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

ID Theft?

[calebt3]

Excuse me? Aside from the standard malware risks and stupid users, how is P2P an ID Theft risk?

Re:ID Theft?

[a-zarkon!]

Don't ask silly questions! What don't you get about, "think of the children?"

"Think of the children" is the Congressional equivalent of the Jedi Mind Trick; "these are not the droids you're looking for." Upon further consideration, he may have substituted "Identity Theft" instead of "terrorists" since he's talking about the Interweb. I applaud his restraint in not using any analogy to tubes. This is progress.

Re:ID Theft?

[KublaiKhan]

Yes, it's called the "voting box". If you don't like 'em, then vote 'em out.

Re:ID Theft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a fun hobby of mine. Open up Limewire, select documents, search for "resume.doc". Watch in shock and awe at the stupidity of people as resume after resume appears.

Then have more fun. Right click on one, browse host.

Watch in amazement as you now have access to their pictures, word documents, cookies, anything you might find interesting. All because they're too stupid to properly define the Sharing folders when they started using Limewire.

An ID theft's wet dream, all thanks to P2P.

Re:ID Theft?

[muindaur]

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

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.

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.

Many Don't Seem to Understand

[Apple Acolyte]

Let me preface this by pointing out I'm a generally conservative young Republican. We're in a generational battle with our parents and grandparents and (more directly) the politicians that come from them over redistribution of our wealth and misappropriation of our technology. They want to put the screws to young people to maintain control, whether it's economic control (in the case of robbing the young to pay the old Social Security and Medicare), or entertainment control (draconian legislation in favor of the media cartels), or electronic expression control (clamping down on the freedoms enjoyed currently online). And we'll continue to lose this battle unless there's a shift in the political paradigms over these issues.