The Recording Industry Association of America released a new wave of lawsuits Wednesday against 745 individuals at 17 colleges, including Boston University – marking the third series of suits to hit the Charles River Campus within a year.

The lawsuit, which represents multiple major record companies, is a continuation from its most recent action against several college students filed Sept. 29.

“We haven’t seen [Wednesday’s lawsuit],” BU spokesman Colin Riley said. “I don’t know how many [BU students] that would include.”

Although the lawsuit has not been presented to the university, Associate General Counsel Crystal Talley said BU should receive it and begin notifying students within a week.

Because the RIAA cannot detect the individuals’ identity who are downloading music from peer to peer networks, they use a “John Doe” litigation method, according to the RIAA.

The John Doe litigation identifies an Internet Protocol address in place of a name until the name of the individual is discovered. If subpoenaed, the university will disclose the identities of BU students named in the suit to the RIAA.

One month ago, BU was subpoenaed to release the identities of BU students based on their IP addresses as a result of the same method. The RIAA continues to use a method where they subpoena the Internet Service Provider into giving them the name of the person with the IP address they detected, according to an RIAA statement.

In April, the RIAA filed 400 lawsuits at 18 colleges using the same Internet Service Provider procedure.

College of Arts and Sciences junior Catherine Smith-Howe said she discovered she was sued last June by the RIAA after receiving notification from BU.

“I doubt [this lawsuit] will be any different,” she said. “They seem to have a formula down that is working for them. They’re just going to keep going after more people.”

However, even though the RIAA continues to sue students for file sharing, School of Hospitality Administration junior Kara Jansons said students have not reacted as a result.

“I don’t think that people really know what’s going on,” she said. “They know that kids are being sued for illegally downloading music, but they don’t really know how or why. A lot of people just assume that ‘It’s never going to happen to me, so why should I stop?'”

Jansons said she was sued by the RIAA in April and is still in the process of settling her suit.

Riley said BU is not going to change its procedure of responding to these suits regardless of how many students are named.

“Students need to make sure that they’re not engaging in misconduct,” he said, “because there are serious consequences. And this is just the latest example of it.”