Fired over MP3's

[DUD]

Sounds like a great opportunity for her to sue for improper dismissal. I'd go for discrimination based on sex and/or harassment. What a crock!

[SoopaStar]

Its not a crock. Its completely legit to fire someone for that. The secretary did not own the computer, she was taking her company's bandwidth up downloading MP3's, and she may have violated copyright laws. When I worked as an Admin on the SIUE campus, the employee's mailbox files were stored on our server. Because it was novell, many employee's didn't realize this. The recieved all KINDS of attachements and junk pics and stored them on the server. I purged one emp's attachment folder and cleared up nearly a gig of space. I didn't even bother to look and see what was in the folder. Later I found out it was full of those funny flash movies, mp3s, and the other junk that he was just "saving".
You are not paid to to search for mp3s, surf for porn (got another funny story on that one!) or anythign else. Its okay by me if you do email at work..hell I do, but if you have attachments, clean up. If its a personaly email, forward it to your personal email address and get on with work.
Quit wasting time.

Paul

[ND]

SoopaStar is 100% right. If you don't own the computer, you can't use it for your personal needs without permission. The case is similar to the dude who ran "Distributed" services on computers he was in charge off, and expecting now to do time of 15 years
Well, 15 years is way too much, money lawsuit would be enought ...
But the cases are similar. With todays broadband Internet, ppl jam the traffic, and waste gigs of HD space with funny movies and MP3s.
I do at work whatever I want to - but I'm the Boss

Best Regards ...

[cerberus6]

"Tomino said, she was told that the school had been contacted by former Beatle George Harrison’s music company in regard to alleged unauthorized works in her MP3 collection."


Hahahaha! What a laugh...I think there's a little more to her termination than just storing MP3 files on her computer. If the school was truly contacted, then maybe she was using a box as a distribution server for George Harrison's re-re-re-re-release of his Greatest Hits album? Okay, 2,000 MP3's are a touch much, and if they were truly legit, she should have asked for permission to store them...and NOT distribute them. Some companies are tighter about this than others.

[DUD]

FROM NOW ON I PROMISE TO READ THE ENTIRE STORY BEFORE PASSING JUDGEMENT!

Yes, if there were existing guidelines regarding personal use of the computer and the bandwidth available, and this employee violated those guidelines, the employer may very well be justified in taking action. I apologize for popping off before reading.

I can't help but wonder if there are other factors involved, however. One might be concern about potential liability with regards to the copyrighted material. Another might be a desire to find a plausible excuse to terminate an employee found to be otherwise unsatisfactory....

[radio1_mike]

I think it most likely had to do with the number of mp3s too.

C'mon, 2000? At 5MB a pop, depending on how long or what bit rate they're at-- that's 10GB of data.

I think this story would be truly alarming if say, the amount of mp3s was around 100 or so. In my experience, many download a few mp3s. At that number, if IT came around and they were upset they'd ask you to delete them.

But 2000?! She was asking for it....

I have a broadband connection at home and have only about 600.

[reagan_oconnor]

PCs, e-mail, bandwidth, T-1 connections... all are company property, just as are telephones and sticky notes and paperclips. Using your work PC for personal use is unethical at the least and grounds for termination at the most. You wouldn't place long-distance personal calls from your work phone, would you? The same should apply to your work PC.

My company has a strict "Computer/Electronic Mail Policy & Internet Code of Conduct." We have lockdowns in place on field PCs so that they cannot run executables. If we catch users with non-licensed software or unauthorized files, we advise them to re-read their policy and procedure, and then draft a report to our supervisor, who routes his report through human resources. I am unaware of a situation in which an employee was fired specifically for Internet or e-mail abuse, but there are employees whose non-work-related PC use contributed to their termination.

We had a part-time freelancer who downloaded a pornographic video to the workstation he was using. We never called him back for work...

[Mojo5958]

I'm reading this right now, at work, on company time, and listening to pirated MP3s... Have a great day!

[Mojo5958]

I'm reading this right now, at work, on company time, and listening to pirated MP3s... Have a great day!

[alondra]

I notice MOJO doesn't identify himself, if I was his boss and read this he would be cleaning out his desk, and I'd check his pockets on the way out.