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Proposed Peer-To-Peer Law Sparks Animosity
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission and Distributed Computing Industry Association locked horns over a proposed law that would govern how peer-to-peer networking technology would be used and regulated. Before the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, the Federal Trade Commission expressed its doubts about companies protecting sensitive consumer information (PDF) or sensitive data over P2P internet file-sharing networks. It doesn't help the P2P cause that the technology continues to pop up in bad practices. Recently a company that monitors peer-to-peer networks said it found classified information about the systems used onboard the president's helicopter in a shared folder on a computer in Iran, after a file containing the data was accidentally leaked on a peer-to-peer network last summer. Meanwhile the DCIA said any laws would likely be ineffective and stifle the business opportunities P2P can generate."
An article on CNet points out that the wording of the bill would make it apply to just about everything related to communications on the internet.
More government control over our lives!!!!!
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
Recently a company that monitors peer-to-peer networks said it found classified information about the systems used onboard the president's helicopter in a shared folder on a computer in Iran, after a file containing the data was accidentally leaked on a peer-to-peer network last summer. Meanwhile the DCIA said any laws would likely be ineffective and stifle the business opportunities P2P can generate."
How do we know that this government employee didn't purposefully 'leak' the documents online or plant them at an Iranian I.P. address so that the government could have an excuse to pass an archaic and oppressive internet law?
An article on CNet points out that the wording of the bill would make it apply to just about everything related to communications on the internet.
One person, a government worker, leaks a document, and now we must all pay.
If a government worker drunk drives should we all lose our licenses and cars?
That under the old admin everybody was screaming in fear about 1984... And now with the new admin... it still feels the same
Those Iranians, Arabs, and Terrorists use P2P networks! Lets regulate or ban them. ZOMG, they use television too. Lets ban TV networks. Oh noes, they use cars and roads too... Well, walking is good for you. Damn, they use elections too. We don't want to be like 'them' so no more elections. How much more ignorant are reporters and politicians going to get?
Oh no, they use television to broadcast government propaganda. No more .... wait, they copied that from us, so that's ok.
I'm waiting for the first idiot legislator to suggest that foreign governments and terrorists are using Linux so it too must be banned.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
It's people, not software that are the problem. Software is a tool and is neither good or bad. The people using it on the other hand...
Not to start anything, but this is why I am generally amused by the term "Computer Ethics". Computers are simply a tool; there might as well be something called "Blender Ethics". The real issue is simply "Ethics", which I fear some are lacking.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
the punishment of those who obey the laws and prosperity of those who do not.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Any security breaches are not the fault of P2P per se. Why was there a computer with classified documents where the user was allowed to install software and connect directly to the Internet? The user could have installed Apache and made the entire hard drive accessible through HTTP at that point.
Ultimately the entire Internet is peer-to-peer. All these "P2P" applications do is make it easier for the peers to find each other.
It is a well established scientific fact that 100% of terrorists use a readily available, totally unregulated oxidizing agent to maintain their very existence here on God's green Earth!
This extremely destructive agent has been used in nuclear missile propulsion systems, high explosive devices, and is a leading cause of infrastructure collapse!
Known as 'Element 8' This substance must be banned! Our wise and benevolent leaders have been combining Element 8 with simple carbon atoms in order to render it harmless and reduce its availability to the terrorists. These valiant efforts are opposed by environmental activists who are merely duped by our socialist enemies!
Write to your Congressman and Senator today and have them join the fight to ban 'Element 8', before it is used to destroy us all!
</sarcasm>
Hey, someone who actually read an article and figured out it's (a) not much of a regulation and (b) about software, not networks.
Whether or not you need to be warned each time depends on the interpretation of "initial activation" in "immediately prior to initial activation of a file sharing function of such program..."
Otherwise, yes. For already-sane P2P clients, this adds minor annoyance, and nothing else. It does, as someone pointed out, seriously injure the "I didn't know I was sharing it" defense for child pornography and copyright infringement.
You know whats funny about the whole situation is if they didn't want them on the internet they wouldn't make it there if they had a good security team in place.
Please remember that the architecture of the Internet makes it the world's first P2P system; albeit with a lousy user interface.
All regulation of P2P systems and what you can do with them or not logically must apply to the Internet as a whole, because there is
no fundamental functional difference between a fancy P2P system and the raw Internet.
This is why all legislation targeted specifically at P2P systems is both misguided and extremely dangerous to the future of the net as a whole.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Who decides what "p2p apps" to ban and which to approve? Furthermore, what criteria do they judge them on?
There is increasingly a separation between the actual applications (the clients), and the protocol itself, case in point: there are dozens of bittorrent clients. Do only sleazy malware clients get banned, or do entire protocols? What exactly makes a protocol "bad"? Why should anyone be in the business of telling me what sort of software I can write and run myself?
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
The slackjawed,walleyed, bucktoothed, illiterate, inbreds that brought you "The war on drugs" "gun control" the DMCA and all the draconian shit supposedly to "save the children" and make sex offenders out of teenage boys who make the mistake of screwing teenage girls.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd