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."

Comments

Threat to our children? Did you read the summary?

[StewedSquirrel]

This is farking hillarious!!!!

They say that file sharing is a "threat to our children", but did you read WHY?

* that peer-to-peer networks could manipulate sites so children violate copyright laws more frequently than adults, exposing those children to copyright lawsuits and, in turn, make those who protect their copyrighted material appear antagonistic,

So... it's file sharing's fault that the RIAA looks like profiteering litigious bastards for suing a dozen teenage kids. Somehow, file sharing made them do it

I can't believe I just read that.

gah.

I'm moving to the Czech Republic or something.

Stew

bogus and reality check

[drDugan]

So the "harmful to children" line is completely bogus. LOTS of stuff is harmful to children. That is why parents have to take some responsibility to protect their kids. ... Oh, think of the children. Yes, think just how terrible it will be to grow up under information tyranny.

The second line is much most interesting. p2p really IS a threat to the nation state system. More generally, free information exchange will erode the power of the state significantly. Lots of people all freely sharing information will mean the whole concept of countries starts to break down. If everyone can get all the information they need from anywhere across the globe and across borders, why do we need those borders still? To protect the physical resources? Hardly. Information is the last (latest) great resource humanity has stumbled upon and now people are making Googles of money doling it out, just like the oil barons, and other folks who have controlled major resources in the past.

The really cool thing about information is that you don't loose it when you copy it, so there CAN NEVER be scarcity of information (at least long term) UNLESS the laws and the state artificially support systems to create information scarcity. WHY WOULD HUMANS CHOOSE THAT? Quite simply, they won't, when they fully understand the choice. p2p works directly against the idea that information should be artificially maintained as a scarce resource by laws, and hence, it gives the 'ole thhhhbbbtbtbtbt to the nation state and the lynch pins of it's power and ability to control the people.

Life is a such beautiful thing. It unfolds exactly as it should. This is good.

Re:bogus and reality check

[drDugan]

I disagree. Information is far more valuable that physical resources. With the right information, we know which trees grow food, how and where to grow them, and when and how to harvest them, also which plants grow (just like weeds) that we can weave and wear, and how to build the best structures with available materials. Rinse and repeat for most all of the physical resources people need.

The choice between ignorance and tyranny is a false choice, provided by those who wish to control your access to information in order to take money and energy from you.

I strongly disagree with the implication that just because some information has "entertainment" value that it is of a lower class or less important than other information. Who are you to judge what someone else values and why? You might consider reading more about myths and how they have evolved over time - and learn how stories are the transport layer for the structure of civilizations. Do you think people who make movies do so only to distract us from our "more important" business pursuits? Wow.

Re:Whereas:

[Anonymous Coward]

Software patents in and of themselves are not harmful, it is US Patent Office that is. Software merely takes a generalized machine and turns it into a specialized machine. Clearly a unique specialized machine should be patentable.

That said, the Patent Office doesn't have a clue about how to evaluate software patents. The number of obvious (vs non-obvious) inventions that make it through is just incompetence. The fact that things that have existed in the open for decades can be patented as unique wouldn't fly when it comes to mechanical patents and it shouldn't with software patents either.

Give every reason but the real one, as usual

[retrosteve]

What the propagandists are trying not to say is simply this:

"The US economy was once based on manufacturing. Our cars and buildings and aeroplanes and weapons were the best you could buy, and people bought them and America prospered. Lately people have stopped buying all those things, and we no longer manufacture anything for export but movies, music, and software.

Our economy has gone from world-leading to "service-based" in just a few decades, and our only hope of exporting something that people might want to buy is in movies, music and software. Unfortunately, all those things are now digital, and easily copied millions of times for free. Even more unfortunately, the more we try to protect our eroding export figures with DRM and IP enforcement, the more we realize that other countries don't have to play by the rules we make up. And it's those other countries that count most.

So it's time for education. Or perhaps Re-education. Time to teach everyone that, despite our own flagrant disregard for the Berne conventions and international IP rights from 1886 up until 1989 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_convention), it's vital that the world now all fall into the US party line on IP enforcement and DRM. And if we can't do it with WTO, IMF, WIPO, and Most Favored Nation status, we'll do it with propaganda.

File sharing kills babies! File sharing promotes pedophilia! File sharing is communist and fascist and Saddam-loving! File sharing destroys family values and promotes the gay agenda!

I've wanted to say this for a long time.

Thomas D. Sydnor

[ajakk]

Does it bother anyone that the lead author of this report is Thomas D. Sydnor II? Before joining the USPTO, he was an attorney at Arnold & Porter, the RIAA's main outside law firm. While at Arnold & Porter, he litigated patent and copyright cases. I have no clue whether he actually did work for the RIAA, but the contacts are interesting.

Re:Security of what?

[evought]

Indeed, where I used to work (Pentagon), an Air Force officer used a floppy to transfer an unclassified Word Document from the isolated classified network to the open unclassified network. The Word document had scooped up random classified data from the hard drive in its buffers.

When DISA was done, they had scrubbed half a dozen "contaminated" systems, carted the guy off to Leavenworth, and left a mark on the section's record (too many of those and its *very* bad for everyone working in the section).

In these cases, I do not know why:

1. The systems had classified data and were hooked to the Internet. That alone should land people in jail.
2. The employees had permission to install *anything* on the system. Unless they were administrators, that would have counted as a violation of security by itself, and if they were administrators, doing anything unauthorized should have had them canned. I had to go through hoops just to install new tools on development machines.
3. The employees were not jailed with no questions asked. I guarantee that would put a stop to the practice.
4. The whole section was not audited, leading to immediate correction of the above.

Requirements when we set up an off-site Secret test facility were no less strict and a single violation would have cost the right to operate it. I really have to wonder how lax things have gotten. It also makes me very nervous about the government's insistence of late on creating large integrated databases. Even if I trusted them to use the data ethically (I don't) I do not have confidence that they could secure it adequately.