An eight-member panel will discuss file sharing and its effects on the music industry today, nine months after Ohio University garnered national attention for receiving more copyright complaints from the recording industry than any other U.S. university.

The panel — which includes musicians, record producers and the Recording Industry Association of America’s director of communications — will meet from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Baker University Center’s Grand Ballroom.

Brice Bible, the university’s chief information officer, began planning the panel after the RIAA cracked down on music sharers using university networks earlier this year.

When the RIAA announced in February it had sent more copyright complaints — 1,287 since the beginning of the academic year — to OU than any other university, officials responded by cautioning that the list wasn’t an indicator of rampant music sharing, only of RIAA complaints.

Those complaints, called Digital Millennium Copyright Act notices, treat the university as an Internet service provider and require OU to notify the user of its network responsible for the alleged violation of the complaint.

If the copyrighted file isn’t removed, the owner of the copyright can file a lawsuit.

When the university receives a DMCA complaint, it shuts down Internet access to the computer sharing the file until the file is removed and the person responsible pledges not to violate copyright law again or disputes the notice.

Although OU officials denied that the RIAA’s list or the publicity surrounding it influenced university policy, they increased punishments for students caught sharing copyrighted files less than a week after it was published.

First-time violators of the university’s copyright policy — part of the student code of conduct — can lose Internet access and be referred to University Judiciaries, OU’s student disciplinary body.

Today, the university uses a nearly $60,000 software and hardware package from Audible Magic to stop file sharing on its network and pays about $16,000 for support, maintenance and regular database updates that allow the system, called CopySense, to detect newly released music.

CopySense compares small portions of copyrighted music files to network traffic. If a match is found, an information technology employee reviews the information and decides whether to deny Internet access to the computer.

The RIAA is still sending DMCA notices, but has received more attention for its monthly waves of about 400 pre-litigation settlement letters, which allege that computers on college campuses nationwide are sharing music. Those letters demanded recipients pay an average of $3,500 to settle a potential copyright infringement lawsuit by multiple record companies.

OU received 100 such letters by mid-April, but has received none since it began using CopySense.

If students failed to respond or refused to pay, the letters warned, the recording industry would subpoena the university for the student’s name — the first step in filing a lawsuit.

By mid-April, OU had received 100 pre-litigation letters. That was the same month that Bible decided that was enough.

In a widely criticized decision, Bible announced the university would block all peer-to-peer programs regardless of what users were sharing. Those with a legitimate need to share files, Bible said, could ask for an exception.

The university also shut down a local file sharing network, or darknet, after an article about the network appeared in The Post.

Before the year ended, the recording industry subpoenaed information for 25 IP addresses that hadn’t settled. In October, record companies filed lawsuits against five OU students. One student is fighting a subpoena that would reveal his or her identity. All six cases are ongoing.

The RIAA’s director of communication has declined to say what the RIAA will do with the other information it received.