Slashdot Mirror
Cracking Down on MP3s at the Office
jhaberman writes "News.com has a story
about how corporations are now starting to crack down on networked MP3's, not
necessarily for the reasons you might think." Talks about legal issues,
as well as bandwidth issues, and the simple issue of employees wasting
their employers time.
There's no reason to have a fileserver full of MP3's on the company dime. These days it's tantamount to having porno on the corporate fileserver.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
"Some of these corporations, we are told, have their own little networks--that is very clearly illegal."
--RIAA President Cary Sherman
Man, I hope this one was taken out of context!!
I have mp3's at work on my computer because I keep all my CD's at home in a 300 disc changer, and have ripped them all to my mp3 server at home. If I want to listen to an album, I'll download it from my FTP then listen to it for a few weeks before I delete it. It takes me no more time to queue up an album in Winamp than to swap between CD's like other people do at work for music. If I'm not pirating or sharing files, why can't I listen to mp3's?
When I read this, I didn't think it was news, pretty much anyone who has had a professional job can say, yea we aren't supposed to use our work computers for much besides work (Doesn't mean you do always use it for work, you always have some leeway.)
Typically, the RIAA receives tips about alleged illegal file swapping through its anonymous tip line. It then threatens legal action and asks companies to stop. So far, the tactics may be working.
That is what scared me... how BSA like the RIAA is. Anonymous file sharing tip line? So some disgruntled employee anonymously says they traded MP3s and they go after the company. That's just a new low for them.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
At my workplace, the woman in the cubicle neighboring mine plays Hanson and Bette Midler mp3s off of her personal server on open-air earphones for 5 hours straight. Everyone within a 10 foot radius hates her because of that. Even the boss tells her it's reducing our performance-ever since she set up that server, our productivity and innovation has gone down dramatically. The boss decided to shut down the server to get us back on track, but the RIAA got to him before he had the chance.
:)
We're probably the only people glad that the RIAA is cracking down on businesses with mp3 filled servers.
Sigh. Why doesn't the RIAA just admit that they have found a new business model in the post-mp3 world: it's called extortion.
Networked MP3s is the key here. If you're sharng your collection with people who don't own those CDs, that's illegal. Whether or not it's unethical is an exercise left to the reader, but I don't think anybody can logically debate the legality.
I know the kneejerk reaction is to scream "But MP3 is just a file format!" If what you say is true, that you're not allowing others to access your music, then you have nothing to worry about - you're covered under fair use.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
About two years ago, my employer banned all music at work. I work in an automotive facility--not like where you get an oil change, but like where you get engine blocks bored and stuff. (To be more accurate, it's where prototypes of various machined parts are made for testing and stuff. Also, as a sort of side job, a lot of repair work is done, because there's big money in it. Think about it... make a hole a bit bigger and charge the poor shmoe $400 to do it.) You could say that prior to about two years ago, there were practically "no rules." This meant that in every corner of the facility, employees blasted their stereos with all their favorite music. In one corner of the shop, you heard Metallica, in another, Mozart, and in another yet, that stupid noise that some people call Pop. And there were about twenty other zones like this. At the various computers, which are all connected to the 'net through a LAN, employees downloaded countless songs through every system known to man, whether IRC or through web pages or whatever, and burned these on CDs to play everywhere in the shop. It was commonplace for someone with a computer-related request which takes one minute to fulfill to also ask for whatever songs, which would take about an hour of someone's paid time to find and download. People brought art projects into work--I am NOT kidding! The boss was always running around giving people instructions, because all the data was literally in his head and he didn't empower anybody to make decisions, so while one person had his attention (and twenty others were chasing him around for attention), everybody else was messing around. And somehow (don't even ask me how, because I can't explain this to this day), this company remained very profitable. Probably because a ton of work DID get done (though it was nearly all done in overtime, or by the boss in the middle of the night). The problem was that the company operated at perhaps 10% of the efficiency that it operates at now.
