How about 2,400 bps, 9.6 kilobits per second, 14.4 kps, 33.3 kps or 56k? Remember protocols and baud rates? Remember modems?

Of course, modems aren’t quite ready for the computer hardware scrap heap. At least, not yet, for millions of net surfers still rely on those modulation / demodulation devices for connecting their computers to the world. Those ads you’ve seen on TV starring Dennis Miller hawking NetZero for $14.95 per month? That’s for modem people. For the rest of us, there’s broadband.

The point is that the speed at which we surf is constantly improving, thus exemplifying one of the major characteristics of the Net – if you don’t like the way it works, wait a few microseconds. Yesterday’s Internet is ancient history, today’s experience is fleeting and tomorrow’s will probably get here before you know it. While the future is always uncertain, you can pretty much bet tomorrow’s Net will be faster than it is today.

Another constant when discussing the Net is that there will always be copyright piracy. No, we’re not saying that fighting piracy is a hopeless cause, that copyright holders should just look the other way and that all intellectual property should be free for the taking. Instead, we’re just pointing out the obvious.

The world got a preview of the future of the Net when the Recording Industry Association of America announced it was filing copyright lawsuits against 405 students at 18 colleges. While lawsuits against individual peer-to-peer file-trading users aren’t anything new, what is new is what the perps were using for their swapping.

It’s called Internet2, and it’s faster, slicker and smoother than the Net you’re familiar with. A movie that otherwise might take hours to download can be acquired in seconds, and songs can be downloaded in the time it takes to click a mouse. Internet2 makes Internet1 a two-lane highway to hell – slow, congested and ridden with potholes.

Currently, Internet2 is a private network used by millions of university students, researchers and professionals. In announcing the round of lawsuits, the RIAA stated that just because Internet2 is a private network, its users should not believe they are immune from the long arm of copyright law.

“This next generation of the Internet is an extraordinarily exciting tool for researchers, technologists and many others with valuable legitimate uses,” Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, said in a statement. “Yet, we cannot let this high-speed network become a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules don’t apply.”

Sherman goes on to say that the RIAA’s latest action puts “students and administrators everywhere on notice” as to the “consequences for unlawful uses of this special network.”

Although the RIAA’s latest round of lawsuits resulted in a lot of media coverage regarding the organization’s never-ending battle against copyright piracy, it appeared no one was acknowledging the elephant in the room – that given the opportunity, some people will pirate copyrighted material no matter if they’re on a special, super-fast private network, or even if they’re using the same old pokey Internet the rest of us have to put up with.

For example, the RIAA said it was limiting the number of lawsuits in this current batch to 25 per school, and that the 405 lawsuits filed represented some of the most “egregious” Internet2 copyright banditos. According to the RIAA, the average number of copyrighted files shared among those being sued is more than 3,900, and that some users have shared as many as 13,600 music files and as many as 72,700 files encompassing software and video as well as music.

With the latest round of RIAA lawsuits, there were rumblings that the organization’s actions might hamper new technology. As the RIAA has done before, the trade group, in announcing the lawsuits, called out for university leaders to consider applying filters to block unauthorized duplication and distribution.

However, such a demand goes back to the old argument as to who is ultimately responsible for copyright infringement: network administrators and the people they answer to or the people committing the actual infringements?

“We don’t condone or support illegal file-sharing,” Internet2 chief exec Doug Van Houweling said. “We’ve always understood that just like there is a lot of file-sharing going on on the public Internet, there’s also some file-sharing going on on Internet2.”

In other words, there’s good news and bad news. The trick, of course, is to maximize the good and minimize the bad.