Starting this month, colleges and universities that don’t do enough to combat the illegal swapping of “Avatar” or Lady Gaga over their computer networks put themselves at risk of losing federal funding.

A provision of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 is making schools a reluctant ally in the entertainment industry’s campaign to stamp out unauthorized distribution of copyrighted music, movies and TV shows.

Colleges and universities must put in place plans “to effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material by users of the institution’s network” without hampering legitimate educational and research use, according to regulations that went into effect Thursday.

That means goodbye to peer-to-peer file-sharing on a few campuses — with exceptions for gamers or open-source software junkies — gentle warnings on others and extensive education programs everywhere else.