In an e-mail sent on Thursday night by Microsoft to the company"s 50,000+ employees, three senior Microsoft executives warned that peer-to-peer (P2P) networks used for sharing files raise "significant legal, public policy, and security concerns."
"The e-mail kind of speaks for itself," said Microsoft spokesman Jon Murchison. "Given the proliferation of the P2P network sites, we thought it was a good time to reiterate a longstanding corporate policy to our employees."
In their e-mail to employees, the three Microsoft executives - Will Poole, corporate vice president for the Windows Media division; Brad Smith, general counsel; and Rick Devenuti, chief information officer - warned of the fine line the company walks with regard to peer-to-peer networks.
In the memo, the executives contrasted the peer-to-peer efforts of music-sharing distributors AudioGalaxy, Kazaa and Morpheus against the work Microsoft is doing with Groove Networks. On Monday, Groove said it would incorporate support for Microsoft"s SharePoint Team Services technology into its product.
In the email, the executives emphasized that copying personal music CDs to a PC is acceptable - "you just can"t share them with other people, or download ones offered by others, using company PCs or networks."
Microsoft also is concerned that some peer-to-peer networks create potential security problems for the company. "Running such programs on company PCs or through company servers substantially increases the risk that our network could be hacked, that viruses could be introduced into our network, and that internal corporate documents could inadvertently be shared with others outside the company," the executives wrote.
The executives instructed employees to obtain permission before installing or running third-party peer-to-peer network software and warned that the company would occasionally monitor its internal network for file sharing activity.
As one well known security consultant, Richard Smith, has recently said regarding the use of P2P software within companies... "I"ve been advising my clients to also ban music-sharing software in the workplace. Companies are just sitting ducks for RIAA lawsuits."