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Using P2P To Make Gov't Documents Easy To Find

Posted by timothy on from the whaddya-mean-for-once? dept.

Trinition writes "Kim Zetter wrote for Wired News that "While legislators in Washington work to outlaw peer-to-peer networks, one website is turning the peer-to-peer technology back on Washington to expose its inner, secretive workings." For once, we have a concrete example to point to when citing the merits of P2P."

6 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Hrm... by canwaf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wouldn't "exposing secretive inner workings" make the US government want to shut down p2p even more?

    1. Re:Hrm... by Erpo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wouldn't "exposing secretive inner workings" make the US government want to shut down p2p even more?

      Of course, but it's a lot easier for your elected representative to read "We're legislating against p2p networks to stop criminals from stealing music," off of a 3x5 card given to them by the RIAA than it is to say, "Here in D.C. we're doing things we're afraid you might find out about."

    2. Re:Hrm... by torpor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      because that web site can be taken down.

      because it can be altered.

      we have seen many, many examples of the U.S. gov't altering published data to support political motivation.

      using p2p, where there is -no one single point of control- would actually be a far more Democracy-supporting protocol than FTP or HTTP, both of which are like the "fascist dicatorships of transfer protocols"...

      --
      ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  2. um... by AmaDaden · · Score: 4, Insightful

    " For once, we have a concrete example to point to when citing the merits of P2P."

    Um...What about Bittorrent? Last time I checked it was the best way to download large files like Linux distros. Plus it makes it better to have more people downloading not worse, a big problem for huge servers with popular files. I can remember it taking FOREVER to get my first fresh Linux dostro downloaded

  3. Perhaps this is one reason they don't like P2P... by carcosa30 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Some other comments are saying "But they will just want to ban it all the more!"

    In fact, if we use P2P to broadcast all kinds of government dirty laundry, their attempts to ban p2p will look like an attempt to crack down on freedom of information.

    It could very well be that free flow of information, anonymous and universally available, is a huge reason why world governments don't like p2p. Of course, the record industry's huge donations to Orrin Hatch don't hurt any either.

    I say dump Cryptome onto p2p sites. Dump whatever you can. We have a loophole right now; better try and widen it while we can. We might even give pause to some of the criminals on capitol hill while we're at it.

    --
    Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
  4. Ernest Miller wrote about this... by e6003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...at The Importance Of... - basically he makes the very sound point that this obfuscated distribution system is entirely unnecessary. All US Government documents are public domain (non-copyrighted) so any web site could put them up for static download without fear of DMCA attacks. It would make them far easier to find just by using Google. Instead "I go to the outragedmoderates.org website, go to the "Government Document Library," look up the documents I want, ignore the fact that I could download them from the website, start a P2P program, enter a search for the document name and/or outragedmoderates.org user name, and then download the documents, remembering that if I don't download the documents from outragedmoderates.org I might be getting inauthentic files."