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One More Workplace-Ethics Problem: Watching Online Videos

Mar 17th, 2008 • Posted in: News

Wall Street Journal notes that huge chunks of company time are being consumed by employees tuning into YouTube or MySpace, wasting time and burdening company’s Internet bandwidth

NEW YORK
Watching videos on the job is one of the latest dilemmas in workplace ethics, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Profiling the case of Carriage Services, a funeral-services company that recently discovered that 70 percent of its 125 workers regularly watched videos on sites such as YouTube or MySpace for about an hour a day, Journal reporter Bobby White writes that the problem has become endemic.

“Like Carriage Services, companies across the U.S. are starting to prevent their employees from accessing Internet-video services at work,” White reports. “The move follows previous steps by IT departments to shut employees’ access to instant-messaging services, streaming music and Web sites with adult content.”

“Now, online video has become an increasing irritation. Worker productivity is being jeopardized as short, often low-quality video clips popularized by YouTube are being joined by better-quality video services with long-form content.”

The Journal notes that in addition to the fundamental ethics problem of employees being otherwise occupied when they are supposed to be working, high levels of video-watching consume enormous bandwidth and can crash a company’s computer systems.

Source: Wall Street Journal, Mar. 13.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Jan. 14 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 8, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 17, 2007.

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1. Ethics Newsline » News » Tibet Protests Raise Twin Ethics Issues: China’s Treatment of Dissidents and a Crackdown on New Media that Covers Protests on March 24th, 2008 at 11:57 pm:

   [...] more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 4 [...]

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