Websense, known for its employee monitoring software, and digital rights management (DRM) provider Macrovision announced their strategic partnership this week.
According to a recent report from Jupiter Media Metrix cited by the companies, only 16% of home users (in the US) have high-speed internet access. By contrast, 57% of employees at work with internet access use a broadband connection (again, in the US) – which makes the office system a popular location for downloading large files.
The first product from the partnership is expected to be launched in the second half of 2003. It promises to “help shield employers from potential legal liabilities by searching company servers and hard drives for copyrighted content found to have copy protection elements removed or bypassed.” Other products will monitor downloads.
Businesses have been held liable for allowing illegal copyrighted materials in their workplaces. In a recent case that was settled out of court, music indutry body the RIAA won $1 million in damages from an Arizona-based company for storing illegal MP3s on its network. In addition, the Business Software Alliance consistently wins high financial penalties from companies around the world caught using unlicensed software, much of which is downloaded from the internet.
However, searching the files of employees raises privacy issues.