Well, let me get to my story, yo. So the boss, one day, got pissed off because a bunch of jobs had been scrapped, due to errors made by his various employees (40 of them), so he got pissed and banned all music. It's been that way ever since. (Oh yeah, and about two years ago, around the same time as this ban, he brought in a professional management team that understands the business quite well, and this increased profits to nearly twenty times the original amounts. I won't say whether the lack of music had anything to do with it, but I'm trying to say that I can see where these bans on whatever in the workplace come from. Sometimes, you just gotta get shit done.)
When you pay close enough attention, it is possible to find many instances where an activity or behavior is not necessarily the most appropriate allocation of company resources. We could be facist about what activity we allow, though I think it would pollute/dilute the friendly attitude we want to encourage in our employees. I think that it comes down to the corporate environment those that hold purse strings are attempting to foster.
We strictly deny music downloading/streaming/trading over the LAN. There is the legal perspective of licensing and outside pressure (we do pay ASCAP and BMI handsomely in our business) but the real reason is because of the impact it can have on our network and physical system resources (I can't afford to put CD-ROMs in everyone's box just for tunes). However, we encourage listening to whatever helps your specific style of working through a standalone deck so long as it doesn't distract your coworkers. I have some experience in the hospitality industry and I would relate an experience from our kitchens: we feed our employees from our overage in production. It is our experience that when we give to employees there have much less desire to take. Control your shrinkage proactively, so to say.
We expect our employees to give their best effort for greater than one-third of their waking hours, and in return they deserve to be given our best effort to make their experience as positive as possible. I think that the same attitude can apply in many aspects of how you manage your staff, whether it "letting" them listen to music instead of the hum of an HVAC or any other corollary to their day that helps people feel better and accordingly, be better employees.
Go do anything besides sitting in a cube and you'll be lucky if you get to do any of this..
Free Mac Mini
IT workers say the same thing--that the songs are already out of the proverbial jewel box. Like universities, companies may have to learn to live with a certain amount of media on their networks.
For any but the biggest networks this is easy to stop. Institute a policy of NO filesharing programs and NO unauthorised MP3's and Movies's. Do random checks of company computers at night. If contraband is found write them up, and tell them that if found again, they will be fired. Check that employee's machine again after 2 weeks, and one month later. If they resumed doing it, they are an idiot and should be canned. I would imagine after the first employee got canned, this practice would have a tremendous effect. This isn't that hard of a problem to solve.
You are dealing with a limited environment, in which you have physical access to all the machines involved. Every company should do it, if only to save money on bandwidth.
Oh, well, I guess they would be cracking down for the reasons I might think.
[
Check out Webplay.
You can set up variable-bitrate streams from your home to your office - then you have no incriminating files left on your office's disks.
For instance, you can listen at 48k during the week during high net usage times or at native bitrates at night or on the weekends.
Even with my iPod, it seems that the song I want to hear is always at home on my server - this solves it nicely.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
our company has installed special "anti-fun" headsets on all employee units. We called them "shit-colored glasses" for a while until Helen lost her job for saying it at a staff meeting; now we just call them "productivity goggles".
They are some pretty amazing technology- they filter out bright colors from your field of vision so you won't be distracted, and they give you a mild electrical shock (akin to the type of therapy used to treat homosexuality in the '50's) whenever you have a creative thought. It's pretty amazing, you can really focus on what you set out to do so long as it's mind-numbingly banal.
But other than that working for the MPAA isn't too bad.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I just turned 16. I started my first job 3 weeks ago. I have admin access to every server where I work, and my workstation. I have root on the Linux system that I set up for the company. I simply FTPed to my system at home and downloaded all my oggs. I then installed WinAmp, and everything is fine. My bosses(I have two) are both complementing how hard I work.
