Trade groups for the movie and music industries on Thursday took their fight against online piracy to the workplace, asking major corporations to curb illicit file-swapping by employees on company time.

Trade groups for the sectors jointly published a guide they will distribute this week to Fortune 1000 companies laying out ways to prevent copyright abuse on computers and networks.

The guide, titled "A Corporate Policy Guide to Copyright Use and Security on the Internet," is being issued as the music industry locks horns in a bitter legal dispute with Verizon Communications (VZ), which was ordered by a federal judge last month to divulge the name of a customer alleged to have downloaded more than 600 songs over the Internet.

Verizon argued on Thursday it should not have to reveal the name, and has said such a move could have severe consequences for Internet providers worldwide if record companies -- or anybody claiming copyright violations -- could easily obtain the name and address of any Internet user.

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

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Commentary by Bill Evans

However not only do they attack file-sharing at the workplace they attack the individual stoarge of file on a company computer regardless if it is for personal use brought from home, you must be able to prove your innocence, not them to prove you guilty.

What I find really interesting and objectionable is the wording of the brochure, which is quite misleading, which can be found at http://www.ifpi.org/site-content/library/copyright-use-and-security-guide-english.pdf

Once again the use of the term "unauthorized" to mean illegal.
"Unauthorised copies of copyright material like music on your computers pose legal and security risks to your organisation"

"You should ask for and keep evidence to show that any copies of music are legal"

They seem to lump individual use of music and file sharing into the same ball.

Hell, not on one cd that I own does it say anywhere that I am authorized to play it on any device. Does this mean that if I play the cd on my home cd player that is an unauthorised use? Can I risk a home invasion by the RIAA and IFPI for playing the music I bought? This is the very thing that they imply.

Once again comparing apples to oranges calling both oranges, and accusing you of stealing the apple.
I am a believer in copyright contrary to what some here would choose to believe, but this ever expanding rhetoric of unauthorised in place of illegal is growing tiresome and downright disgusting.
(Since the brochure was conceived and published in London I've used their spellings for unauthorised)

Once more, this shows the extent to which John and Jane Q. Public are loathed, reviled, despised, hated and all-around spat on by the multinational entertainment-media complex with the kind of venom that would get the executives of these entities and their respective lobbies ousted from their posts immediately if they said anything similarly negative about, say, Blacks or other ethnic minorities. If any one of these people were to say something on the order of "piracy is at its worst in urban ghettos or among certain ethnic minority groups," you could expect them to get the John Rocker-Trent Lott kind of treatment. Yet, the average consumer is the last individual who can be trampled on -- steamrolled over, if you will -- with impugnity, and with no worry of any meaningful and / or lasting consequences; the double standard here is nothing short of repulsive. And it's also evident, based on their increasingly fascistic, Iron Curtain-derivative, police-state-style behavior, and their reckless, iron-fisted disregard of human rights, that these heavy-handed Goliaths have almost become boycott-proof. Nothing touches the thick skulls of these poobahs, and they absolutely refuse to listen to the rest of us or our concerns.

And it may soon get to the point that not only will there be armed home invasions, but even possibly there may be fatalities in this cataclysmic war against all of us. In short, they may go so far as to kill somebody they deem "guilty" as part of their plan to carry out their totalitarian agenda.

In a way, I can see how Communist regimes and tin-pot Third World dictators draw at least part of their inspiration for further repression (political or otherwise) of their respective populaces, given this whole corporate-governmental interdependence and how one hand is always washing the other.

But the question is this: What will it take for the populace to rise up and SERIOUSLY challenge these modern-day tyrants in a way that will make them finally step back at least somewhat? And where is Amnesty International when you really need them?

Well, Bill, you are on fire, this seems to get yer goat.

I have been employed in a film editing facility the last year in which our main business has been rock videos, the likes of Led Zep/Cadillac and Kelli Osbourne. Needless to say, the ambience of the office "too-hip" vibe requires IPod-style music.

The activity of which the interns, receptionists and film assistants require their file-sharing efforts in a daylong manic downloading behaviour. The use of music to "maintain a business atmpshere" such as dentist offices, exercise facilities, or even Girl Scout campfire meetings, has been historically held to have some tax value to ASCAP.

It has long been knwon that the earliest adaptor of music-sharing has been the vast Microsoft Campus; that the office atmosphere and productivity is inmproved by mood enhancement and employee sharing of music; and that Microsoft servers have the largest and most perfect celestial jukebox on the planet.

The latest effort of the RIAA to serve intimidation papers on corporations will backfire. The recipients are not geeked-out students with no support systems. This effort to chill-out the world's largest corporations will backfire in the RIAA's face in the most extreme manner. That is, even white-collar workers did not comprehend they were breaking some kind of thought-crime law. "NO ONE" is capable of defining copyright limits.

As Jessica Litman has said, "How can we teach students the ethical guidelines, if even the teachers, much less the lawyers, cannot define the law?" Sum total which of which creates job security for bloodsucking attorneys. Like arguing the number of angels that dance on the head of a pin.

The RIAA corporate lawyers operate in a bunker mentality, like Haldeman/Erlichman White House goons. Public relations spin or backlash containment is unknown to their legal training. The indiscriminate blasting out of spam mail to corporations did not demonstrate a prudent RIAA policy debate.

The efforts of the IFPI have extraordinary imperialist implications; to create a Mac-world homoginization of culture and idea expression.

Those people who recently proclaimed a kindler gentler RIAA or applauded the resignation fo Hilary The Thug did not understand that Jay Berman of the IFPI has alwys called the shots.

I have warned you all along not to trust the RIAA efforts at conciliation. Nothing stops the RIAA fascist agenda; not sleep, not spirit, not guilt, or the dream of their own children inheriting a better world. Those who pursue a "win-win" agneda or appeasement with the RIAA are being played for booty punks.

Yeah I've known all along that Jay Berman was the one who called the shots, He was instrumental in the WIPO treaties. He was an advisor to President Clinton, he was the person who recommended Hilary to the RIAA to replace him when he "retired". I consider Jay Berman the 2nd most dangerous person on earth. Right after that Osama guy. I consider him every bit as much a terrorist as Osama, he just uses copyright as his weapon rather than suicide bombers.

lol I have a 40Gig harddrive at work...I'm going to get all the music videos I can't get at my house and burn them no matter what

Come and get me RIAA!

The RIAA claim they're losing money but they can afford to sue every music loving person on the Earth. Great way to attract customers. I see them filing for chapter 11 real soon. RIAA motto: Buy our overpriced music or we'll sue you.

Nice move by the Enemy here. They are targeting another weak point: The massive bandwidth lines used by office downloaders. Not only do they stop thousands of downloaders with one leaflet, but they also stop all those sharers borrowing the companys very high speed connection.

Oh well, its an annoyance, but what are we going to do? Best to concentrate on the area where we have an advantage: Making it harder of those companys to detect and block p2p software!

"Target" me as much as you want.

Screwing-over-the-MPAA is more important to me than not-screwing-over-my-boss.
Even more than keeping my job.

The more people download , the more money the **AA's have to spend on their anti-piracy and PR campaigns.
The more money they spend, the more expensive their disks get.
More expensive disks means more people decide not to buy, but to download instead.

This situation is not in equilibrium, no matter which wau this seems to be going.
Even if it seems like piracy is slowing down over a shot period, it will still jump up soon afterwards.

what IS an equilibrium, is where all MPAA and RIAA members stop the rhetoric and finally fuckin go OUT OF BUSINESS.

(to avoid any confusion over typos

*This situation is not in equilibrium; no matter which way this seems to be going.
Even if it seems like piracy is slowing down over a short period, it will still jump up soon afterwards.

But look at whom the alphabet-soup lobbies for the multinational entertainment-media complex have been targeting (or picking on, if you will), and you can see a pattern here: namely, you could make the case that this is another insidious form of class warfare, with the poor, disenfranchised, dispossessed, downtrodden and those generally least likely to fight back in their crosshairs. In short, the RIAAMPAAIFPIBSA etc. ARE out for total disenfranchisement, disempowerment, subjugation, usurpation, and enslavement of the populace for their own selfish benefit.

That's Okay. Server stats indicated over 300gigs of data transferred in the last 8 days. And that's just the movie box. Laugh laugh; Screw you MPAA!

Notice I DIDN'T mention the American Civil Liberties Union with regard to this issue . . . and for good reason. Namely, because Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who, unfortunately but not surprisingly, wrote the majority opinion in the Eldred case) had once worked for the ACLU. And if she sides with these multinational entertainment-media Goliaths against the oppressed, downtrodden Davids (as she obviously does), could it be just possible that the ACLU would likewise be so-silent-it's-deafening viz the continuing abuses against the consumer being perpetrated by the RIAA-MPAA-IFPI axis of evil?