The Recording Industry Association of America’s first wave of legal threats toward alleged music pirates at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln didn’t quite go as planned.

Earlier this month, the RIAA announced it was preparing to sue 400 college students across the country, three dozen of them from UNL, for illegal file-sharing.

Universities were asked to identify their guilty students based on  RIAA lists of computers known to have visited file-sharing sites.

But UNL officials have hit a surprising snag.

Thanks to a long-standing practice of storing computer records for just 31 days, the university was able to identify only 13 of the 36 students the RIAA wants to punish.

The names of the remaining 23 will never be known, UNL network security analyst Zac Reimer said.

That lucky group, then, is all but certain to walk away scot-free from the billion-dollar recording industry’s threats.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Reimer said matter of factly.

How UNL’s policy works: Almost every time someone on campus turns on his or her computer, that computer is assigned a new Internet protocol address, an ID of sorts that allows the RIAA to track a user’s online activity.

UNL hangs onto records of the IP addresses for about a month, then discards them.

That means if the RIAA wants to punish a UNL student who pirated songs, say, last November, it’s simply out of luck, assuming the student turned his or her computer off at least once.

It also means UNL’s records-disposal policy has had the unintentional effect of protecting most of its offending students.

“We can’t recreate data that we don’t have any more,” UNL spokeswoman Kelly Bartling said. “It’s impossible to find (the last 23).”

No plans are in the works to change the 31-day policy, Reimer said. That’s partly because he suspects the RIAA will become more timely with its legal actions, asking schools to identify students within the same month the file-sharing occurred.

In that case, UNL can catch music pirates no matter how many times they turn their computers on and off.

“We’ve never had any problems with the 31 days,” Reimer said.

UNL will do its best to cooperate with the RIAA, Reimer added — unlike the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which recently announced it would not identify any of its accused students without a subpoena.

Nevertheless, RIAA spokeswoman Jenni Engebretsen criticized UNL for not saving computer records for a longer time.

“Reasonable data retention policies are essential,” she said. “One would think universities would understand the need to retain these records.”

The RIAA is processing responses from the 13 students UNL was able to find, Engebretsen said, so it’s not yet known whether they’ll choose to settle or fight the industry in court.

UNL’s inability to name all its offending students was an unpleasant surprise to the RIAA. Engebretsen called the school’s records policy inconsistent with those at other universities.

Further, she vowed legal action against file-sharers will continue despite technological barriers like this one.

“As piracy evolves, so too do our efforts.”

Reach Melissa Lee at 473-2682 or mlee@journalstar.com.