The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and other industry groups on a mission to stop illegal downloads sent strongly worded letters to various universities and Fortune 500 companies recently asking them to be on the lookout for illegal file swappers.

High-speed Internet connections and peer-to-peer networking go hand-in-hand, and despite Napster's demise, illegal downloading hasn't gone away. In fact, the RIAA believes it's increased dramatically. See who received the letters and what they intend to do about the request tonight on "Tech Live."

The letters are similar, although the corporations are being threatened with prosecution if illegal files are kept. The letter also states: "Using technology to steal music is no different from walking into a store and shoplifting a CD or DVD."

However, Ed Black of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, who represents some of the Fortune 500 companies, believes the move by the "creative content communities" is too aggressive. "The idea that these companies should make it paramount in their business practices to worry about the interest of the industry that the RIAA represents is really just not appropriate," he said.

Still, the RIAA insists that is not threatening in any way.

"This was an effort to cooperatively reach out to companies and alert them to the possibility that illegal downloading and uploading of copyrighted works may be occuring on their networks," a RIAA spokesperson told TechTV. "The letter alerts them to this problem and encourages them to help us doing something about it.

"It should be in their interest to help us. After all, from a productivity standpoint, we would think most employers would want their employees spending their time dedicated to work, not downloading music from illegal websites. Nor do we think companies would want their bandwidth wasted on illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted works rather than the legitimate business of the corporation."

But university officials believe the letter stomps on fundamental privacy rights.

"I think what the industry group is asking for is more aggressive monitoring of what people are doing, and that's really against university policy," said Jack McCredie, UC Berkeley's associate vice chancellor of information technology. "We need to find a balance."

But it was too late to find a balance for Integrated Information Systems (IIS). The company did not get a formal warning and settled out of court with the RIAA for $1 million for copyright files shared on its internal network.

IIS CEO James Garvey wishes his company had known more about copyright issues before the dispute, and thinks corporate America is lucky to be given a warning.

"It was an unfortunate situation that we were in," he said. "You know they really wanted to make an example of somebody. They made a good example of us. If it's on your network and you're a corporation and somebody is copying MP3 files on your network, the RIAA is going to be looking for you."

Ed Black says he hopes employees aren't using corporate networks for illegal purposes, but agrees the RIAA is overstepping its bounds. "I also think that employees ought not to be viewed as probable law breakers and subjected to a set of rules," he said.