The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said in a statement that the letter, to be sent today, points out that piracy of music, movies and other creative works is taking place at a "surprisingly large" number of companies.
The letter says: "It appears that many corporate network users are taking advantage of fast internet connections at work by publicly uploading and downloading infringing files on P2P services, and also distributing and storing such files on corporate networks."
In the letter, whose list of authors includes the RIAA, the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Music Publishers' Association, the industry also claims that using peer-to-peer networks such as KaZaA and Grokster is "no different" from software piracy or shoplifting.
The RIAA statement can be found at:
www.riaa.org/PR_story.cfm?id=580
The letter to the Fortune 1,000 companies is available from:
www.riaa.com/pdf/Corporate%20Outreach.pdf