GristyMcFisty lets us know that according to a
new survey, more than
three-quarters of corporations have file-sharing programs installed on company
computers. None of the mid-sized and larger companies with 500 PCs or more were
free of file-sharing software such as KaZaA or Morpheus, thus offering a big potential for legal problems:
 The survey found that file-swapping software was installed at
least once at about 77% of all the 560 corporations surveyed worldwide.
Some had peer-to-peer programs installed on as many as 58% of their PCs.
The study included more than 175,000 PCs and companies varied in size from
100 to 40,000 employees.
The results reinforce "the concerns that the recording
industry worldwide has had about the amount of illegal file sharing that's
being transacted on corporations' computer networks," said Brian
Robertson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association. "I
didn't anticipate it was this extensive," he added.
CRIA's U.S. counterpart, the Recording Industry
Association of America, last month said it is prepared to take legal
action against systemic users of music-sharing software who illegally
distribute copyrighted songs over the Web.
Mr. Robertson said CRIA is not yet "in litigation
mode." It plans to undertake a letter campaign aimed at 500 Canadian
companies which the association believes could have peer-to-peer software
on their systems. |
Several companies have already introduced software to hunt down
and delete unauthorised software on their networks such as KaZaA and other
file-sharing tools. The complete article can be read here.
Source: National Post
