Politicians Legally Discouraged From Sharing Music

from the RIAA-lawsuits-got-you-down? dept

While so many laws that are passed seem to have special exemptions for politicians, here's one that's directed right at them. The House has passed a bill "discouraging" government bureaucrats from using file sharing systems. Basically, it says that federal agencies should take some effort to stop people from using P2P technologies. They're not necessarily doing this to prevent them from being hit with an RIAA lawsuit (now, wouldn't that be fun?), but because they're worried about the security issues. This seems like a bit of an overreaction - since there are plenty of legitimate uses for file sharing, and the systems can be set up in a secure way. Just because some Congressmen don't think federal agencies have smart enough IT staff, doesn't mean the technology should be thrown out completely.
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  1. identicon
    westpac, 26 Sep 2003 @ 6:08am

    serious business

    DoD banned file sharing several years ago when Napster was still big. People have been fired for violating this policy right here in the building I work in. Ostensibly it was because of security issues but realistically it's because of copyright infringement. That and blatantly wasting time and gov't resources.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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