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File Sharing — Harmful to Children and a Threat to National Security
jkrobin writes to mention that a recent report from the US Patent office calls peer-to-peer file sharing harmful to children and a threat to national security. "Interestingly, the report makes numerous references to RIAA and MPAA legal actions against file actions, as well as cites a 2005 Department of Homeland Security report that government workers had installed file-sharing programs that accessed classified information without their knowledge."
Stop the INSANITY!
This is getting just stupid.
We live in a MEDIA driven State of Fear.
It's good to know that RIAA and MPAA are willing to expend so much energy and money to educate our public officials. After all, we wouldn't want any extra freedoms to slip under the door.
The ordinary pencil is, in our modern America, a flagrant excess that cannot be tolerated. Pencils can be used to copy national secrets from one piece of paper to another, and leave no identifying marks of any kind on the documents that have been copied. Their sharp ends can be used to gouge; children can inflict grevious rubber burns upon one another using the rubber end. Perhaps most shocking of all, the pencil graphite is conductive and could be used in any number of explosive devices where conductive elements are required.
The Pencil manufacturing concerns of America, however, are resolved to work with the U.S. government to mitigate this crisis. Henceforth, all pencil purchases are tracked with a unique REAL ID-coordinated identifier. Authorized use of pencils will require a tiny microchip implanted under the skin of the right hand. A left-handed version of the chip is expected to be available before 2020--until then, pencil-using left-handed Americans will have to make the sacrifice of writing less legibly until the chip is available.
Wow, I'm really bored today.
[snip]
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
It sounds like the network administrators in said "governmental offices" should take the precautions neccessary to police the bandwidth. Furthermore, any environment in which said p2p applications are capable of leaking any private information need to be under closer scrutiny.
Don't blame the p2p networks for the actions and negligence of those in control of their own computer infrastructure.
A decade ago, the idea that copyright infringement could become a threat to national security would have seemed implausible. Now, it is a sad reality.Since when is copyright infringement, and not massively-propagating worms and keyloggers, the problem for national security. The latter causes FAR more breeches of personal identity information and credentials.
for sale
I'm a self-modifying sig virus
The threat to national security is not the file sharing software it's the asshats who have access to classifed documents,who are installing Kazaa on their government owned work computers. You could just as likely leave a few thumbdrives with trojans sitting around where these guys have lunch.
We are all just people.
> Wow, I'm really bored today.
;-)
If you produce that level of satire as a result, please be bored more often
Which is to say that, of course, music and movies depicting or narrating gangbangers pimping hoes, killing rivals/cops/etc, and committing various other crimes are not harmful to children.
Hmmm... well at least their glass houses get a lot of light.
> Software merely takes a generalized machine and turns it
> into a specialized machine. Clearly a unique specialized
> machine should be patentable.
No the general purpose machine is the patentable invention. Specific information (ie: software) should be protected by copyright. Pure software is not patentable and all software is pure software.
The Patent Office is either way off its rocker and/or it is not a far stretch to understand that a company that controls your computer, the content, the OS and that of 90% of the rest of the world, would make it also a threat to National Security and the security of every other nation on the planet. Microsoft with Vista can turn off your ability to use the computer. Through tools like WGA and WGN it can monitor your computer and your use. Since there is no competition out there to give consumers and government a choice then we are all bound to something that is unprecedented in the history of the world. The OS. No other time in the history of the world has one company held such influence on the lives of virtually everyone in the world in the same way.
To say that file sharing allows for children to have access to this or that harmful content, and be subject to other bad things, and to say that files can be put at risk and therefore risk the national security, it would not be a far stretch to understand that to allow one company to essentially enter every computer (as the computer is an extension of your home/business) as they are able to enter your home and business to search, inventory, and accuse (and ultimately with Vista shut down your home/business) then that company and it's product could be considered a threat to national security. P2P is not used solely by children and since it can be useful in business and government it is a lesser threat than that posed by one company having control of the computers of the world. You have unprecedented control and access which creates a major possibility of security threats, if not primarily by Microsoft then by some enterprising vicious terrorist hoping to exploit Microsoft's buggy OSes and buggy spy tools.
You can't go from P2P and the concept of access without going to Windows and WGA/WGN. Whatever applies to the concept of access over the Internet via P2P also extends to any product that could be used to yield the same type of invasive behavior that leads to stealing trade/national secrets be it by a controlling monopoly previously convicted in numerous nations of the world or by someone attempting to exploit the fact that exploits to tools like WGA/WGN could present unprecedented access to terrorists and the governments of other rogue nations.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
File sharing isn't a threat to national security, stupid government employees that install file sharing programs on work computers and then make the shared folder one that contains important documents are a threat to national security.