RIAA & MPAA pressure corporations to ban p2p use

[TankGirl]

They have got music publisher and songwriter organizations with them and approach about 1000 largest U.S. corporations with the following letter (from the RIAA's website):

October 25, 2002
[COMPANY NAME]
[TITLE FIRST LAST NAME]
[ADDRESS]
[CITY], [ST] [ZIP]
Dear [CEO/President]

We write on behalf of the creative community regarding the use of corporate networks to infringe copyrights using online peer-to-peer (P2P) systems such as Kazaa, Grokster, iMesh and Gnutella. Because this letter references legal issues pertaining to the use of corporate networks, we ask that you forward a copy of this to your company’s General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer.

We, like you, invest our time and resources to create products or services that our customers will find of value. And, like you, we do not want our valuable assets to be stolen. Therefore, we must aggressively enforce our rights in cases of copyright infringement. Many companies have already implemented employee policies and technical measures to prevent copyright infringements on their corporate networks. If your company is among this group, we commend your action. If it is not, we urge you to take hatever steps necessary to ensure that your network is not being misused to infringe copyrighted works.

By now, you and your colleagues are well aware that software piracy is illegal and that your company is at risk when your employees copy and use software without buying additional licenses. You may not have thought about unauthorized distribution of music and movies in the same way. But, in fact, allowing employees to use your corporate network to illegally distribute copyrighted music and movies is no different from software piracy.

We have recently become aware that piracy of music, movies, and other creative works is taking place at a surprisingly large number of companies – including a number of Fortune 1000 companies. It appears that many corporate network users are taking advantage of fast Internet connections at work by publicly uploading and downloading infringing files on P2P services, and also distributing and storing such files on corporate intranets. In the past few decades, companies have built sophisticated digital networks – at great expense to shareholders and investors—to ensure competitiveness in an increasingly networked world. The use of your digital network to pirate music, movies, and other copyrighted works both interferes with the business purposes your network was built to serve and subjects your employees and your company to significant legal liability under the Federal copyright law. A great many institutions—corporations, government agencies and universities -- have prevented unlawful uses, saved a great deal of money on broadband fees and enhanced the security of their internal networks by configuring firewalls to prevent access to particular networks or limiting the use of certain software or files. We are aware of a few companies that are developing tools that may assist in detecting and/or blocking infringing activity on a digital network. For your reference, we have attached a list of these types of companies.

The creative community welcomes technological innovations such as peer-to-peer technologies. Legally downloading, streaming, and otherwise experiencing music, movies, and other forms of entertainment over networked environments is exciting, and our companies are working aggressively to make this experience increasingly available. However, using technology to steal music and movies is no different from walking into a store and shoplifting a CD or DVD.

The creative community commends those companies that have already implemented employee policies and technical measures that serve to eliminate copyright piracy from their networks. We stand ready to work with the corporate community to find ways to eradicate digital piracy of copyrighted works on business networks, and would welcome the opportunity to assist your company in this effort.

Hilary Rosen
Chairman and CEO,
Recording Industry Association of America

Jack Valenti
President and CEO,
Motion Picture Association of America

Edward P. Murphy
President and CEO,
National Music Publishers' Association

Rick Carnes
President,
The Songwriters Guild of America

The bold way they refer to themselves as 'creative community' has an irony of its own...

- tg

[JackSpratts]

Originally posted by TankGirl
The bold way they refer to themselves as 'creative community' has an irony of its own...

- tg

they've got brass dvd's alright! thanks for the story tg.

- js.

[pod]

Because, as we all know, we have constitutional rights to download songs off P2P networks on company time. It's right there, somewhere along with freedom of speech, I'm sure.

Come on now, yeah, it's tacky for RIAA to be telling companies how to manage their own networks and what their acceptable network usage policy should be. But for pete's sake, do your downloading on your own time and equipment. I doubt you'd complain if your boss told you to quit with that Kazaa thing and get some work done?

[Mazer]

The creative community welcomes technological innovations such as peer-to-peer technologies, and VCR's, and DAT's too, honest.

Legally downloading, streaming, and otherwise experiencing music, movies, and other forms of entertainment over networked environments is exciting, and our companies are working aggressively to make this experience increasingly available, then it will be alright for your employees to use your network to get music and movies.