University of Nebraska-Lincoln students have been a bit too download-happy lately, drawing the nation’s third-highest number of copyright complaints from the recording industry so far this academic year.

How’d the campus react to that news?

With some finger-wagging, some shoulder-shrugging and, well… some more downloading.

“It isn’t going to go away,” sighed Kent Hendrickson, associate vice chancellor for Information Services. He and his team monitor complaints about students’ illegal file-sharing and, in a handful of cases, dish out punishments to repeat offenders.

“All I can say is we will do better. We’ll try to do a better job.”

In light of UNL’s No. 3 ranking for Recording Industry Association of America complaints — with 1,002 this year versus just 421 last year — Hendrickson is reminding students of campus policy, which explicitly prohibits illegal downloading.

Students are allowed two strikes, handed down in e-mail warnings, before being blocked from the campus network.

In rare instances, the RIAA may pursue legal action, as it did against one UNL student in 2005.

Now, no immediate action against offending students is planned, Hendrickson said, though the campus “is looking into the situation.”

Still, he admitted, curbing file-sharing among young people, who download songs and movies by the thousand, seems a near-impossible task.

Indeed, Wesleyan sophomore Natalie Olson — on the UNL campus Wednesday specifically to download music, since Wesleyan’s network blocks file-sharing — said RIAA crackdowns didn’t worry her.

“I still buy concert tickets. I still buy CDs. So I contribute,” Olson, an accounting and political science major, said as she downloaded albums by Gym Class Heroes and Gwen Stefani.

“Plus, I watch ‘Cribs.’ I know (music artists) don’t need the money.”

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