What employers need to realize is that things like a dress code, and crummy music hurt job performance. A friend of mine at work can do four times the productivity that he does, but as he says, "I'll give them better work when they treat me better." While I don't doodle and such during work, I do understand where he is coming from.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
You really should have posted this anonymously, if you insisted upon posting it at all. If the company's legal department finds out, they'll almost certainly recommend firing you before you get the company's lungs ripped out through its nose with a discrimination lawsuit.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
A female employee was FIRED for having "lesbian porn in her home folder"?! While everyone else's porn was just deleted? I really hope this is way out of context, because otherwise your company are assholes, and sue-able assholes at that. In fact, if you found the lesbian porn and set this all in motion, rather than just deleting it, you are an asshole too. Well, actually I suspect you're just a troll, but the point needs to be made.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I was the unofficial DJ at my last workplace. We all (12 people) sat in a large room, and I'd usually play whatever I was into at the time, trying to mix it up as much as possible, unless someone else brought in a CD for me to play, which took precendence. What made it work so well was that we had a gong policy. Anyone at any time could "gong" a song or album, for whatever reason. It could be a one-time gong (say you're simply not in the mood for it) or a permanent one (if you can't stand the song/CD ). For instance, I played a Johnny Cash CD once, and a coworker came back the next day and said he had "Tennesse Stud" stuck in his head the rest of the day and put a permanent gong on Johnny Cash. So I never played it anymore while he was around.
Basically, music in the workplace can be a double-edged sword. A well-chosen CD can make a hour of hardcore coding at 9 pm go by like nothing. A CD like Hanson can prevent you from doing any work at all, for lack of any spare brain cycles (they're all used up saying "this sucks, this sucks, etc.).
A little goddam common courtesy for your fellow workmates goes a long way. Failing that, "shut that crap off, woman" isn't such a bad idea. Or if you feel like being more polite, just suggest people take turns DJing. Not playing music at all is, IMHO, a poor and counter-productive solution.
c-hack.com |
"What you really want to do is protect people from themselves," --Frank Gillman (Guy who works at company that makes web filters for adults at work).
Bring on the straight jackets, and urine testing.
From the article:
Some studies have estimated that as many as one in five work computers contains file-swapping software.
Really the percentage is probably more like 99%. Any computer that has a web browser or FTP client has file-swapping software on it.
Again from the article:
RIAA President Cary Sherman.: "Some of these corporations, we are told, have their own little networks--that is very clearly illegal."
And some corporations have large networks. I guess that is even more illegal. Everyone! Disconnect the Ethernet cable, and step away from the computer. Networking computers has been declared illegal by the RIAA.
All that aside, they have a point. Most people do use the network at the office for personal use. This is of course the fault of the IT department. If they lay down a policy that the network is for company business, they should set up equipment and software that enforces those rules.
At Bank One in AZ, they have such a policy (network and Internet acesss for company business only), but the restrictions are applied haphazardly. Joke sites are filtered by the proxy along with sites like Dilbert, The Onion, etc. Software downloads are disallowed, but they allow FTP connections and do not block sites like versiontracker.com or download.com. *shrug*. Perhaps a few settlements/suits will cause companies like this to suddenly crack down and actuall impliment their stated policies. Until that time, I know the employees take the view that if the company where really serious about the policies that the IT department would limit/control the offending behaviour/sites.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Hmmm. No. Productivity sinks when your employees are unhappy. It's all about finding the right balance. You do want to ban MP3 servers on your lans because you don't want to be sued out of existence by the RIAA & co. but banning (or making it technically impossible) the use of the work computer for a reasonably small amount of non-business related activity is simply stupid.
by reading this article!
back to work!
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Labor jobs are tough, no doubt. When I was younger, I worked a couple of summers for an electrical contractor. Much of the time I was actually digging the ditches you mention. In the summer. In south Georgia with nats and 90% humidity.
Absolutely, it sucked. One thing about it, though, my brain never got so overwhelmed with mind numbing details that it wanted to climb out of my skull. When programming it often does.
An article just this morning talks about how IT work sucks the soul right out of a person. At the end of a day digging ditches, you feel good. Tired, yes, but you have whole endorphin rush thing from the exercise, as well as a real feeling of acomplishment. The ditch is dug. You can see it is dug. Nobody is going to come along later and ask you can also make it an email sending ditch with instant messaging. It's a ditch. You know where you stand.