Music industry targets corporates

The movie and record companies are now gunning for corporates that allow employees to download content using company PCs.

According to Reuters, trade groups for the sectors have jointly published a guide which they will distribute this week to Fortune 1000 companies laying out ways to prevent copyright abuse on company computers and networks.

Some analysts have indicated that it is only a matter of time before the music and film industries lock horns with a few corporates to make an example of them.

Peter Scott, of Silicon Valley analysts Datawatch, said: "There is a perception in the music business that people who sit at their computers at work are busy downloading music while they work."

But the analyst suggested that this is "naive and paranoid" as most corporates would "come down on downloaders like a ton of bricks" because peer-to-peer downloading sucks up too much bandwidth on company networks.

The movie and music industries have been increasingly aggressive in pursuing copyright infringement since winning a groundbreaking case against renegade file-swapping service Napster.