Sharing iTunes on company network

[26139]

Music Law ~ Copyright Law,
Tomatoe ~ Tomatoe

Yeah, not so much.

Is it illegal for me to load you a CD?

If I turn up my speakers and you listen to my music, is that illegal? What about if we share headphones?

What if I have a party with a keg and I charge for admission (let's say $5 for keg cups) and have music playing in the background. Am I making money off of musical performance?

Music Law ~ Copyright Law,
Tomatoe ~ Tomatoe

Is it okay for me to stream songs from iTunes over the corporate network?

Let's assume bandwidth isn't an issue.

 

[pismobrat]

Yeah, not so much.

Is it illegal for me to load you a CD?

If I turn up my speakers and you listen to my music, is that illegal? What about if we share headphones?

What if I have a party with a keg and I charge for admission (let's say $5 for keg cups) and have music playing in the background. Am I making money off of musical performance?

Well let me clarify.

1) I live in Canada
2) No we don't live in igloos
3) Our beer is better than the US

In canada the copy right system is specific and states that copying a copy-protected cd is illegal. But in the home vs a business, the use of P2P software is legal. Where this statute comes in to play is that Hard Drives have not been reviewed under the act. For a business to attempt to use this argument to "allow" their employees freedom to have you load or access the content locally or even over a network, would consitute a violation of copyright infrigement and point into providing a unsafe work environment so far as the direction that a user using a machine unknowingly storing files could be help personally liable in a companies eyes.

 

[26139]

Yes...

Well let me clarify.

1) I live in Canada
2) No we don't live in igloos
3) Our beer is better than the US

In canada the copy right system is specific and states that copying a copy-protected cd is illegal. But in the home vs a business, the use of P2P software is legal. Where this statute comes in to play is that Hard Drives have not been reviewed under the act. For a business to attempt to use this argument to "allow" their employees freedom to have you load or access the content locally or even over a network, would consitute a violation of copyright infrigement and point into providing a unsafe work environment so far as the direction that a user using a machine unknowingly storing files could be help personally liable in a companies eyes.

1. Cold there, eh?
2. Duh, that's Alaska.
3. Yes, but...****. I've often visited Vancouver, so I can't even attempt to argue this point. Dogfish Head is making some waves though.

Streaming is not copying. That makes a BIG difference.

 

[decksnap]

Well let me clarify.

1) I live in Canada
2) No we don't live in igloos
3) Our beer is better than the US

Your beer=our beer. Thank you for being our hat.

 

[26139]

No no no no

Your beer=our beer. Thank you for being our hat.

There's always one guy...

Way to be that guy.

 

[decksnap]

There's always one guy...

Way to be that guy.

What? We lose a lot of heat up that way. They keep us warm. For that I am grateful.

 

[26139]

Yeah...no, not really

What? We lose a lot of heat up that way. They keep us warm. For that I am grateful.

Well, it's definitely not working. Notice how 95% of the population lives right on the border...

 

[DoFoT9]

Actually it was pretty factual post.

The maths that you want to see is simple. Take the bandwidth available minus the bandwidth used and if the bandwidth used is greater or equal to the bandwidth available your in trouble. I would imagine most corporate IT managers would like to have a 10% safety net incase of increased usage although I doubt many get it.

Now imagine you have have 5 people streaming lossless music across a network at an average bit rate of 600kbps over a 100baseT network. 600 x 5 = 3,000 kbps. 100 baseT is 100mbps so that leaves you with 97mbps. Now take into account the network overhead that is always a factor and your looking at 95 - 96mbps and you haven't actually used the network for anything useful at all. That is 5% of your network capacity gone just so 5 people can share music.

and if you add to the fact that people are actually DOING WORK aswell as streaming music. the music would probably be to keep the people on task, so if someone is constantly changing things on the servers there is also a hell of a lot more data that is streaming along the network , so that bandwidth would fill up pretty quickly, especially on 100 T-base.

 

[pismobrat]

Well, it's definitely not working. Notice how 95% of the population lives right on the border...

Because the whole plan is that we are sneaking up on you. Out of any country in the world, Canada would be the least expected to take over another country.

We are the perfect sleeper.

 

[26139]

Riiight...

Because the whole plan is that we are sneaking up on you. Out of any country in the world, Canada would be the least expected to take over another country.

We are the perfect sleeper.

hahahahahahahhahahahahahaha....

Oh, come on now.

What are you going to attack with, an army of Mounties and 25 planes?

