Four university students have reached settlements in music piracy lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America.

The RIAA sued the four students separately in April. The music industry association accused them of sharing copyright material and operating on-campus, Napster-like file-swapping services designed to search for music on computers connected to school networks.

Under the terms of the settlements this week, the students have agreed to pay fines, the RIAA announced Friday.

Two students are at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Jesse Jordan agreed to pay $12,000 and Aaron Sherman, $17,000. Princeton University's Daniel Peng and Michigan Technological University's Joseph Nievelt will pay the RIAA $15,000 each.

The RIAA will collect those amounts in annual increments between 2003 and 2006. The students are also expected to disable the Web sites that allowed campus users to download songs and files from school network computers.

The RIAA said that the trade group was pleased that the cases, first made public in early April, were settled quickly.

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