Who downloads music in the company?

Rome – How many Italians use the computers of the company where they work to illegally download music? Many, according to the record industry, which has now decided to warn local companies: take a big risk. Thanks to the continuous scanning of peer-to-peer networks, record companies believe that a very large percentage of those who download illegal music do so from the workplace.

The problem, as old as file-sharing, and which has already dragged some American companies to court, in Italy takes on the contours of a phenomenon that FIMI, the Federation of Italian record companies, has decided to fight with an awareness campaign.

In essence, the lack of serious and continuous control over the cheerful behavior of employees struggling with the internet can provoke the ire of the industry for violation of intellectual property rights on music and therefore affect negligent companies that become accomplices of the offense.

FIMI directs its initiative towards public and private companies to which it is sending an informative brochure on law and technology. The brochure talks about the “risks associated with the use of the company computer network to download and distribute music files in terms of security, waste of technological resources and workforce”.

In the document, FIMI warns that there are company servers transformed into real jukeboxes of illegal files and this exposes companies and their managers to serious legal consequences.

“These – affirms FIMI – are potentially very dangerous activities and often practiced in total disregard of internal IT security procedures”. Company notified half saved?

For its part, the international association of record companies IFPI is also moving in these hours once again, which as part of the awareness-raising initiative has been keen to argue that due to file-sharing the industry in the sector would lose enormous quantities of income with heavy repercussions also on employment.

It must be said that in the recent past the industry has already activated initiatives to try to sensitize users or other subjects massively involved in p2p, such as American universities. From the development of file sharing systems, however, it seems that these attempts have been unsuccessful.

On the topic see also Who controls the P2P of employees?

To check how much space on a WAN occupies mp3 and other music files not to be missed is the little program Mp3check (here a review).