

Really? Porn In The Workplace Is Now A Major Board-Level Concern For Business - Blish123
http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/?p=5312

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imp
This article was written by someone who sells email utilities like spam
blockers, etc. This is his proposed solution to the problem:

 _"This non-confrontational approach can be achieved by using an e-mail
monitoring tool that will not only monitor activity but can also be set to
automatically respond to the activity in a variety of ways."_

It doesn't look like he has a specific porn-filtering utility, but overall I
think his opinion is a little biased.

~~~
pstevensza
The industry sells image analysers hard. I've run ones by M86 Security and
IronPort, and couldn't implement them based on the suggested approach, i.e. an
automatic email wagging a finger at a suspected infringement. Not only do your
employees now feel that they're working for the Ministry of Truth, but I
imagine that you may have some problems if you consistently get it wrong and
falsely accuse people based on a piece of software.

~~~
dkarl
Yeah, I'd get pissed off if I got an email every time I accidentally saw a
racy picture at work. It happens more often than you think, usually when
you're reading about some current event and you read, "Hey, I know someone who
this actually happened to. She blogged about it _here_..." and you end up on a
blog full of pictures of the blogger dressed up for lolicon or cosplay. I
don't want to be auto-badgered by some image recognition program. If anything,
badger me for reading non-work-related news while I'm supposed to be working.
... :-O _Cntl-w_

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ovi256
This is funny, because here in France, a kinda soft-porn site called
BonjourMadame, www.bonjourmadame.fr, has taken offices by storm. The concept
is simple: each day at 10am, they publish a new mind-blowing picture.

Each day, across all offices I know, men (and some women, duh) huddle around a
screen and F5 repeatedly. Someone exclaims "Bonjour, Madame!" and everybody
knows the new pic is up. And nobody seems to be bothered, until now. And it's
even popular in what are otherwise stodgy environments : investment banking,
big Fortune 500 corps.

It's got to the point that network admins have set up special cache rules for
this site to avoid serving stale copies. Funny. Also, I have nothing to do
with the site.

Thanks for the URL correction.

~~~
Mc_Big_G
In the interest of correctness, the link is actually
<http://www.bonjourmadame.fr/>

Mind-blowing is a pretty good description of today's pic.

~~~
hga
After looking at the archives I'd have to say it's pretty tame ^_^.

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JulianMorrison
I'm annoyed by the complete lack of reasoning behind the assumption porn ought
to be especially rejected from workplaces. I'm neutral on the conclusion
itself.

Porn isn't work - neither is reading hacker news, and every sane employer
knows that employees need breaks.

Some porn is sexist and objectifying - arguably not all of it, and a lot of
other things are sexist and objectifying too; are those being equally purged?
That might be a good idea. And what about explicitly feminist porn?

The article mentions the protection from harassment act - that protects
against whatever repeated actions knowingly cause alarm and distress. Porn per
se is never mentioned. No doubt it can be a tool of harassment. Ought it to be
automatically assumed to equal harassment?

The word "inappropriate" is often used - to my mind, that's just a value
judgment, like "sinful", unless it's bundled with a reason that stands up to
scrutiny, and unless every other thing that would be caught by that reasoning
is treated the same. Inappropriate why?

~~~
tow21
People reading HN at work are unlikely to make their colleagues feel
uncomfortable.

People looking at (image-based) porn at work are extremely likely to make at
least some of their colleagues feel uncomfortable. That's not cool.

It doesn't really matter if you feel your colleagues ought or ought not to
feel uncomfortable - some of them almost certainly will, and it's frankly
antisocial behaviour to act in ways that will offend your colleagues,
regardless of whether they "should" be offended.

The particular nature of the porn is irrelevant - whether objectifying, sexist
of otherwise. (Except if it's text-only perhaps. That would get in people's
face much less.)

(And all of the above would be equally true, for example, for image-heavy neo-
fascist boards.)

~~~
JulianMorrison
OK, that's a justification; would you apply it equally to everything that is
just as likely to make others uncomfortable?

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tokenadult
Well, if porn in the workplace keeps government law enforcement agencies from
doing their job to stop serious crimes,

[http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hOvd2ZHpLg...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hOvd2ZHpLgAEKjwU87acksA24EDQD9F8KP9G0)

maybe it should be a concern in those agencies, whether or not it is a concern
to profit-making private businesses.

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rleisti
Problem: board members want to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

Solution: install token software and pretend that the problem is solved.

~~~
shrikant
In 'big business', solving a problem is less important than exhibiting
attempts to solve said problem.

I'm glad I got out of that world when I did.

~~~
bitwize
A.k.a., solving a problem is less important than shifting responsibility.

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jcromartie

        > Furthermore, no line manager relishes the task of 
        > chastising a top sales person for their use of porn; 
        > nor does the business want to risk losing a number of 
        > valuable employees as a result of their inappropriate 
        > behaviour.
    

I'd actually say that in that case (a top sales guy or a valuable employee)
there is no problem at all. If they are truly top performers, what does their
favorite break-time activity (so long as it's not a liability) have to do with
anything?

~~~
wmeredith
You answered your own question in your second parenthetical.

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GFischer
What is the definition of "porn" in "one in five men admitting to accessing
porn at work"? I'll freely admit to having looked at an image of a scantily-
clad woman at work (from a major news outlet of all places), but is that...
"inappropiate material", "porn" or what?.. I can see it being brand damaging
if (female) customers had seen me watch it. I don't get how they reached the
broad-sweeping (and inaccurate IMO) conclusion:"The merging of the home/office
world is complete." and "From personal e-mails to social networking and
downloading porn, individuals will continue to exploit the corporate network
for personal use if they can" ("exploit"?). I try to keep a degree of
separation between work and home, and I believe most do the same (though
"home" can be the laptop I bring with me to work) - I don't use my work PC for
downloading porn or dating - I do use it for personal email or some kinds of
"socialization" like HN.

~~~
nooneelse
HN isn't socialization, it is... ummm, continuing education.

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dpatru
> Under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, employers have a legal
> obligation to prove they are taking all reasonable practical measures to
> protect staff from inappropriate material. Companies and individual
> executives can also face criminal prosecution if employees are found using
> the company’s IT infrastructure to distribute porn, or they fail to prevent
> employees from downloading child pornography into the workplace.

It seems like the author is concerned mainly with a company's criminal
liability for allowing access to porn. The solution to this is a political
one: in a free society, people should not be criminally liable for exchanging
offensive information.

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Psyonic
This is about to get a lot more complicated. Given that more and more people
have access to internet on their phones, it'd be quite easy for someone to
temporary tether to their phone to access whatever they want

