While universities are still caught in the middle of the Recording Industry Association of America’s nearly year-long effort to punish music piracy on campuses across the country, some students are beginning to strike back against the RIAA with legal investigations of their own.

A Harvard law class is currently exploring the legal indications for universities caught between a responsibility to protect their file-sharing students and their accountability to an industry crusading to make examples out of students violating piracy laws.

Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson’s class has been working to formulate arguments on the schools’ behalf.

The RIAA started sending letters to university administrators in February 2007, requesting they forward the settlement letters to the file-sharing students, according to the RIAA’s website.

Nineteen Massachusetts Institute of Technology students received letters in the latest round of letters this year.

When the RIAA tracks down a file-sharing student, it files a “John Doe” lawsuit and then tries to use the court’s discovery process to find out who uses a certain IP address, said Nesson. The RIAA get permission to subpoena a university with access to IP-address information to find out individual student names.

Nesson said the lawsuits are unfair fights.

“Students are completely overwhelmed by the legal apparatus behind the enforcement that the RIAA is bringing to bear,” he said.

He said schools should not necessarily protect their students, but act in their own interest by staying neutral in the RIAA’s campaign. …