The US government's annual information security briefing is making the rounds online thanks to a questionable slide or two that indicate that all music downloading is illegal and that government employees need to avoid it at all costs. The slideshow is required for nearly all employees and is meant to drive home the importance of everyone taking basic security measures, but the hyperbolic examples have drawn negative attention to the government's view of downloading and the Internet.

The music-related questions are found in the interactive portion of the presentation, where you are asked to help your buddy Miguel with some downloads on his computer. The slide shows Miguel excitedly showing off all the downloadable music he just found—"and it's free!"—and asks what your response would be. The options range from asking Miguel to e-mail you a link, asking whether it's safe to download, handing over your thumb drive and telling Miguel to hop to it, or to declare, "That's stealing!"

Unsurprisingly, the government says that the fourth answer is the only correct answer. If you select the second answer—to ask whether it's safe to download—the presentation says that it seems like a good idea to ask that question, but it's really not. "It's also illegal and prohibited on DoD networks," the slide reads. Technically speaking, of course, not all free music downloads are illegal—there are numerous sites that allow for free downloads that are completely legitimate, including an Ars favorite, Amie Street.

There are other amusing tidbits from the presentation, including the opening slide that suggests that worldwide rioting and military crackdowns could result thanks to someone with security access losing a laptop or PDA (wow, talk about pressure). However, it also encourages employees to exercise some common sense with their work computers, such as only enabling ActiveX for Department of Defense-related sites and to notify someone immediately if a laptop goes missing. Indeed, with several high-profile laptop disappearances that have exposed personally identifiable information of citizens, it's definitely not a good idea to sit on one's hands on that one.

It's clear that the presentation is aimed at keeping the government network and machines as secure as possible, so the fact that there's no mention of public domain works and free licenses in the music section doesn't come as much of a shock. As an IT admin, would you trust average users to know the difference between a public domain work and a song from a P2P network that may not only be illegal, but could also be malicious? At the same time, as pointed by Slashdot commenters, this presentation is educating thousands of federal employees to be ignorant of the nuances in copyright. There's happy medium, but the government apparently isn't worried about finding it.