Anti-Porn Bill Targets File Sharing
from the regulating-Kazaa dept
It appears that another part of the entertainment industry's strategy to kill file sharing networks is moving forward. After years of fear-mongering reports about people (gasp!) using file sharing networks to download porn, they've convinced some Congressional representatives to introduce a bill to regulate file sharing networks. It's called the Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography Act, and would require any file sharing system to get "parental consent" before a child could use it - and would even let parents install a special "beacon" (designed by the FTC) that would alert parents if their kids installed file sharing software. There are a number of reasons why this is a ridiculous piece of legislation. Ignoring the (big) question of how you would go about building such a "beacon" in a way that would actually work, you also have to wonder how this could possibly be enforced. Furthermore, there's a ton of porn just on the Internet itself. Technically, someone could apply this bill to the entire internet (it is a file sharing network, there is porn available).
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Trojan horse...
Is anyone else getting tired of the "save the children" political ploy? ...or is it just me.
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This is great...
After all, wasn't an author trying to get AOL to lock up usenet a while back...it would be much more simple to just lock up his access, and he wouldn't know bad things were happening. Same with congress, lock up their computers and then they won't be spending all day, and out tax money, on simultaneously f**king up the internet and browsing porn (not that I care for the porn anyway, but I should be able to download music from an artists website without receiving cease and desist letters, or copying legitimate files without having some sort of congressional permission to do so.)
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