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."

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

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.

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: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: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!

Re:But that's the song name?!?

[AME]

Sales will skyrocket for that band.

Or downloads will.

Re:Why the focus on music, though?

[0racle]

I think you'd find half the internet IS illegal.

Re:Why the focus on music, though?

[cthulu_mt]

If the summary is accurate

You must be new here.

Re:Lol

[larry bagina]

30-80 Cock & Ball Torture sessions a year! And they're all crap? What kind of extreme shit are you into?!?!@?!@!?

Re:Non-Flash Equivalent

[HTH NE1]

Every stream of bits can be interpreted as audio, so technically, if you're using the internet, you're "downloading music". Not to mention how many times your computer copies it around.

Someone been reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency?

Because he was too tired to think particularly constructively tonight he savagely selected and copied a whole swathe of figures from the spreadsheet at random, pasted them into his own conversion program, which scaled and filtered and manipulated the figures according to his own experimental algorithms, loaded the converted file into Performer, a powerful sequencer program, and played the result through random MIDI channels to whichever synthesizers happened to be on at the moment.

The result was a short burst of the most hideous cacophony, and he stopped it.

He ran the conversion program again, this time instructing it to force-map the pitch values into G minor. This was a utility he was determined in the end to get rid of because he regarded it as cheating. If there was any basis to his firmly held belief that the rhythms and harmonies of music which he found most satisfying could be found in, or at least derived from, the rhythms and harmonies of naturally occurring phenomena, then satisfying forms of modality and intonation should emerge naturally as well, rather than being forced.

For the moment, though, he forced it.

The result was a short burst of the most hideous cacophony in G minor.

So much for random shortcuts.

Re:Non-Flash Equivalent

[damburger]

Bloody hell, not a big mystery what your favourite film is, is it?

Re:Why the focus on music, though?

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

The proper abbreviation of "Association" is "Assn." not "Ass."; yet somehow, if you used it, your post would be less accurate than it is now...

Re:Why the focus on music, though?

[Grishnakh]

Yes, for most associations, the proper abbreviation is "Assn." However, when talking about the RIAA and MPAA, the proper abbreviation is "Ass." And if there were a "TIAA" and "IIAA" that operated anything like the RIAA/MPAA, then they would also get the "Ass." abbreviation.

Remember, the English language is a living language, and anything is correct and proper as long as enough people use the language that way. So everyone needs to be sure to use the abbreviation "Ass." when talking about the MPAA and RIAA.

Installation of sarcasm detector

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what operating system/distro you're using, so I'll include instructions for several.

Debian/Ubuntu:
apt-get sarcasm

Gentoo:
emerge sarcasm

Slackware:
tar -xvzf sarcasm.tar.gz

Windows:
Go to The Pirate Bay, search for 'sarcasm detector', and install it with the aid of the included keygen.

Be sure to run these with superuser/root/admin privileges. Good luck!

Re:Non-Flash Equivalent

[Inda]

I love these CBT flash thingies.

I was asked to 'install' one not so long back. It was for a National Grid Electrical Safety Rules. There were 100 questions and a printable certificate at the end.

On my third attempt, I got 96%. Higher than all the proper electrical engineers around here (I'm a keyboard monkey). My certificate is pinned to the wall. I am qualified. Really, I am, the computer told me so.

Re:Apple's iTMS may beg to differ

[sorak]

That's still no reason to falsely accuse someone.

Agreed, why not just instruct people to point and scream "witch!".

It would be too confusing. That's also the standard procedure when meeting Nancy Pelosi.