Slashdot Mirror
US Fed Gov. Says All Music Downloads Are Theft
BenEnglishAtHome writes "Nearly all US government employees and contractors are subject to
mandatory annual information security briefings. This year the official briefing flatly states that
all downloaded music is stolen. The occasionally breathless tone of the briefing and the various minor errors contained therein are funny but the real eye-opener is a 'secure the building' exercise where employees stumble across security problems and resolve them. According to the material, the correct response to an employee who is downloading music is to shout 'That's stealing!' No mention is made of more-free licenses, public domain works, or any other legitimate download. If this were a single agency or department that had made a mistake in their training material it might not be so shocking. But this is a government-wide training package that's being absorbed by hundreds of thousands of federal employees, both civilian and military. If you see a co-worker downloading music, they're stealing. Period. Who woulda thunk it? Somebody should mirror this. Who wants to bet that copies will become hard to find if clued-in technogeeks take notice and start making noise?" Warning: this site gives a whole new meaning to "Flash heavy."
If the summary is accurate, whoever wrote this needs an encounter with a clue-by-four. Let's not even bother with stuff like Creative Commons licenses or public domain recordings - just take the briefing at face value for a minute. All music is copyrighted; downloading copyrighted material is stealing; therefore, downloading music is stealing.
Do they also not realize that in every Berne signatory country, all "creative" written text (i.e. anything other than raw facts), drawings, and photographs are also automatically copyrighted? So, using that logic, downloading any text or images is stealing. Congratulations, you've just made the entire Internet illegal!
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I read an opinion once that the reason the US government is so incompetent and inefficient is because we as Americans expect it to be. Since then I've decided it's kind of true, can you imagine working at a job where people are always blaming you for being inefficient, bad workers and lazy? Who would want to work there? Some people might, but then you get things like this. I am ok with not pirating music, but.........
imagine if your workplace had a policy where if you saw someone downloading music, you had to approach them, then shout, "That is stealing!" Wow. Talk about demoralizing policy. I would feel like an utter tool. I mean, do I have to shout? Can't I at least say it in a soft voice?
When managers start implementing policies like that, it's time to quit. What competent person would want to work for the government if they can work someplace nice? Some, I'm sure, but they are pushing a lot of good people out.
Qxe4
Copyright as envisioned by the authors of the US Constitution was written to law as the Copyright Act of 1790.
Under that act protection was 14 years with a 14 year extension available if the copyright holder was still alive and it was renewed.
So... that's what they meant by "for limited times". They wrote it down for us. Under that law all works prior to 1980 would be in the public domain as would many prior to 1994. Every time copyright has been extended those works that would be public domain have been stolen from each of us. THAT'S stealing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
According to this, Pandora and radio streams are.. STEALING!
It's still downloading music.
This is all very interesting considering it was just ruled that Yahoo online internet radio should be royalty-free and only have to pay normal radio licensing fees: http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/19017.cfm
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
I read an opinion once that the reason the US government is so incompetent and inefficient is because we as Americans expect it to be. Since then I've decided it's kind of true, can you imagine working at a job where people are always blaming you for being inefficient, bad workers and lazy? Who would want to work there?
My sis-in-law works in the Federal court system as a paralegal, basically. Their enormous office building has exactly the minimum legal number of required bathrooms, and one drinking fountain, on the ground floor. When she asked why, she was told that if they put in comfy bathrooms and drinking fountains within a short walking distance of desks, there would be a huge public outcry about how gummint workers had cushy jobs and were too lazy to walk to get a drink -- which is exactly what happened when they DID try and modernize the building. So now she and her coworkers pay out of their pockets to get a Deep Rock water jug once a week. It has to sit on someone's desk, too, because they're not allowed to use floor space for non-governmental property. I'm glad the job pays her reasonably well because it sounds fairly hellish. I have a sink 8 meters from my desk, and our company pays for refrigerators stocked with free drinks, but that's okay because I'm in industry.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.