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

Call me a troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

... but there *is* a case to answer here.

From the paper linked to TFA:

All five programs analyzed have deployed share-folder or search-wizard features. These features are uniquely dangerous: They can cause users to share inadvertently not only infringing files, but also sensitive personal files like tax returns, financial records, and documents containing private or even classified data. Published research identified these features as causes of inadvertent sharing by mid-2002. By mid-2003, the distributors of the programs analyzed here had agreed to discontinue use of these features, and concerned legislators had warned that their continued use would compromise national security because government employees using these programs would inadvertently share files containing sensitive or classified data.

Nevertheless, the distributors of BearShare, eDonkey, LimeWire and Morpheus programs kept deploying search-wizard or share-folder features

The authors have identified specific behavior, documented efforts to get certain people to change that behavior, and demonstrated that it has not changed. What more do they have to do to be taken seriously?