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Trade An MP3, Lose Your Job
woggo writes "I just noticed in
Infoworld
that certain companies are
firing their employees
for using MP3s on office computers. That's right, firing, without notice or prior warning. 'Acceptable use,' indeed."
What's the policy at your company?
Many people I work with bring either personal CDs, or a radio. So long as they listen with headphones, we can contact them when we need to, and they get the work done the company doesn't care.
Now if there were illegal (I didn't read the artical) or tieing up bandwidth they have grounds. However if they have a under utilized machine on their desktop what does the company care if they use it for music?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The "article" is one piece in a rumour column. It starts with the proposition that one firm has implemented a change to its acceptable use policy regarding MP3s. Fair enough - bandwidth costs money, and a certain amount can slip through in the margin a business needs over and above normal usage. 5mb chunks going out tends to cause the lights to dim (as does a lawyer stomping down there and ranting at the IT manager for wasting everyone's time with the effing GoodTimes or Wobbler or whatever it's called now virus hoax, but that's another story).
It then goes on to say that five employees got sacked without warning or reprimand or like that there.
That, frankly, I don't believe. Try that in the UK and you'd be paying four or five figure damages within a few months. Even in the US, firmly under the heel of capital, I misdoubt workers have that little right to a fair hearing.
That said, I work in a firm with the email kit set up so everyone can read everyone else's. Convenient if you need to know what client said what when to who when one of the whos is out at court, but a royal pain when you're after trading filthy limericks with said client.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
I thought about this a few months back when I needed to replace the 50 disc changer I had at work; Most of my CD's were already sampled to MP3, so just snagging the lot of them off my home PC would have been easy. But one of our TS drones had been fired for excessive bandwidth abuse and subsequent copyright infringement. (He was downloading 'Warez' from work)
First, I'd have had to install a sound device, then I'd eat most of the 10G hard disc with MP3's.
Not to mention circumventing the Admin account to install said drivers and a copy of Winamp. Plus the 'You've got six gigs of MP3 files? Are they all legal?' question. While they're all legal, I'd be hard pressed to prove I bought each and every album.
I said 'screw it, I'll stay away from using ANYTHING company owned;' They don't own it, they can't say a word about it.
So I grabbed a Micro AT 486 off the scrap heap, added memory and a DX4-120. Bought a pair of used 8.2G 14mm laptop hard drives and a used ISA SoundBlaster. I intentionally left Ethernet connectivity out; If I need to change files, it will be over my personal LAN and a PLIP cable. The box is only capable of playing MP3s. No network drivers, no services, no utilities, no login. (It runs a root shell and a script to choose the playlist, and enters init-6 when the script is terminated.)
If they have a bitch about it, I can tell them to get stuffed. If they touch it, I have good reason to get them reprimanded and or fired; Corporate policy is pretty strict about employee owned devices, and there is the added complication that they are incapable of even making their way around a shell! Any 'touchy-touchy' would do harm, and they don't like that liability.
.sig: Now legally binding!