Limewire: 'Congress Should Make ISPs Filter Copyrighted Content'
Quote:
Says too unpopular for them to do on their own, and that legislation is the only way to make them police their networks.
Yesterday I talked about how the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep Henry Waxman (D-CA), reignited the debate over online file-sharing with dramatic testimony about how P2P and file-sharing programs pose a dangerous new threat to information security in this country.
Delving deeper into the hours of footage and the plethora of prepared statements submitted to the committee reveals an interesting new tidbit of information about how Mark Gorton, the founder and Chairman of The Lime Group, the company behind the ubiquitous Limewire file-sharing program, feels about copyright infringement and the role that ISPs should play in preventing it from occurring on their networks.
I mentioned previously how he intended to reconfigure they way that users opt to share folders and directories after taking a lot of heat for the fact that many have inadvertently allowed important financial, medical, and even government data to be downloaded by other users.
In additional testimony he also points out the problem of child pornography and copyright infringement that P2P networks are consistently plagued by, though if not for copyright infringement I'm not sure what he expects Limewire to be used for. Surely there are much easier and more secure methods of sharing pics and video with family and friends.
Groton continues by suggesting that ISPs themselves should be apart of an "enforcement mechanism" to prevent child pornography and copyright infringement from occurring on P2P networks.
He comments:
The Internet is a technology which allows for many novel behaviors. Unfortunately, some of these new behaviors are detrimental to society. The regulatory framework that surrounds the Internet has not kept pace with technical advancements, and currently, no effective enforcement mechanisms exist to address illegal behavior on P2P networks.
Internet Service Providers, ISP’s, are a unique point of control for every computer on the Internet. Universities frequently function as their own ISP’s, and a handful of universities have implemented notice based warning systems that result in the disconnection of users engaged in illegal behavior who ignore multiple warnings. These universities have sharply reduced child pornography and copyright infringement on their campus networks.
Similar policies could be mandated for all ISP’s in the United States. However, these policies are unpopular with the telecom and cable companies who would prefer not have an enforcement relationship with their paying customers. The telecom industry has objected vigorously to previous attempts to involve ISP’s in the enforcement process and it continues to oppose policies that would allow for the establishment of moderate, yet effective enforcement mechanisms to combat illegal behavior on the Internet.
Now why Gorton would suggest that ISPs begin engaging in a hopeless and invasive attempt to monitor their customers traffic is beyond me but, I think it smacks of passing the buck and trying to make Limewire look like the innocent one in all of this. After all, if ISPs were to make sure that millions of people had to abide by the law then by default so would his company. Wouldn't a better solution be to finally admit your program is only used for copyright infringement and leave millions of peoples privacy alone?
If the program is supposed to be used for legal content distribution then I ask you where is this legitimate content to be found?
Please Limewire, by all means argue your case as you see fit but, at least leave the rest of us out of it, especially those of us who prefer BitTorrent and other, more secure file-sharing programs. Don't sacrifice our privacy on the altar of self-preservation and profits.
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8930/Limewire%3A+'Congress+Should+Make+ISPs+Filter+Copy righted+Content'
