muckerman from his sleep to examine his computer. But instead of finding one in Muckerman’s room, they found two.

One computer was used for the server program, Muckerman said. The server program allowed its users to propagate file searches. The other computer was used for school.

Along with the computer that was used for the server program, the police also confiscated a number of items from Cavinee’s room in Houck Hall including a computer, video game manuals, Blockbuster cards, DVD and video games, a DVD player, a power cord and a computer microphone.

“They basically took anything that was touching my computer,” said Eric Diamond, a freshman in electrical and computer engineering.

Neither Cavinee, Muckerman, Diamond or John Wieseman – a freshman in engineering – were arrested after the police confiscated equipment from their respective rooms.

At the moment, there is no certainty about the type of charges the students will face, said Ron Michalec, University Police Chief. The students could face charges from the U.S. District Court, the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas or both.

“We’re not sure where it will go at this point,” he said.

Police officials said they believe the four students were operating a program called Direct Connect Hub from which other students can make connections with other students to obtain copyrighted information. More than 3,000 on campus students participated in these activities.

According to University Police Detective Willis Amweg’s affidavit, at one point, “it was estimated that this file-sharing activity alone consumed over 10 percent of the university’s total network resources.”

According to Amweg’s affidavit, the student had broken two sections of the Ohio Revised Code.

The affidavit states “Section 291.04 ORC makes it a criminal offense for any person to knowingly gain access to any computer network beyond the scope of the express consent of the owner of the computer network.”

The network owner, OSU, does not allow for students to use ResNet, part of its computer network, for illegal purposes such as downloading copyrighted material. Anyone who downloads copyrighted material deviates from the expressed consent of Ohio State.

However, some of the students involved in downloading did not realize the illegality of their actions.

One of those students was Wieseman’s roommate.

“I knew it was probably illegal to download some of the copyrighted stuff, but non-copyrighted stuff was fair game,” said Alex Moore, a freshman in computer science engineering.

Moore said he had downloaded Direct Connect, although he did not host a hub.

“I didn’t think it was any different from KaZaA or any programs like that,” said Eric Obrynba, a sophomore in Spanish.

KaZaA is a file-sharing program that is similar to Napster – except that it has no central server.

In the other Ohio Revised Code section police believe students have disobeyed, it is a “criminal offense for any person, having devised a scheme to defraud, to knowingly disseminate, transmit or cause to be transmitted by means of a wire or telecommunications device any picture, sound or image with purpose to execute or otherwise further the scheme to defraud.”

Some of the suspects involved said they believe the police are taking the incident to an extreme.

“They’re blowing this way out of proportion, like it’s some black market we’re running,” Cavinee said.

However, recent court decisions have left such users liable for any copyrighted material they exchange on such systems. The students could face criminal and civil prosecution for Internet piracy if copyrighted material is determined to have been traded. The students could also face university discipline for violating university policies for computer use.

The police were collecting evidence during a three-month investigation, which had been conducted by both the campus police and the Office of Information Technology, Michalec said.

Amweg said in the affidavit, “On March 5, 2003 I was contacted by Mowgli Assor, an employee of OSU-OIT. He, and another individual, Robert Christ, an employee that works directly with the ResNet network, stated to me that an unknown number of individuals in the residence halls were involved in sharing copyrighted material over the university’s ResNet network.”

Through the collaborated effort of Christ, Mowgli and Willis, the three were able to pinpoint the computers used as hosts for Direct Connect.

The affidavit said one of the individuals had the responsibility of maintaining the membership lists, a list of frequently asked questions, a chat board and a tutorial section. The other individual’s task was “to keep track of all of the available computer files on the network and where they are located.”

Diamond said the entire situation was a simple misunderstanding.

“I wasn’t running a hub; they just think I was,” he said. “I used the system, and that is it.”

He has yet to get an indication as to what is going to happen to him and his equipment.

“I’ve tried calling the police to get more information, but nobody is getting back to me,” Diamond said.

– Jessica Herzfeld, Michelle Payne and Nick Reed contributed to this story