That's not even funny.

 

[DoFoT9]

hahahahahahahhahahahahahaha....

Oh, come on now.

What are you going to attack with, an army of Mounties and 25 planes?

That's not even funny.

i reckon australia would attack. i know i would.

get ready for spears and dingoes!!!

 

[pismobrat]

hahahahahahahhahahahahahaha....

Oh, come on now.

What are you going to attack with, an army of Mounties and 25 planes?

That's not even funny.

Screw the Monties and the 25 Planes.

We have millions of moose with head mounted Air to Ground combat weaponry. And don't even get me started about our all season snow forts.

 

[beatsme]

What if I have a party with a keg and I charge for admission (let's say $5 for keg cups) and have music playing in the background. Am I making money off of musical performance?

Technically, yes.

there are exceptions, but generally if you're playing pre-recorded music in an environment where money is changing hands, then you owe the record companies via ASCAP their cut. Go to any bar or any club that plays pre-recorded music over their sound system (or books live bands that play covers) and ask. Most of them pay an annual fee to ASCAP to rent the catalog (BMI does not charge for theirs) and if you don't pay, believe me, the ASCAP lawyers will make damn sure you do. I have seen this happen.

check it out:
http://www.ascap.com/licensing/licensingfaq.html

granted, ASCAP would never bother with a one-time kegger. But if you have one every weekend, sooner or later they'll find you...

re: iTunes streaming
I deal with it at work. I don't care so much about liability as long as everything's been bought legally, but I've seen the way it hogs bandwidth. I'd like to stop it, but I don't have the clout and I also don't wanna be a jerk about it. Eh...

 

[DoFoT9]

Technically, yes.

there are exceptions, but generally if you're playing pre-recorded music in an environment where money is changing hands, then you owe the record companies via ASCAP their cut. Go to any bar or any club that plays pre-recorded music over their sound system (or books live bands that play covers) and ask. Most of them pay an annual fee to ASCAP to rent the catalog (BMI does not charge for theirs) and if you don't pay, believe me, the ASCAP lawyers will make damn sure you do. I have seen this happen.

check it out:
http://www.ascap.com/licensing/licensingfaq.html

granted, ASCAP would never bother with a one-time kegger. But if you have one every weekend, sooner or later they'll find you...

re: iTunes streaming
I deal with it at work. I don't care so much about liability as long as everything's been bought legally, but I've seen the way it hogs bandwidth. I'd like to stop it, but I don't have the clout and I also don't wanna be a jerk about it. Eh...

what would be really awsome is if you could reserve an amount of bandwidth that could be used for music playing (or anything else for that matter). what would also be good would be if the song would download onto the computer in cache, then play, then just b4 the next song starts it cache's the next song... eh

 

[gnasher729]

Yeah, not so much.

Is it illegal for me to load you a CD?

If I turn up my speakers and you listen to my music, is that illegal? What about if we share headphones?

What if I have a party with a keg and I charge for admission (let's say $5 for keg cups) and have music playing in the background. Am I making money off of musical performance?

If you are at work, the question would be: Could it be possible that the company gets sued over it? (Whether they would win or lose a case doesn't matter, getting sued is expensive anyway). If it isn't self-evident that they cannot get sued, is it a good use of their lawyers' time to check out the situation?

 

[logandzwon]

Actually it was pretty factual post.

The maths that you want to see is simple. Take the bandwidth available minus the bandwidth used and if the bandwidth used is greater or equal to the bandwidth available your in trouble. I would imagine most corporate IT managers would like to have a 10% safety net incase of increased usage although I doubt many get it.

Now imagine you have have 5 people streaming lossless music across a network at an average bit rate of 600kbps over a 100baseT network. 600 x 5 = 3,000 kbps. 100 baseT is 100mbps so that leaves you with 97mbps. Now take into account the network overhead that is always a factor and your looking at 95 - 96mbps and you haven't actually used the network for anything useful at all. That is 5% of your network capacity gone just so 5 people can share music.

You know, actually you pretty much sum up why it DOESN'T make sense to limit that feature. Who streams lossless? 600kbps? iTunes downloaded stuff is 128, modern mp3s average around 160abr. Even if we assume 192cbr that is still 3 users for each one you figured for, so ya, that is 15 users on your 100mbps using 5% of your bandwidth. That is also assuming your using hubs and not switches. If you were switched, and had the proper backplane you would not see any impact even if every person in your company was sharing.

