Posted 07/30/09 at 08:15:30 PM by Paul Lilly

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is taking a hard stance against peer-to-peer file sharing, claiming the practice is "jeopardizing" national security.

"At any time your computer is connected to the Internet, other computer users with similar software could simply search your hard drive and copy unprotected files. Unfortunately, that is the sad reality for many unsuspecting computer users," said Chairman Edophus Towns.

Towns went on to single out LimeWire, a popular P2P file sharing program, noting a startling amount of sensitive data made freely available by using the app. In addition to music and movies, Committee staff also unearthed federal tax returns, the Social Security numbers and family information for every master sergeant in the Army, medical records of about 24,000 patients of a Texas hospital, FBI files, and the safe house location for the First Family.

Naturally, Mark Gorton of the Lime Group saw things differently.

"I am confident that with LimeWire 5.2.8 any sharing is intentional sharing. LimeWire does not share any Documents by default," Gorton explained.

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Posted 11/03/08 at 01:25:57 PM by Paul Lilly

The World Series might be over (congrats Philly fans), but baseball fever is apparently sweeping through France in the form of a "three strikes" copyright enforcement proposal gaining ground in the country's Senate. The pitch is this: Get caught downloading illegal content a first time and receive an email from the ISP with a warning. A second strike earns a written letter via snail mail, and a third strike means you're out. Of course, in baseball striking out is only temporary until the next at-bat, and for internet surfers caught breaking the law three times, they'd have to wait a year before having their internet connection turned back on.

The controversial legislation is receiving widespread support with a cross-party vote showing 297 in favor of the new law and only 16 voting against. That leaves it up to the French National Assembly to vote on and decide the proposal's fate. If it should pass, the French government could find itself at odds with the European Parliament, who earlier this year shot down the notion of cutting off repeat offenders.

Think this type of legislation could ever fly in the U.S.? Hit the jump and post your thoughts.

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Posted 08/03/08 at 12:58:50 AM by Paul Lilly

Shawn Fanning, the former Northeastern University student who created Napster and popularized peer-to-peer sharing, could never have imagined all the fuss the technology would create nearly a decade later. Comcast earlier this year drew ire over throttling Bittorrent traffic, and now AT&T is taking a hard lined stance against its wireless customers engaging in P2P activities.

FCC Republican Robert McDowell asked AT&T about its policy regarding P2P traffic over its wireless network, and in a letter, Robert Quinn, AT&T senior VP for regulatory affairs, said in no uncertain terms that its customers are strictly forbidden from usng P2P services.

"AT&T's terms of service for mobile wireless broadband customers prohibit all uses that may cause extreme network capacity issues, and explicitly identify P2P file sharing applications as such a use," Quinn wrote.

Unlike Comcast, who drew criticism both for throttling internet traffic and for initially denying it was doing so, Quinn also wrote in his letter that AT&T does not use network management tools to block the use of P2P applications, and that its customers are warned in writing that they could have their service terminated if caught violating the policy.

Do you agree with what AT&T is doing?

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