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Are your staff still swapping music?
'cause they really shouldn't be...

By Reuters

Published: Thursday 04 March 2004

Employees are still swapping music and other files on peer-to-peer applications at work despite the legal threat from the record industry, a survey released Wednesday said.

Forty-two per cent of the 300 respondents said they continue to use file-sharing applications like Kazaa and networks like Gnutella, and 38.6 per cent said they do their file swapping on company networks, according to the poll conducted by security provider Blue Coat Systems.

Nearly 70 per cent of the peer-to-peer application users said they spend more than 16 minutes a day sharing files and close to 16 per cent said they spend more than one hour a day doing so.

Almost 60 per cent of the employees polled said they are not concerned about whether the Recording Industry Association of America will take legal action against their employers for the distribution of copyrighted material on the corporate network.

The record industry trade group sued more than 500 more people last month for online copyright infringement employing a "John Doe" litigation strategy until the defendants' names are known.