Now, the fact of the matter is that most business I have been in link a couple cheap or old 10/100 switches together with no regard to proper switch design. In this case, yes sharing music could be a problem. As could sharing files, browsing network shares, etc... If more then a couple people do it at the same time.

This reminds me of another company that I was working for. They had all very cheap equipment, three 24 port 10/100 unmanaged switches we paid about $80 each for each uplinked to the other. Then we had a linksys for wifi access for notebooks. Then they started making money and bought a bigger office and went from 50 to 150 people. The problem was they highered someone who didn't understand network design and at one point they had about 75 clients sharing one cisco wifi point. He also had 4 or 5 10/00 switches with GB uplink ports. No one could understand why the wifi was dirt slow so they bought more bandwidth. They upgraded from one to two data Ts. Of course that didn't help the 75 people sharing a single 54 meg network... The VPs ended up getting a "backup" dsl line and attaching a linksys to that. After that they didn't seem to notice the network slow, or if it went down. Look the point here is that many places don't have proper network design. It is usually just kind of cobbled together by who ever with whatever equipment he can get VPs to sign-off on.

 

[logandzwon]

Yeah, not so much.

Is it illegal for me to load you a CD?

If I turn up my speakers and you listen to my music, is that illegal? What about if we share headphones?

What if I have a party with a keg and I charge for admission (let's say $5 for keg cups) and have music playing in the background. Am I making money off of musical performance?

The funny thing about your post, is;
No, but MAFIAA has tried to hard to make it this way.

I could be. If we are in a private setting, no your fine. If you are in the car next to me and I can hear your music, (like, maybe, at a tail gate party,) yes. They consider that public performance and you can be fined heavily for it.

Yes, clearly illegal, although usually unenforced unless like your a running a business like a club or something.

 

[logandzwon]

hahahahahahahhahahahahahaha....

Oh, come on now.

What are you going to attack with, an army of Mounties and 25 planes?

That's not even funny.

Usually the term army in the sense you used it implies there are many of them, rather then a few.

 

[FoxyKaye]

OK - I'm getting in to this fray.

I run a network at a nonprofit, and you know what, sharing iTunes libraries is expressly forbidden on it, as is any form of P2P (easily handled by port blocking), and I frown on Internet radio.

It's all well and good to say IT folks are a pain in the ass when you can't play your friends' music across the LAN, but you know what? When I watch traffic over a network map blow up and suddenly I get a dozen emails asking why folks can't connect properly to our server or have ridiculously slow load times on outside Web pages, I'm darn well going to investigate and put an end to it.

Our T1 manages VoIP and data, and I'm going to cut out every extraneous use of it's bandwidth to the outside world that I can. Likewise, our LAN has anywhere from 10-30 simultaneous users, and I want to be sure they can get their work done and properly connect to our fileserver. And if you're at a nonprofit like I am, it also usually means getting all this done on a shoestring budget, so forget putting in that 6.0/1.5 pipeline or installing fancy new gigabit switches for all.

It's not about being a hardass or arrogant, it's about making sure people have the tools and resources to do their job properly. I review our network policies with staff on a regular basis, give an orientation to new users, and politely but firmly enforce the rules that help *everyone* have the best experience with the equipment and software under my charge.

Edit: I will say that I welcome folks ripping as much as they want into iTunes from their own CDs, the caveat being that unlike their actual work data, their music libraries are not included in the overnight backups. This seems to go down well with folks, who then are still able to have a soundtrack they want to accompany their work.

I too worked in a Creative/Branding Agency that allowed their users to share/stream itunes contect + use limewire on their workstations.

Ayup - you were smart to go. Sooner or later someone is going to download something illegally from the likes of Adobe, HBO, Paramount, or any given large record label and their ISP will need to get involved. A couple slaps on the wrist later, and the ISP can pull the plug because of copyright violations. And, if it happens in a corporate environment, it's usually the company that gets in trouble for it, not the individual, if some large media company wants to take a settlement.

 

[DoFoT9]

.......

Edit: I will say that I welcome folks ripping as much as they want into iTunes from their own CDs, the caveat being that unlike their actual work data, their music libraries are not included in the overnight backups. This seems to go down well with folks, who then are still able to have a soundtrack they want to accompany their work.

i think thats a very good outlook on it, give them limits, but at least allow them to do it is SOME way so that they can be happy campers and work efficently.

what speed is T1???

 

[Nermal]

what speed is T1???

1.5 Mb/s.