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."

Comments

Non-Flash Equivalent

[eldavojohn]

Warning: this site gives a whole new meaning to "Flash heavy."

They have a non-flash site if you need to complete this training and receive your certificate and you can't have flash. Not sure how they are running the audio but that's available as well.

I gotta admit it's not as entertaining as the zoom down into the city flash animation when instead of that you get:

Screen 1 of 48. Screen title, Intro. A block in any city, U S A. The camera zooms into a bank A T M. The A T M screen reads, no funds available. The camera zooms into another A T M, and again, no funds are available. Cut to an office in a building. Camera zooms into computer screen on desk. C N N website is on screen, displaying news headlines that support audio. Camera zooms to P D A on desk. P D A displays news headlines that support audio. Camera zooms to fax machine. Document on machine displays news headlines that support audio.

Also, you might encounter some problems with words and acronyms that are pronounced like IA (Information Assurance)

Screen 4 of 48. Screen title, What is I Ay? Image of worker at desk with computer. The computer monitor displays a warning ...

Re:Non-Flash Equivalent

[reginaldo]

Thanks for the link, but I like the flash site. The website has audio, so while you are instructed not to download music (hey, spoken word is a type of art/music), you are in fact downloading music.

THAT'S STEALING!

Re:Non-Flash Equivalent

[Anonymous Coward]

You're basically saying 'it's not flash heavy' and then going on to state why it uses flash. If it uses flash heavily, that's flash heavy - that they have a reason for it being flash heavy is basically irrelevant.

Re:Non-Flash Equivalent

[amicusNYCL]

Let me clarify - it's not a Flash-heavy site, because it's not a site. It's a course. It's an online course entirely written in Flash, not a Flash-heavy web site.

Re:Non-Flash Equivalent

[shutdown -p now]

A PowerPoint presentation document can also be on the web and have an URL, but it doesn't make it a website.

What's the Big Deal

[Ozric]

When is the last time they were right about anything? .. .. ..
Can't think of one? Yea Me either.

Nuff said

Apple's iTMS may beg to differ

[Ralph Spoilsport]

given that the only way you can get music from it is by downloading.

RS

Re:Apple's iTMS may beg to differ

[Professor_UNIX]

It specifically excludes music you've purchased from being listed as illegal in the explanation if you pick the choice it doesn't want you to pick. The only thing I see wrong with their explanation is that it excludes legitimately "free" music such as stuff released into the public domain or under something like a Creative Commons license, but for the most part their definition is perfectly acceptable to the target audience (non-technical DoD users).

Re:Apple's iTMS may beg to differ

[jedidiah]

That's still no reason to falsely accuse someone.

Some people might not be bright enough to distinguish from actual downloading
of some sort and streaming from some site like Hulu or Pandora. How does Pandora
or radio streams fit into this particular bit of government propaganda?

Re:Apple's iTMS may beg to differ

[supernova_hq]

A drop in the bucket or not, somebody is still going to get harrased/sued/imprissoned for downloading something completely legit just because some dumbass in the government doesn't understand the law they are writting about!

Re:Apple's iTMS may beg to differ

[aztektum]

IANAL but legally is it not theft but copyright infringement? Therefor the government is misrepresenting its own laws?

Re:Apple's iTMS may beg to differ

[Sponge Bath]

That's still no reason to falsely accuse someone.

Agreed, why not just instruct people to point and scream "witch!".
That would reveal the true intent of this exercise.

Re:Apple's iTMS may beg to differ

[netdemonboberb]

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

If you're downloading music at work...

[KingSkippus]

If you're downloading music at work, it probably is stealing...

...of company time. And given that my taxes are paying these people's salaries (that is, you and I are "the company"), I'd really rather them not. Granted, I do wish that they would convey correct information, and I don't expect government workers to go zombie-like through the day without taking a break now and then, but still, I am glad that rampant goofing off in this particular manner is discouraged.

Re:If you're downloading music at work...

[squidfood]

If you're downloading music at work, it probably is stealing...of company time.

Many government offices have sane guidelines that include that the allowance of a strictly limited amount of personal use is permissible: e.g. occasional personal internet use. A (legal) song or two would easily fit under these guidelines. (whether you're allowed to have the software to play it on a work machine is another matter). It strikes me that this is a sane policy for any company.

Re:If you're downloading music at work...

[phantomfive]

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.

Re:If you're downloading music at work...

[Asclepius99]

I think you're missing a far larger point. Have you dealt with non-government employees at a large corporation? When is the last time that you got them on the phone right away? And then did it take that one phone call to get stuff sorted out? Or did you have to make other calls? Possibly talk to a supervisor?

