Apparently, Mr. Steshenko thought it was appropriate to use company resources for non-company activities.

Use of phone, desk, email, bathroom, grounds, chairs, kitchen, are all company facilities that are necessary for working for a company, but it is widely accepted that they can also be used personally as perks. At the extreme of a perk-that-is-necessary is "calling your doctor". This is not company business, but if you can't make such calls at the office, you end up working less in order to get around such restrictions. The other extreme is something that takes up company resources due to purely individual convenience: posting to usenet for personal business. This can be done via a private account and does not have to be done from the office, but many companies allow this because they also expect people to work overtime for free and this keeps them at work. Depending upon many factors at a company, the amount of perk usage allowed varies. Some companies have policies about this while others do not. I think the reason no policy exists in many places is that defining it is a form of encouragement (like saying you have exactly 5 sick days a year, and they don't carry over to the next; this causes people to call in sick even when they are not. One company I worked for took sick days out of your vacation days (but you got more vacation days than was ordinary); this encouraged honesty, but also led to sick people coming to work).

On top of that, those activities misrepresented the company.

This gets into the disclaimer bit. I *never* assume a person is speaking for the company unless they are making a product announcement; for anything else, it is fairly easy to see that postings are personal (even if they regard business related subjects like commendts about the quality of particular software). It would be far easier for everyone to assume that no messages represent the company, board of directors, etc., unless explicitly stated as such, simply because official messages are rare and personal/unofficial ones are frequent.

Steshenko's firing is something all the libertarians on this list should applaud.

The cost of accounting/surveillance/policing/ill-will must be balanced with the benefits of having a trusting/open/honest/self-policed-perks policy; this is a tradeoff all organizations must make and has nothing to do with free markets. Libertarian thought doesn't say anything about this tradeoff, except that governments shouldn't coerce a company into a particular position. Paul E. Baclace peb@procase.com