Music Industry Could Go After Your Company for File-Swapping

You’ve probably heard about the controversy over the music industry’s battle against Internet song-swappers. In a recent letter to a U.S. senator, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America pledged that “RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted music.” See Reuters story.

Suppose that your employees were surreptitiously swapping songs, not just with their home computers, but with your company’s servers. Now suppose that RIAA were to discover that fact — possibly because of a whistleblower within your company. RIAA might view your company as a tempting target for a copyright-infringement lawsuit, with the intent of making your company into a very public example. (Software industry groups such as the Business Software Alliance have done much the same thing with their anti-piracy campaigns.)