The employer has a right to monitor traffic on its network, even if the traffic originates on an BYOD device. 

The employer doesn't have a right to look at traffic if it originates on a BYOD device and is carried on a wireless data plan that the employee pays for. However, even there I can see a possible legal liability if the employee pirates data while on the employer's premises. No, that doesn't make sense and it's not fair -- but copyright law stopped making sense and being fair in 1976, when Congress started extending copyright retroactively. 

I hear you Kim. The companies have to make that decision based on their cost benefit analysis. The unauthorized duplication of work may be critical for the company. I would say they have to have proper policy.

@Jason

I agree that IT departments are good candidates for monitoring piracy.  Sometimes, though, that would mean the fox is guarding the hen house! With the odds as high as you state, there are people engaging in piracy all across an enterprise.  How tech savvy do you need to be?  Or is it a matter of knowing about piracy and doing it anyway?

@Mitch

I agree, that's my general perspective too, wrt all your points.

As you commented, it seems only a matter of time before the pack of lawyers from whatever given movie studio descend upon enterprise owners of IPs shown to be torrenting.

The situation is a bit thornier with BYOD users who bring their devices onto workplace networks, but still, filtering can eliminate 99 percent of the danger, if done right (esp. given that most users aren't exactly sophisticated in their piracy).  Most users will simply get frustrated and give up and return to pirating at home.  

That should be your goal, in terms of safeguarding your work network -- to frustrate would-be employee pirates. You can't beat piracy (even if you wanted to), but you can work to keep it out of the workplace, limiting your liability.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether anti-piracy laws are wise. I'm in favor of much looser copyright protection, and less draconian punishment for violations. 

However, we don't have the best possible laws -- we have the laws we have. And employers need to protect themselves.

I don't see an ethical issue here involving employee privacy. If the employer owns the device or network, the employer has a right to monitor it, particularly when it's not looking at content but rather type of traffic. 

Given the RIAA's history of suing Welfare mothers, I expect they'll come after businesses sooner or later. That's where the money is, after all. 

Nobody, surely, would suggest monitoring for copyright breaches using work devices?

Just to be contrary, are the risks to the business sufficient to justify the effort?  Given that minor piracy is probably very widespread in workplaces, as at home, why should we think it's likely that Internet connections will be shut down?

I agree. IT can play a role in monitoring and auditing. Piracy may result into security and privacy issues. We have all kinds of policies in workplaces, they are not being followed, you can reduce impact and the risk coming from that through monitoring and providing awareness.