The RIAA and MPAA Target Day-Job Downloaders

BrianUofR points to this USA Today article, which says "the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are sending a six-page brochure this week to Fortune 1000 corporations with suggested policies -- including a sample memo to workers warning them against using company computers to download songs and movies."

do you wanna bet...

[TheHawke]

That some of the know-nothing managers will forward these boilerplate memos onto their charges without any changes??

ALSO, how many managers will take their threats for real?

In the UK

[jaavaaguru]

In the UK, it's not unusual for people to have Internet connections at home that are just as fast as those at work. I have 512mbps broadband at home and am considering upgrading to 1mbps, which will be 4 times faster than I have at work.

If I wanted to download a lot of music, I'd SSH to a machine at home and do it there where it's faster. I guess it's different in the US though where lots of companies have T3 connections.

I'd also have though that a lot of large organisations (e.g. Fortune 1000 companies) would already have "downloading music/video" policies in place, and the smaller companies would be the ones with people doing things like this.

Anyway, if you need to spend time doing stuff like that, you're job must not be interesting enough - you employer should tackle that problem first!

This isn't that bad...

[I'm a racist.]

Honestly, compared to the usual shit these two organizations pull, sending out recommended procedures is really not so bad. Of course, (not having read the memo) I'll assume they made some "threats" against those companies that don't implement said procedures (as per their 'usual shit').

If they kept themselves confined to asking companies to police themselves, and "enlightening" the public to the plight of their failing business model, I wouldn't really hate them. The problem is that they insist on buying laws and bullying other companies into proping up their fading legacy.

What I want to know is...

[Visaris]

How much will it cost the RIAA and MPAA to send out all these letters? How much money will they save/make by stopping the "theft"?

More bureaucracy...

[$$$$$exyGal]

The "sample memo to employees" includes language informing workers that using computers to share illegal files can result in disciplinary action, including termination.

Ok, I don't really have a problem with that, because you shouldn't be using your employer's network like that.

The brochure recommends performing regular audits of employees' computers to search for audio and video files as well as the presence of peer-to-peer software.

But that is a really stupid recommendation. For one, who's going to pay for that? For two, the last thing big companies need is more big-brother'ness. There are already cameras everywhere, and it's already tough to get anything installed on your network without a huge audit. Now they are going to add: "We need to check your computer every night for MP3's, so make sure you leave your computer on". Just more bureaucracy.

--sex [slashdot.org]

I'm scared(!)

[Duds]

[quote]
The brochure recommends performing regular audits of employees' computers to search for audio and video files as well as the presence of peer-to-peer software.
[/quote]

Gotta love working for the govt.

They gave me the laptop with win95. My very first task was to stick XP on it but give it the exact same hostname.

No-one has yet noticed but my life is a lot more pleasent.

In adddition, the 2Mbit connection we have is only ever stressed by me and the occasional vnc session (again mostly me). Certainly no-one has access to any logs since we all go out direct. If they catch it at head office (our line goes through them) then they won't be able to tell which PC did it our end.

And the laptop comes home with me at night,

This'll be fun.

When will they learn?

[ZeroIdea]

Since the movie and music industry continue to lose money, how long before they realize the old busines model does not work anymore. Honestly if they fired all the lawyers and special groups and started worrying about finding good artists and producing quality entertainment I would think their sales would increase, but they keep making more boy bands and wh0rish chick groups. I mean just how much money are they losing in the courts since a good lawyer costs a lot and you know they have a small army of them. Give them enough time and you won't be able to listen to any of your cds or watch your dvds unless you call in and activate them and after you are done you can watch them self destruct.

My company already did this to us..

[stephenisu]

The admin at my work was way ahead on this one.. not only did he try to scare us by saying it was illegal.. but he used a script to email EACH employee a list of mp3 and ogg files on our comps.. no way did i think he would catch my ogg files.. damn he's good. Thats one way to stop this stuff at work.

Re:at work?

[Sanity]

Wow - then you go and prove my point.

There is no reason for them not to wash their hands either, perhaps you should send a memo about that too?

oooh...evil!!!

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

Here's my message to those who would decry this as another RIAA/MPAA evil act:

Just remember, kiddies, that most large workplaces don't even CARE WTF you're doing on their computers, as long as it isn't work related. Using company equipment for non-work-related activities is grounds for dismissal in many firms, so the RIAA really shouldn't have any resistance here. They're lobbying for a different idea, but will have the same result.

Re:This isn't that bad...

[Forgotten]

But the question remains, what the hell business does the RIAA or MPAA have telling me how I should administer *my* business. This isn't for your own good in the sense that it'll improve productivity (in fact, being able to listen to music at work and freely use the net often raises productivity). That's only a question of having good employees with interesting work to do anyway.

This is simply a veiled legal threat. It's "do this or we'll eventually get around to suing your ass off". Never mind that it's largely an empty threat - the intent is to invade another business and, through legal chill, affect the way they *do* business. And that's simply unacceptable.

What about universities?

[apple-marc]

Most (if not all) have bradband connections - and students - no money and in the RIAA's usual target audience - probably download much more music.

AOL TimeWarner ads say trade songs with RoadRunner

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard on Time Warner cable channel today, in a pitch for AOL/Time Warner's digital cable service/road runner, that you can "download movies on demand" and "trade songs with families and friends" as part of their pitch for selling their service.

Time Warner is part of the MPAA/RIAA. Very interesting to hear that they are pitching "trade songs with families and friends" as part of road runner. What type of applications do you think they are talking about when they mention "trade songs..."? What applications other than p2p are the general public aware of when it comes to "trading songs..."?

Is AOL/Time Warner pitching p2p file sharing as a reason to get their service?

Can someone capture the audio on this commercial and email it to one of the groups that are fighting for fair use rights in Washington?

AOL TimeWarner ads say trade songs with RoadRunner

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted the parent. I don't have any sales brochures. It is a commercial that is running on television. I haven't paid enough attention to see if it was a cable channel, or a network channel (tv is running in background, and I never pay attention to commercials). My VCR is dead, or I'd have a vcr running all day to try and capture that commercial.

It would be really helpful if someone could capture that commercial (video and/or audio) in its entirety.

If you can get the audio and make an mp3 or wav out of it, that would be great. For video, use best judgement, but an open source tool would be preferred.

If you are able to capture audio and/or video of the time warner/road runner commercial as described in the parent post, please contact "one name like Cher" at http://www.nylxs.com and you'll be given an email address to send the file to.

You'll be helping the fight for fair use rights.

btw, I don't use road runner. I have a dsl connection that doesn't have any restrictions, I can run servers, vpn, no restrictions on ports, etc.

And one more important point for road runner users: prior to on demand movies, you got decent bandwidth on road runner as long as there weren't many road runner users in your immediate area on line at the same time. If a lot of users were on line and downloading at the same time, your connection crawls. I have relatives who have the service, and I've seen the service (prior to on demand movies) slow down to slower than dial up during certain times of the day and evening. I haven't seen time warner cable running any additional wiring in any nearby neighborhoods. That means you are now competing with on demand movies for bandwidth. You may want to avoid the internet during evening/night hours from now on.

Good luck.