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Story URL: http://comment.silicon.com/0,39024711,11035910,00.htm

Time to boot out the techno time-wasters?
Get them before they get you...

By editorial@silicon.com

Published: Thursday 10 October 2002

What a week. There aren't enough hours in the day as it is without some bright spark deciding to offer us 50 free music downloads. Digital Download 'Day' indeed - it took a week to finally download all 50.

It was bad enough when you just had to make time to look at some movie clips you'd been sent, or reply to all the emails you received from your friends while you were out at Starbucks picking up a coffee, or down the corridor playing Quake with the IT boys.

Then throw into the mix a shopping trip to Amazon.co.uk mid-afternoon, a look at the new Lord of the Rings trailer, a quick look at your bank balance online and a tour of your favourite sports sites and you start to get a sense of just how busy the average worker is this days.

And then you get somebody going on at you, telling you to 'get your work done'. If only you had the time... right?

Most employers would like to believe this isn't the case. Too many employees are sitting tight hoping they never cotton on. But now Websense and Macrovision have stepped in to try to encourage employers to get busy with the spying and stop their procrastinating employees in their bandwidth hogging tracks.

Of course both companies are trying to sell something, so they would say that, but they've also got a point. This week we've seen another case of a company being tarnished by an employees' less than savoury antics. Two years ago the name of City law firm Norton Rose was dragged through the mud by the notorious Claire Swire email. Now we've got Trevor Luxton - who's done for Credit Lyonnais what Gerald Ratner did for crystal decanters.

Then there's the case of the US firm stung for $1m by the Recording Industry Association of America when it was discovered company bosses had been far from strict with employees exchanging illegal MP3s on the network.

In all three cases - and we could add one infamous 'Dell boy' and 100 Hewlett-Packard staff to the list- the public embarrassment, expenses and hassle could all have been avoided if people were just getting on with their work.

Of course that over-simplifies the case, but next time you are stuck for something to do while in the office because you've played all your games, watched all your video clips, downloaded all your MP3s and replied to all your personal emails, you might like to take two minutes to wonder what it will be like if it is you or your company who is the next to be named and shamed on the front page of the Sun.