Cracking Down on MP3s at the Office 419
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.
Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
My company's policy is to fire (Score:2, Interesting)
First hand story of music banned at work. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.)
Webplay (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Why bother? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bring your MP3's to work on CD-Rom... (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason? We're a pretty easy going company and having a dedicated server saves HDD space on everyone's machines. It also makes it ten times easier to wipe a machine and set it up again, without people complaining that you lost their gigs of MP3s.
I'd say that listening to music allows for greater efficientcy in the workplace too. I know I work better with some funky beats being pumped into my ears.
Re:Bring your MP3's to work on CD-Rom... (Score:1, Interesting)
They'd play Age of Empires across the network (2 sites) during lunch, after work until 9pm (on the company's computers) and had mp3's and wave files out on a production server.
Well, that production server was to hold our information, so I guess they never thought twice about filling it up....
Well, what eventually happened was twofold. One, our networking department was watching the traffic increase, and therefore watching closer every day. Also, someone (corporate audit) found the wave files, and mp3 files, open to everyone in the company (and word spread fast, seeing as everyone and their brother were asking for the sharename.... heh...)
Me? I didn't get any bad marks out of it, but 3 people got fired (2 underlings and one manager, for not taking care of the problem once and for all). See, the manager would delete the files, but then the guys would restore it (from COMPANY BACKUPS!)....
I learned my lesson that year. Never consider yourself irreplaceable, no matter how high up on the totem pole you think you are....
posting anonymously to protect myself.
Gong policy (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bring your MP3's to work on CD-Rom... (Score:1, Interesting)
Never mind the fact that a quarter of the office has Limewire going to get more. I pointed out to one user that she had 9KB free on her drive (KB, not MB) and if we could move some of that gig of music... and she got all defensive that she was allowed to have them and needed them for work and... So I emptied her trash and made a note to revisit after the current deadline had past.
Its the crap you get with Windows... (Score:2, Interesting)
The software should all be on one server. The data files should all be on another. These are company assets. They should be treated as such.
Files should be checked-out and only to the user that should be authorized to use/modify them, checked-in again, journaled stored for check-out again and backed up.
What the hell are we doing with multi-media capable machines in an accounting department? Singing spread sheets announcing how deep you're in the red?
What's with all these CD-ROM drives? The files should be on the company server. If they aren't, you don't need them. If you do have IT put 'em there.
NOBODY needs diskette drives anymore.
The PC should consist on one CPU, only enough RAM as required to run the permissible apps, a NIC, a sensible flat screen monitor so it doesn't eat up all the desk space.
Printing, faxing, communication connection, storage are all shared corporate resources and should reside on networked servers.
Who needs Windows with all the damn bells and whistles?
A bare-bones geegaw-less Linux distro with OpenOffice or StarOffice and whatever specialized software tools the each user really needs to do their job, pulled off the LAN, should be all a business allows.
The rest is expensive distractions and productivity sinks.
Re:Bring your MP3's to work on CD-Rom... (Score:3, Interesting)
And, of course, security camera operators may indulge certain voyeuristic pastimes.
My boss made me do it! (Score:2, Interesting)
I work with a consulting firm, but the office I'm in is down stairs in a suite of our own away from the suits.
For many months we had all gotten used to having tunes playing on the speakers connected to my box (myself and two others split the cost of some cheap Altec Lansing speakers). At first I acquired some mp3s from a coworker upstairs, then later I ripped a bunch of our CDs to OGG and shuttled them to work on CD-RW...
Recently we reorganized our seating arrangement and it left me and another coworker in a room to ourselves. I took the speakers with me since they were connected to the box I was using...
Well, no more than two weeks and my supervisor was franticly trying to come up with a way that he and the ladies in his area could have some music again!
I told him to simply buy some cheap speakers, but he didn't want to at first... Two days later, he gave me $20 to go to the local computer store [infotechnow.com] and get some more cheap speakers for him!
They're happy now! :)
I might waste bit of my time.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe they just need more to do (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Bring your MP3's to work on CD-Rom... (Score:3, Interesting)
Companies unfortunatly cannot condone the mp3 server as it's patently illegal. When workers have mp3s on their machines, companies can claim unknowing, and then only the employee gets in trouble.