Another Kind of P2P

The RIAA going peer-to-peer with 300 corporations, informing them by letter that their computer networks are being used for file sharing:

The music industry’s leading trade group has sent letters to 300 U.S. companies complaining about alleged acts of piracy and copyright infringement in their corporate computer networks and warning of possible fines.

….The RIAA has recently begun to track down individual users it says are among the worst offenders, and last month it distributed a guide to Fortune 1000 companies containing ways to prevent copyright abuse on their networks.

….The letter tells the recipients of specific instances where people using Internet connections coming from the companies’ networks accessed file-sharing services such as Kazaa and iMesh, where pirated songs and movies are readily available.

“In short, your computer network and resources are being used to illegally distribute copyrighted music on the Internet,” the letter said. “We strongly urge you to take immediate steps to prevent the continued infringement of our members’ sound recordings on your corporate network.”

Those who received the letter were also sent a CD with logs of music files on the companies’ networks that were being offered on the various file-swapping services. [Reuters]

If nothing else the companies will have evidence of misuse of their networks and may be shamed into action from that angle without having to get into the legality/copyright mess.