Judging by the people I see on the train to work each day, many of us couldn't get through a commute or a day in the office without plugging into an iPod to shut out the horror.
But if any earbud addicts were reading the Financial Times over someone's shoulder this morning, they would have been horrified to learn that there are now calls to ban MP3 players in offices:
Media companies are increasingly creating their content on all-digital form ... [creating] multiple opportunities for theft, data corruption and large-scale piracy.
Security companies have been worrying about the issue for some time, but now consultants Deloitte and the digital security company McAfee have added their voices to the debate.
There's good reason for bosses to be concerned. A compact flash card the size of an after-dinner mint can now hold up to eight gigabytes of information - equivalent (pdf) to half a million pages in Microsoft Word or 800,000 pages of emails - while the top-of-the-range iPod holds 60 gigabytes.
Most companies presumably fear all-out mutiny if they try to separate people from their portable jukeboxes, but that sentiment is likely to change as the risks of security breaches increase.
So put down the music player, raise your hands, and walk slowly away. They know your game, information pirate.
