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

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.

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.