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MP3 musings
So the head of our department has decided that employees may no longer have any MP3s of any kind on their university-owned computers. Before, employees were only told to remove all illegal MP3s and other media.
Now we must removed ALL of them, even ones we've burned to our hard drives from our personal legally-owned
CD collections.
When I first heard this, I was very, very upset. After all, I'd gone to great pains to bring in CDs I own
and burn them all to the (large) hard drive, so that I wouldn't have to lug heavy CD cases to work.
But now I can begin to see the problem from their perspective. Here are their reasons:
1.) The university is being majorly hounded by the music industry and the MPAA. After all, a huge amount of illegal stuff is being served from unsecured university machines. At another university, several students were arrested for running servers out of their dorm rooms.
2.) The unversity says that a very large percentage of the total on-campus bandwidth has been clogged with illegal downloads and uploads. When the MPAA called up the university about a month prior to the official release of "Tbe Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" and said "hey, BTW, someone hacked into one of your computers and is serving copies of this film to the world from it", the university got very upset. That thing not only took up a lot of bandwidth, it revealed the very embarrassing state of security (lack of) here. The employee whose Windows computer was hacked had not taken any measures to secure his/her computer, and was not aware that someone has hacke in.
3.) The tedium involved in verifying violations is enormous. If a computer has a ton of songs burned to it, checking to see if each song has a corresponding paid-for CD version or Apple Music store credit card proof, or other proof of ownership is probably a real pain. The university has already had to do this where students were involved. So they probably figured that with employees, if no one had any songs at all burned to their drives, then the whole problem would be wiped out -- no need to sift through songs if there aren't any at all.
We're still allowed to do the following:
1.) Listen to CDs in our computers' CD players as long as we don't burn the contents.
2.) Listen to streaming audio.
3.) Bring in a regualr CD player or iPod.
4.) Bring in our own personal laptops (i.e. personal rather than university-owned hardware) and have whatever we want to have on those, as long as the laptops have sufficient firewall and other security software installed.
Of course, there have also been murmurs about not allowing us to bring in the personal laptops. This would be lame IMHO because my personal laptop is SO much faster, newer, and has a better monitor than any of the university-owned equipment. I can get more work done because I don't have to hang about waiting for things to load and run.
I guess I'm still pretty upset about being told to remove all my legal songs from the work computer, but hey, it isn't my hardware, so I guess I don't have that much say in the matter. As long as they don't make me leave my personal laptop at home, I don't really have a right to be too upset.
It's just about expectations and what people are used to doing and having. Humans don't like change, and we tend to balk at it, no matter how many sides there are to an issue, no matter how many grey areas there are.
And getting upset with my employer would do little good, I guess, because they in turn are being pressured by the music and movie industries. It's easier to be upset at those companies.
Now we must removed ALL of them, even ones we've burned to our hard drives from our personal legally-owned
CD collections.
When I first heard this, I was very, very upset. After all, I'd gone to great pains to bring in CDs I own
and burn them all to the (large) hard drive, so that I wouldn't have to lug heavy CD cases to work.
But now I can begin to see the problem from their perspective. Here are their reasons:
1.) The university is being majorly hounded by the music industry and the MPAA. After all, a huge amount of illegal stuff is being served from unsecured university machines. At another university, several students were arrested for running servers out of their dorm rooms.
2.) The unversity says that a very large percentage of the total on-campus bandwidth has been clogged with illegal downloads and uploads. When the MPAA called up the university about a month prior to the official release of "Tbe Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" and said "hey, BTW, someone hacked into one of your computers and is serving copies of this film to the world from it", the university got very upset. That thing not only took up a lot of bandwidth, it revealed the very embarrassing state of security (lack of) here. The employee whose Windows computer was hacked had not taken any measures to secure his/her computer, and was not aware that someone has hacke in.
3.) The tedium involved in verifying violations is enormous. If a computer has a ton of songs burned to it, checking to see if each song has a corresponding paid-for CD version or Apple Music store credit card proof, or other proof of ownership is probably a real pain. The university has already had to do this where students were involved. So they probably figured that with employees, if no one had any songs at all burned to their drives, then the whole problem would be wiped out -- no need to sift through songs if there aren't any at all.
We're still allowed to do the following:
1.) Listen to CDs in our computers' CD players as long as we don't burn the contents.
2.) Listen to streaming audio.
3.) Bring in a regualr CD player or iPod.
4.) Bring in our own personal laptops (i.e. personal rather than university-owned hardware) and have whatever we want to have on those, as long as the laptops have sufficient firewall and other security software installed.
Of course, there have also been murmurs about not allowing us to bring in the personal laptops. This would be lame IMHO because my personal laptop is SO much faster, newer, and has a better monitor than any of the university-owned equipment. I can get more work done because I don't have to hang about waiting for things to load and run.
I guess I'm still pretty upset about being told to remove all my legal songs from the work computer, but hey, it isn't my hardware, so I guess I don't have that much say in the matter. As long as they don't make me leave my personal laptop at home, I don't really have a right to be too upset.
It's just about expectations and what people are used to doing and having. Humans don't like change, and we tend to balk at it, no matter how many sides there are to an issue, no matter how many grey areas there are.
And getting upset with my employer would do little good, I guess, because they in turn are being pressured by the music and movie industries. It's easier to be upset at those companies.
no subject
Yet, I get so incensed hearing about the RIAA’s outrage. In my opinion, they are just the slaveowners of the music industry. When I read about Negativland and all the shit they went through, or Steve Albini’s article about the state of the music industry, I just want to scream because they are SO right and it’s all totally fucked up. When someone like Prince, who has enough money to last forever, is on the side of the musician and not the RIAA, it really makes me think. And there are plenty of so called “indie rockers” who will bitch about “the man” while taking his cash under the table or enjoy the perks of being in bed with him all the while claiming to have so much integrity.
no subject
Apple's new music store is sort of interesting, but I still feel that the big companies are getting most of the money, not the artists. If there were really a way to make sure almost all the money went to the artists, I'd be much happier about paying for music.
I'm cynical enough to believe that every time I hear some music in a TV ad by an artist I like, that they probably are not seeing a red cent of the money. Did Iggy Pop really get any money for the use of "Lust for Life" in that silly cruise commercial? I doubt it.
no subject