House IP Leader Endorses P2P Blocking

Technical Writing Geek points out an Ars Technica report on comments from Representative Howard Coble (R-NC), who sits on the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. In a recent editorial, Coble attempts to discourage P2P file sharing among young people, and praises Ohio University for its ban on P2P applications last year. Coble also suggests that identity theft is a great danger from file sharing. Public Knowledge is running a similar analysis, which argues against the main points from the editorial.

Comments

just like guns

[KevMar]

Guns dont kill people, people kill people.

We should outlaw cars too, look at all the people they kill.

I know this has nothing to do about murder, but they are blaming the technology for the crimes. If you get rid of P2P, something new will replace it.

Thats assuming you can get rid of P2P. P2P will not go away any time soon.

Re:just like guns

[Itninja]

Not that I want to jump on the gun control bandwagon, or that I want to block P2P transfers, but....

Your comparison of gun and cars is a bit flawed, IMO. Guns were invented to take lives; that is their purpose in the universe. Whereas cars are tools that countless uses and, Death Race 2000 fantasy aside, none of them are to kill people. I don't want to start a flame war here, just something I noticed....

Re:just like guns

[MBGMorden]

Guns were invented for that, but that has nothing to do with their current applications. There are many non-violent uses of guns that preclude that, and a technology should never be classified as to it's claimed "purpose". Indeed, P2P (first made famous by Napster) WAS invented to pirate media, but it's now also been purposed towards many non-illegal things as well. Neither should be subject to any banning attempts based on "what they were meant for" originally.

Re:just like guns

[orclevegam]

What are the non-violent uses of a gun?

Paper weight?

Using a gun is always a violent act.
Competition shooting comes to mind. There are also "violent" acts one can commit with a gun that are perfectly legal, such as hunting. Furthermore, guns can be used defensively, in which case shooting an attacker is a protected right, and perfectly reasonable thing to do. The alternative is for everyone to carry around knives in which case we'll probably have a lot more instances of both attacker and victim bleeding to death after stabbing each other.

Re:just like guns

[Solandri]

Your comparison of gun and cars is a bit flawed, IMO. Guns were invented to take lives; that is their purpose in the universe.

I'm assuming you're talking about guns designed for shooting at people, not hunting rifles or competition shooting. The purpose of such guns is not to take lives. Their purpose is to degrade an opposing force's fighting capability. Often the best way to do that is not to kill, but to wound. If you kill someone, the opposing army just leaves his corpse and carries on. If you wound somebody, he's on the ground screaming and demoralizing his peers. They have to devote resources to carrying him back from the front lines. Once he's back, they have to devote medical resources to treat him. Afterwards they have to devote even more economic resources to assist him through his recovery (which may last a lifetime).

From a strictly military standpoint, wounding an enemy is much, much more advantageous than killing him. It's one of the reasons NATO dropped from 7.62mm rounds to 5.56mm rounds - the smaller bullets tended to enter the target and tumble, causing more wounding. The 7.62mm rounds tended to pass straight through, meaning the most effective way to use it was to kill. Guns aren't designed to kill, they're designed to intimidate, often working even when no shots are fired or (if shots are fired) nobody is even hit. The decision to use the weapon to instead kill lies with the shooter.

Clueless legislators

[Iphtashu Fitz]

"Hey, X can be used in illegal ways, therefore we should make it illegal!"

Let's see, that can apply to everything from raw sugar to automobiles. Quick, file legislation to make them all illegal!

Compromised Windows systems are being used to flood the internet with spam in violation of various state and federal laws. Outlaw Windows!

Why cant these congresscritters get it through their thick skulls that there are plenty of legitimate uses for P2P, even in a university environment. A university in Holland is using bittorrent to manage 6500 workstations and it's saving them time and money. The university I work at uses SystemImager on its high performance research cluster to manage the software on all the compute nodes. SystemImager supports the use of bittorrent as a transport mechanism. If these aren't legal, legitimate, and highly useful implementations of bittorrent then I don't know what is. These are just two working examples of P2P being used in university environments in responsible ways, but I'm sure those stuffed shirts in Washington could care less.

Re:Clueless legislators

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Just to play the devil's advocate: Could it be because the supposed benefits are outweighed by the known and (currently) uncontrollable abuses (piracy)?

Show me an independent report from a neutral party that shows the level of P2P piracy outweighs legitimate uses and I'd accept your argument. Better yet, show me that these idiots in Washington have read such a report.

I've already shown a couple valid uses for P2P. Here are a few others:

• Content delivery networks like Akamai that help keep popular websites responsive
  
• The delivery of software updates in everything from operating systems to games
  
• Peer applications like Groove are built upon a foundation of P2P
  
• Legal music/movie downloads from a growing number of websites
  

I bet that most people don't realize that by simply visiting popular websites like Google you're relying on P2P to some extent. They may not be using well known products like bittorrent or limewire but the data moving around the back end of search engines, the images you see on websites like Microsofts, and even the videos you watch on a site like youtube, are all distributed in part through P2P systems of some sort. They may be entirely custom built or they may rest on top of a protocol like bittorrent. The bottom line is that there's a lot of data being transferred legally via P2P for a number of purposes. I bet if somebody could come up with a realistic and impartial set of numbers you'd be surprised at how much legitimate P2P traffic there is compared to illegal P2P traffic.

e-mail

[Maestro485]

If we're going to ban software used in identity theft I guess we can kiss the browser and e-mail client goodbye.

Re:ID Theft?

[muindaur]

Don't forget to call them out on their FUD in public to prevent others voting for them.

Re:ID Theft?

[sm62704]

The voting box is broken when the media doesnt spread the news

The media doesn't spread the news because they are owned by the same corporations that "contribute" heavily to both "mainstream candidates" (IE, both the Republican and Democrat wings of the Republicrat Party) in every major race.

When Nader was running as a "third party" (Green) candidate, he wasn't on the ballot in enough states to gain the Presidency even if he won every state he ran in, and the media slobbered all over him. The Libertarians were on the ballot in 49 states, yet the media said nary a word about him.

Your corporate overlords, most of whom are foreign (Sony, BP, Shell, etc) aren't about to let go of their power. We, the People, lost and lost big a long time ago.

That said, I still vote, but split my vote between "third party" candidates. Because voting for a candidate that will vote against your interests is worse than wasting a vote, it's just plain stupid. People don't stay away from the polls because they're apathetic, they stay away because they know they have no real voice. Both candidates against legalizing something you love? Why vote?

Re:Many Don't Seem to Understand

[sm62704]

You're fighting the wrong battle, kid. The fight is between those in power, the corporations and their lobbyists, and we, the people.

And you're helping them fight us.

BTW, I'm a geezer.

It's said that if you're a conservative when you're young you have no heart. If you're a liberal when you're old you have no brains. I'd say if you consider yourself boxed into outdated ideas like "liberal" and "conservative" you have neither brains nor heart.

When I was in my tewnties, marijuana was going to be legal as soon as my generation got in power. Well, so much for THAT generational battle!

when will they get it?

[JustNiz]

>> ...and praises Ohio University for its ban on P2P applications last year.

Its one thing for some old politician to not properly understand the technology that he is trying to ban, but one would think a university would be better educated than to assume ALL p2p traffic must be copyright infringment.