Workers continue to swap music and other files on peer-to-peer applications at work, despite the legal threat from the record industry, a survey released Wednesday said.
Forty-two percent of the 300 respondents said they continue to use file-sharing applications like Kazaa and networks like Gnutella, and 38.6 percent said they do their file swapping on company networks, according to the poll conducted by security provider Blue Coat Systems.
Nearly 70 percent of the peer-to-peer application users said they spend more than 16 minutes a day sharing files and close to 16 percent said they spend more than one hour a day doing so.
Almost 60 percent of the employees polled said they are not concerned about whether the Recording Industry Association of America will take legal action against their employers for the distribution of copyrighted material on the corporate network.
The record industry trade group sued more than 500 more people last month for online copyright infringement employing a "John Doe" litigation strategy until the defendants' names are known.
The trade group cites digital piracy as the main factor behind a three-year slump in CD sales, but the trend is changing as recent music sales figures show sales are up this year from a year earlier and companies launch for-pay music download services, like Apple Computer's iTunes.
The survey respondents, contacted via e-mail from purchased e-mail lists of Internet users, work at a range of public and private companies, with most located in North America, Blue Coat said.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Blue Coat offers hardware that companies can use to control file sharing and other Web activities on their corporate networks.
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