Top 8 Scary Quotes from Govt. Anti-P2P Report

Inadventant filesharing is the focus of the newly-released govt report, Filesharing Programs and “Technological Features to Induce Users to Share," which goes on for 80 or so pages with a "let me count the ways" on how peer-to-peer filesharing is a threat to national security. Following is a selection of the scariest quotes from it, for us libertarian types to chew our nails over.

They're decontextualized, obviously: here's the original. It's worth bearing in mind that the overall tone of the report scourges the makers of file-sharing programs for writing crappy and insecure software, not so much you and I for being spreaders of terror. In fact, one section is about how features in such programs are dangerous because they deceive the users, in a sense, into being made the legal fall-guys for naughty software functions that result even if the user doesn't intend for them to.

That said, assumptive authoritarian soundbites remain in abundance throughout. Enjoy.

"A decade ago, the idea that copyright infringement could become a threat to national security would have seemed implausible. Now, it is a sad reality."* - from the intro*

"Nor should users assume that they will be held blameless for facilitating pedophilia or terrorism." - p. 69

"legislators repeatedly warned distributors that unless they eliminated features that caused users to share existing files inadvertently, their programs would compromise national security" - p.19

"Inadvertent sharing had thus become “a major part of the current identity theft problem.” p.22, attributed to Howard Shmidt, former White House cybersecurty advisor.

" ... the distributors of
BearShare, eDonkey, LimeWire, and Morpheus began or continued to deploy dangerous share-folder and search-wizard features ... They eviscerated claims that responsible distributors of filesharing programs can self-regulate. And they may have helped achieve the previously inconceivable result of __converting copyright piracy into a threat to national security. __" p-34-35 (bolding mine.)

"Filesharing programs can infect computers or networks with malicious code," p. 50 (The filesharing program, rather than what the user downloads, infects the host? Are you sure?)

"There will almost never be a legitimate business or governmental justification for employee use of filesharing programs." p.50

"The implications of features in filesharing programs that can cause users to share files inadvertently are almost universally bad." p.52

Filesharing Programs and “Technological Features to Induce Users to Share," (PDF)