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 ...

Apple's iTMS may beg to differ

[Ralph Spoilsport]

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

RS

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!

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.

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?

[Mr2001]

Is there an easy way to quit using the government?

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

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.

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?