Ain’t nobody in the US House of Representatives gonna be listening to no Spotify at work. Why? The House’s IT overlords don’t see fit. Not because Spotify is distracting and there’s real work that needs to be done or anything, no. It’s because Spotify has P2P guts and P2P is baaaaaaad, apparently. Yeah, even the RIAA thinks that line of reasoning is stupid.
Everybody knows that Spotify isn’t P2P the way, say, Naptster was P2P, but that’s not the issue, even thought it probably should be. A spokesman for the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer but it this way to POLITICO:
To help protect House data, our IT policy generally prohibits the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies while operating within the secure network. While Spotify is currently not authorised, the CAO has and will continue to work with outside vendors to enable the popular services that improve member communication capabilities.
Spotify isn’t too jazzed about the whole thing, saying “It is a sad day when a few bureaucrats can block our nation’s leadership from enjoying free, secure access to over 20 million songs,” and even the RIAA is getting in on the admonishment. CEO Cary Sherman told The Hill:
These services are safe and secure, and assuring access to them not only respects the contractual relationship users may have with these services, but also achieves an important public policy goal of promoting legal, safe digital providers.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, streaming music is flowing free, whether through Spotify or other services, hammering home exactly how isolated this weird ban is. Suffice it to say that for now, the likelihood of a sing-a-long in the House of Reps is lower than it would be if Spotify was allowed, and if that’s the case, how is anything ever going to get passed? [Politco via TechDirt]