EUGENE (AP) - Despite the increasingly real threat of lawsuits filed by the music industry, plus school disciplinary action, hundreds of University of Oregon students have hooked into the school's computer system to trade in pirated music, DVDs and games.

"It's there. It's easy. I don't really think so much about being sued for thousands or millions of dollars," one UO freshman who asked not to be identified told the Eugene Register-Guard.

University officials say they can no more stop all illegal file sharing and downloading than they can keep every student from drinking or taking drugs.

But by using a combination of technology and education, the university has crimped the flow of shared digital files. Two years ago the flood of file sharing on the university's computer network was so high it almost brought the entire system to a halt; now, such uses take up no more than 10 percent of the network's capacity.

Norm Myers, the computing services coordinator for the university housing office, said that still means something like 200 or more people do some kind of file sharing or downloading each day and maybe 1,000 each week. He estimates 70 percent of students in university housing have file-sharing or downloading programs.

That's despite the fact that the staff posted a warning flier over every network plug-in in all university housing advising students of the consequences of copyright violations. They also sent letters to students' homes over the summer.

Myers also said the university spent $50,000 to install equipment that allows him to identify file-sharing traffic on the network, give it a low priority and limit how much takes place. That at least keeps the network from being overwhelmed, as it was in the fall of 2001.

With the new equipment, downloading one song now takes 20 minutes or more instead of a couple of minutes. Officials had hoped that would discourage students accustomed to high-speed transfers.

But students said that's not a problem: they just line up the songs they want to download before going to bed, click the mouse and by morning they get the music.

Universities have been extremely vulnerable to file sharers because they have high-capacity networks that allow large digital files to move quickly, allowing music, videos and games to be downloaded in a few minutes. That's why they were among the first targets when the recording industry began fighting back by threatening to file lawsuits over the theft of copyrighted music.

The Recording Industry Association of America has sued or sent notices of pending legal action to more than 750 people, and more than 1,000 have signed affidavits promising to cease file sharing after learning their Internet records had been subpoenaed.

"A significant proportion of those we have sued so far have been college students," said Jonathan Lamy, communications director for the RIAA. He said college campuses remain a hot spot for music theft.