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June Concepcion wrote:

Hi, guys —

One of the bosses here in the company came to visit us one day. He has a huge collection of music files that have been converted to mp3 files. He told us to upload them to one of the hard drives so we could listen to them while we work. He said we could do anything with them.

I transferred some of the music files I like to my hard drive so I could listen to them with my headphone. Not everybody likes the same kind of music.

  • Is it okay to use these music files for personal use?
  • Is it okay to transfer them to my hard drive at home for personal use?

Please advise.

Thank you,

June

  { Is it okay to use these music files and transfer them to my hard drive at home for personal use? }

Eric replied:

Hi, June —

No; this amounts to theft.

Making copies of music for the purpose of avoiding paying proper licensing for it, in such a way that both giver and receiver continue to listen to the music, is a form of theft and hence is wrong.

You are depriving the artists of compensation for their work. What your boss is doing is also highly illegal.

Eric

Mary Ann replied:

June —

If the boss paid for his original music files, then he can put them on the office computer for people to listen to.

Mary Ann

Eric replied:


I might agree with you, Mary Ann, if he made the songs available just for listening to them, but it sounded like he invited them to do anything with them, including, presumably, make their own copies.

Even allowing a number of people to listen to his music has licensing implications, which I'd argue has potential moral implications.

Eric

June replied:

Dear Eric and Mary Ann,

  • So the way I understand this is, if my boss paid for the original music copies then people can listen to these songs from the office computer provided they do not make any copies of these music files, right?

Thank you for your response.

June

Eric replied:

Hi, June —

I was a bit inconsistent in my answer, sorry for the confusion.

It would be definitely wrong if your boss intended to make these files available for everyone to download, or for you to download, with the intent of keeping them to listen to or allowing you to transfer these files to home.

It would be a gray area, at best, for him to make them available for people to listen to. While I'm not sure I can say it's unquestionably legitimate, I'm also not sure I would lose sleep over merely listening to them, but unless your office is small, I don't think it's entirely legal for your boss to make them available to merely listen to.

That's a legal question.

Eric

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