As many as 80% of companies have music and video files illegally
held on their servers as a result of file swapping programs being
used by employees.
Network management software company Packeteer discovered the extent
of the problem while demonstrating its products at 500 UK companies
over the past six months.
Besides being a drain on storage assets, industry watchers have
pointed out that UK businesses could be open to prosecution if they
hold pirated material or allow it to be copied to CD on their
premises.
The problem has already achieved a high profile in the wake of the
£1m lawsuit brought by UK music industry body the British
Phonographic Industry (BPI) against EasyInternetCafe.
File swapping software - typically only a few megabytes in size -
is easily downloaded and allows end-users to view and obtain files
such as music tracks from others. The file swapping revolution
began with the now-defunct Napster service and carries on today
through freeware such as Kazaa and Morpheus.
At present the BPI will not prosecute businesses whose employees
contravene copyright.
A spokesman said, "Downloading copied music is illegal. Our
anti-piracy unit writes to the company and informs it that abuse is
taking place, following which, it is up to the company to take
action against employees misusing company computers."
Analyst Eric Woods of Ovum said, "To discover such misuse is a
monitoring exercise, but a cultural change is needed too because
computer access has become so widespread that maintaining
boundaries has become harder.
"The main ways of discovering such misuse are through spotting
unusual bandwidth usage and monitoring for file swapping
applications and types of files, such as MP3, which have been
downloaded."
Napster, the pioneer of the MP3 file sharing movement, launched in
1999. Its demise came earlier this year following a high-profile
lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America
and opposition from bands such as Metallica.