The government is inefficient because it's made up of people working at a large institution that can easily pass responsibility to off to someone else. Why bother to make sure that something gets taken care of when no one above you is actually going to check or say, let alone do, anything if you don't get it done. When someone that's supposed to install your new cable line doesn't end up showing up after you wait for several hours and you call and complain, do you think the guy actually gets fired or reprimanded?

Re:If you're downloading music at work...

[DragonWriter]

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.

If it was a policy of a nongovernment workplace, it would seem to present a cause of action as defamation per se (either because it imputes criminal action to the target or because it impugns the professional character of the target.)

Re:If you're downloading music at work...

[smellsofbikes]

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.

Re:If you're downloading music at work...

[ajs]

If you're downloading music at work, it probably is stealing...

...of company time. And given that my taxes are paying these people's salaries (that is, you and I are "the company"), I'd really rather them not.

Yes, I agree. No one should be allowed to listen to music at work. For that matter, windows should be painted black and I can't see a reason for anyone below a GS7 to go without blinders in the office.

Seriously, what kind of nonsense is this? If I do my job, I should be allowed to select whatever kind of silly thing I want to put on top of my monitor; adjust my chair however I want; and select whatever sort of music I'd like to listen to. Having a "pointy haired bosses must stay out of my way" attitude for "us" and then this kind of oppressive attitude toward anyone who happens to be employed by the U.S. Federal Government is absurd.

Re:If you're downloading music at work...

[dangitman]

But such is the way if you don't ever need to make a profit...

Riiiight... because governance should be about turning a profit. The argument that that would be stealing from the people is a stronger argument than that tax is theft.

Re:If you're downloading music at work...

[smellsofbikes]

I've seen it. Have you?

Lol

[jayhawk88]

According to the material, the correct response to an employee who is downloading music is to shout 'That's stealing!'

WTF is this, Dora the Explorer? Swiper, no swipey! Nice job, lame ass contract media company who probably got paid $10 million to create the worst instructional videos ever.

Re:Lol

[amicusNYCL]

That's not entire true, and not everyone agrees with you.

The company I work for makes CBT courses like what you see here, and the military is one of our clients. We don't get broad open contracts, we have to bid and compete for them, and the scope of work is limited to the CBT that we're creating. The prices the military pays are the same prices that corporations pay (in fact, we even discount the military's price because they've been so consistent in giving us work).

And, finally, I'll add that our company has won several training industry awards (including [especially] for work we've done for the military), and we employ a staff of highly-qualified writers and artists. You can sit there and say the government spends too much money to get sub-par "pieces of crap" without detailing what exactly your "plenty of first-hand experience" is, but quality is all about the vendor. If you choose a good vendor, you get a good product. If you choose a sub-par piece of crap vendor, then you get a sub-par piece of crap product. And this comes from my own experience of working for a government vendor that produces exactly the type of thing you're critiquing (although the CBT in question is not ours).

Sorry if that influences your mod, but I don't think you're as insightful as you would like others to believe.

Re:Lol

[bky1701]

But suddenly I say: and some people want this same government in charge of our healthcare and now I'll be modded troll into oblivion.

I would never suggest something so stupid. Just look at the USPS and the Interstate System. Wonderful examples of utter failure. Imagine if we let private companies build and control our essential infrastructure instead. We'd be so much better off!

Re:Lol

[raddan]

But suddenly I say: and some people want this same government in charge of our military and now I'll be modded troll into oblivion.

Fixed that for ya. Oh wait, still a dumb thing to say...?

The government is a very large and diverse group of people. Some of those people do legitimately deserve to be criticized, but many, many, many of them do not. They do their jobs daily and with excellence, often for little compensation.

To infer that the government would be bad at managing health care because of a single instance of idiotic training materials is an example of woefully poor logic...

Re:Lol

[vertinox]

But suddenly I say: and some people want this same government in charge of our healthcare and now I'll be modded troll into oblivion.

I think the problem is that private care is too efficient. If the contract says you can't throw pre-existing conditions to the curb then I'm all for it.

Its really impossible to use capitalism with a health care system because in order to make the most profit you have to deny people healt hcare and that, as we see, does not not work that well.

Imagine you would a private military, police force, fire department.

They'd only go out and help when there is a profit to be made. A lot of crime and houses burn down simply because its not cost effective to stop everything.

