Proposed Peer-To-Peer Law Sparks Animosity 168
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.
After Looking at the CNET article (Score:5, Informative)
Bill is sponsored by Rep. Mary Bono. Big surprise. She was behind the 1998 Sunny Bono Copyright Extension Act and has worked very closely with the RIAA and MPAA in the past.
From the CNET article:
In other words: a "This gun shoots bullets, which may be lethal." notice every time the program is used, made further annoying by a list of all files that would be shared.
Should a user have a way of finding out exactly what the software they are using is doing, and an easy way to configure it correctly? Absolutely. Should it provide a way for me to view the configuration and what it will share? Hopefully, and I'd look for software that does. Does that mean all software should be dumbed down, and force me to go through such a notice every time I use it? Absolutely not. Of course the end result will be no different than what users currently do with EULA notices during software installation.
All in all a law requireing a bad and onerous implementation of what a good program should do anyway, and potentially the thin end of a wedge to add more restrictions to P2P software. The law could be used to go after some forms of spyware, but I'd much rather see a law carefully crafted for that purpose.
Re:Not the fault of P2P per se (Score:3, Informative)
For a peer-to-peer system, it has a lot of heirarchical order.
In what way? Maybe DNS has some hierarchy to it, but ultimately the internet is peer-to-peer. It's certainly not a broadcast network.
The FTP servers on the Internet constitute P2P file sharing. Same with web servers. You can install apache on your computer and I can install it on mine, and then we be peers who have access to share each others' files. Google's search engine is the tool that most of us use to indicate what files are available, as well as to find them-- but really, Google is just another peer on the network.
But now, watch out, if you use a protocol other than HTTP and a search engine that's not Google (and maybe decentralized), suddenly you're everyone assumes you're doing something illegal. They want to make peer-to-peer communications illegal, but they're failing to understand that there's no meaningful technical distinction between that "suspicious P2P file sharing" and "normal legitimate Internet traffic."
Re:The problem and solution as they see it... (Score:1, Informative)
So if you loose track of your private information, just start a couple of those botnets to monitor the internets... never fails...
Lose god damn it. Lose.
English mother-fucker! Do you speak it?!?
Re:YAY! (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps you missed the fact that the Representative who introduced this bill is a Republican? Kind of hard to pin this particular piece of idiocy on Obama.