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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.
So we have a GOOD reason, for once, to comment without reading the article.
we will end no whine before its time
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.
So they busted out the old terrorist chesnut and "Think of the children?" All they needed was to add something about immorality (implying Christian morality), and they would have had a perfect score.
[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
Also may cause dizziness, insomnia, psoraisis, and the Creeping Crimean Crud.
The cause of the fall of the Roman Empire? File sharing.
JFK's assassins? File sharers.
Besides, file sharing isn't mentioned in the Bible, so it must be forbidden by God.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Oh, and while we're at it, Wolf! Woooooooooooooolf!
How ya like dat?
Recently, Paper has also been called into question.
If you take a heavy-stock piece of high quality paper, fold it into quarters, grasp the edges, and slam your arm down to force air through the middle flap, you can create a sound that will stop an airport in its tracks.
The Etch-A-Sketch brand has been revived and is being offered as a paper-replacement tool, but Microsoft has expressed doubt that the One Etch-a-Sketch Per Child program will work.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"Department of Homeland Security report that government workers had installed file-sharing programs that accessed classified information without their knowledge."
How about changing the title to: Human Stupidity-a Threat to National Security?
They say that file sharing is a "threat to our children", but did you read WHY?
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
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
- Windows XP SP2 - $83
- Mac Tiger OSX - $129
- Half life 2 - $29.99
- 20Gb of music - ~$2000
- Getting all of the above with p2p - Free
- Murdering children and bringing to a halt the fabric of modern society - Priceless
- ?????
- Profit!
For this and everything else, there's Bittorrentfor sale
I'm a self-modifying sig virus
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.
Wouldn't it be better to say:
"Government Employees - A Threat to Children and National Security"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We need to abandon earth and become a space-faring civilization - otherwise our children's children will be plagued by potential weapons (rocks) to use against one another.
I call for a disbanding of the NRA (The national rock association)
for sale
I'm a self-modifying sig virus
The "When you pirate MP3s, you're downloading COMMUNISM!" poster dates back to 2000; it only took us seven years to go from wacky parody to grim reality.
your comment has been deemed harmful to children and kittens.
Do not leave your house, place your hands on the wall and wait, a mind correction team will be with you shortly...
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
But we cannot get rid of paper, for paper beats rock, and rocks are the BIGGEST concern.
Not true! You can bring a rock on an airplane, but try boarding with a pair of scissors...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
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.
national security threatens you!
-insert a witty something-
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.