Re:Lol

[Risen888]

I am from Minneapolis. I remember when that bridge fell, I was scared to death. I've got a couple dozen friends who cross that bridge twice a day. Scared the hell out of everybody.

It's not good when a bridge falls down. Bridges shouldn't fall down. But as far as such things go, that bridge went down exactly the way it was designed to, straight down and in big contiguous blocks, and emergency plans were executed promptly, heroically, and correctly. I don't know where you're from, but we get shit done around here. We don't fuck around.

Thirteen people lost their lives that day. That's the largest single tragedy in my city in as long as I can remember. I in no way make light of that loss.

But hundreds of people lived. Hundreds. A bridge full of people in the middle of evening rush. A school bus full of kids. 60 of them. God, I remember watching the news, watching that bus. I'm not a guy easily swayed to emotion, but Jesus Christ, 60 kids. Everyone in this city paced in front of their TV and chewed their nails and prayed for those kids.

And every single one lived. They lived when they could have died. They lived because emergency response and government agencies did their job.

"A state bridge on an Interstate highway over a county river between two banks of a city... we didn't have one problem." -Rocco Forte, city Emergency Preparedness Director

Initially, design and construction was predicted to take a year and a half, and news reports called that hopelessly optimistic. One year and nineteen days worth of seven-day work weeks later, months ahead of schedule, millions of dollars under budget, the new I-35W bridge was opened to the public. It is truly one of the most beautiful pieces of civic engineering in the upper midwest.

Your post is ignorant in the extreme and incredibly offensive not simply to the people that were there that day, but to the literally thousands of municipal, county, state, and federal employees, not to mention private agencies and contractors, whose diligence, civic devotion, and amazing work not only mitigated what could have been an exponentially worse disaster, but as an encore created one of the first truly great pieces of American engineering of the 21st century.

So fuck you.

Re:Lol

[31415926535897]

You mean that same USPS that is going to have a $7 BILLION deficit this year? Yeah, you can look really efficient and super cool if you can blow through $7B you don't have.

And look, I like the interstate system as much as the next guy, but our state won't stop construction on I-88 because then they'd have to take down the toll booths. And believe me the work is not necessary or helpful. I'm not saying we should let private companies build our roads, but regardless of what it is, IT SUCKS when the government does it. There's an interstate in Washington State that has an exit in DuPont (yes, the city and the company). The state was going to build the exit and charge DuPont for the privilege. DuPont said, 'if we can build it to your specs, can we do it ourselves?' The government said yes and DuPont built it for half the price the state was going to charge them.

As far as health care, there's a lot more to be said about it than just comparing the government's job of doing other things. I don't know what the answer is there. I think that we've lost the 'insurance' aspect of health care. People want their insurance company to pay for everything (why don't we have car insurance cover tuneups?). If people paid for all the little, routine things and had the insurance for catastrophic things (like cancer, or having a limb reattached), then there probably wouldn't be any "crisis". And I think the whole system would probably be in much better health if 64% of American's weren't overweight/obese. Perhaps you shouldn't get insurance if you've caused your own demise through negligence.

When did that happen?

[argent]

I remember when I recorded my band in the living room and copied the cd to my computer. When iTunes told me I didn't have the required rights to make a cd copy I quit using iTunes.

I've been using iTunes for at least six years and I've never had it tell me I didn't have permissions to burn music no matter WHERE it came from.

Re:When did that happen?

[Binestar]

Most likely he was running as a standard user instead of as an administrator. If iTunes doesn't have admin rights or an admin process deeper down to allow burning you'll get the invalid rights.

But that's the song name?!?

[dspkable]

So what if the name of the song is "THAT'S STEALING!". Sales will skyrocket for that band.

Re:Can I quit the government?

[djrogers]

Troll - you lose. iTunes has never been capable of making DRM encumbered copies of CDs. Windows Media Player on the other hand has been capable of it, and in fact that was the default setting for several versions.

All music ripped via iTunes goes into non-DRM'd MP3, AAC, or ALC (Apple Lossless Codec). Any or all of the above formats can also be burned back to CD by iTunes. in fact, even the old DRM'd FairlPlay AAC files from the iTunes Music Store could be burned to CD.

No, Gov't policies were on sale at 50% off!

[denis-The-menace]

And the RIAA bought congress critters for cheap!

Otherwise you'd see the gov't suing RIAA and friends for the payola-by-proxy currently going on.

Flash isn't all it's heavy with

[serutan]

"Occasionally breathless tone" is an understatement. Take a look at some of the other training material. The whole site has a Reefer Madness tone, as if it was produced by the same person who directed anti-commie films in the 1950s. I wonder if government training material in general has been given the "War On [fill in the blank]" treatment.

Re:Flash isn't all it's heavy with

[Zaurus]

Eurasia?

Why the focus on music, though?

[langelgjm]

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!

Re:Can I quit the government?

[hansamurai]

Is there an easy way to quit using the government?

Shrug.

Re:Can I quit the government?

[Mr2001]

Is there an easy way to quit using the government?

Move to Somalia. It's a government-free paradise!

Not at all surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked in the defense industry, with a security clearance, for going on twenty years now, and you have to understand, this kind of stupidity is not at all unusual. On the military side, the security officers are usually MPs (or SPs, for the Air Force) who've been dragooned into doing information security. They aren't stupid (well, most of them aren't), but they also aren't trained for that kind of work--they're supposed to be cops. But "one size fits nobody," so they get assigned by their branch to information protection slots, receive a couple of weeks of Power Point slide training, and then they're placed over engineers and techs whose knowledge of the IT systems runs rings around them. As a result, their response to anything new is hard-wired: "no."

It's even worse on the civilian/contractor side. Security jobs don't pay well, and because you get what you pay for, the dregs of the organization tend to filter down to those positions. What's worse, once there, your average security guy/gal has power over smarter/more competent people for the first time in their careers, and a small but very present minority of them proceed to abuse that power and act arbitrarily, usually out of ignorance, but occasionally out of pure spite. This kind of mindless "training" presentation is what most of them do all day. As you can see, the results are less than impressive.

Copyright act of 1790

[symbolset]

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.

Did anyone read the training materials?

[HikingStick]

The flame of the article is based on the phrasing of the general question. If you click the "Learn More" link, it is clear that the warning is about downloading via P2P file sharing networks. The use of P2P networks is a violation of the DOD Information Systems network use. That's the thrust of the training.

It may not be clear from the phrasing in the question, but in the context (i.e., when administered to people who are constantly exposed to DOD Information Systems training and reminders), it will likely be understood by the reader. Chances are, there is likely a prohibition against personal software (including *legal* music downloads) too.

SlashFUD

[chrisG23]

Taken completely out of context and brought to a heightened level of irrational literal interpretation, the summary is accurate. However...........

"According to the material, the correct response to an employee who is downloading music is to shout 'That's stealing!' The actual question in the slideshow/training abomination is along the lines of your fellow co-worker calls you over and says "look bra, I found a site with free music, lol im leet". There are 4 answers to choose from:

1. I'd rather download the music from home - -email me the link. (I would choose this, and tell my coworker that he could get in trouble doing this at work, anywhere from wasting company time, committing criminal acts at work (if it is actually some sort of pirate site, and lets be honest freely available music is mostly (but not entirely) not worth my time) or at worst inviting security problems into the workplace computer.

2. "Is it safe to download?" Umm, if you have to ask then you don't know already (or have a hunch at least) and are trusting some random Jim Bom on this.

3. "Since we're on our lunch hour, I see no harm. HEre's my thumb drie!" Obviously the wrong answer with the thumb drive part added in for extra obviousness

4. "That's stealing." Ok, so they simplified the answer from "that is probably stealing, who owns the distribution rights to these songs you are getting from this website? If the owners of the publishing rights do not consent to giving away these materials freely then a crime is being committed, otherwise it is ok to access this site but not from work, because of the above reasons".

I took this.....I dont know what you'd call it, class, course, button masher until I get to the print certificate screen, because it was required of me where I work. Most of the info for securing information systems in this presentation is solid and correct for the USER side of things, i.e. things the everday user of a computer on a network can and should do to minimize (not eliminate as that is not possible) security breaches at their particular Department of Defense associated workplace. Now excuse me, I need to go participate in the lynching of my co-worker that downloaded the newest whatever is popular pop song at work.

Re:SlashFUD

[RoboRay]

I've also completed this requirement (I'm in the Navy) and remember the "downloading music" security scenario. I was just mindlessly clicking through as fast as I could to get to the "Print Certificate" button, but had to pause for that one because there was no correct option to choose. It's actually the only thing I remember from the entire course.

This is old, so nobody is going to care... STILL

[paulsnx2]

I read through the comments, but can't claim I read every one. But of those I read, I didn't see anyone who pointed out that the guy in the training is showing you a WEB SITE...

BUT all the answers are about the risks of P2P applications ?!?!?

If you are going to a WEB SITE to download music, isn't the P2P application your browser!?!?!