DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — Concerns about copyright are rampant, as evidenced by one of the world’s largest communications companies suggesting it may begin monitoring Web traffic in order to ferret out content thieves.In a conference during the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, AT&T Inc. Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson said his company is “evaluating” what it should do about peer-to-peer traffic, which represents the largest single bandwidth hog on the World Wide Web. P2P technology frequently is used to share video, music and other files illicitly, although recently it has become a legitimate distribution vehicle for companies seeking direct access to video and electronic-gaming consumers.

According to the Associated Press, during his portion of the presentation, Stephenson remarked, “It’s like being in a store and watching someone steal a DVD. Do you act?”

Cable internet service providers Comcast, Cox and Time Warner are asking the same question, especially after Comcast became the object of a Federal Communications Commission inquiry earlier this month. The problem in Comcast’s case is that it did act, and consumers and watchdog groups say it acted inappropriately by throttling or in some cases shutting off the bandwidth of customers it suspected of sharing files over the P2P networks. Cox has been accused of the same behavior. Not to be caught up in the same net, Time Warner announced last week that it will begin a trial of tiered service pricing that requires high-volume bandwidth users to pay more for their connections.

Broadband ISPs across the board have begun to watch traffic volumes on their networks, and many of the ones that have been accused of delaying, throttling or shutting off high-volume users say they are within their rights and federal law to manage traffic in order to ensure their network’s availability for all customers.