Lawmakers Caught Again By File-Sharing Software

An anonymous reader writes "A document, apparently a 'confidential House ethics committee report,' was recently leaked through file-sharing software to the Washington Post. According to the article, 'The committee's review of investigations became available on file-sharing networks because of a junior staff member's use of the software while working from home.' Of course, P2P software is entirely at fault for this incident. If you begin seeing more interest in DRM from Congress, you now know why." Reader GranTuring points out that the RIAA took the opportunity to make a ridiculous statement of their own. They said, "the disclosure was evidence of a need for controls on peer-to-peer software to block the improper or illegal exchange of music."

Re:SOME p2p software

[TheSHAD0W]

I disagree, it is entirely possible to get malware when downloading music or movies. Use caution when retrieving torrent files from sites you do not trust. This includes indexing engines. BitTorrent is very safe when used with torrents from trustworthy sites; ubuntu.com, openoffice.org, no problem.

And you believe that???

[Anonymous Coward]

And you believe that???

DRM is about selling you a movie that you can watch but not sell it to you so you can read it.

ENCRYPTION is about keeping something secret.

Re:The sadest part of this is..

[Arguendo]

Then why does congress get this kind of protection when private citizens suspected of a crime do not?

They do. It's called a Grand Jury [wikipedia.org]. Although sometimes the media gets the information anyway, like in this case.

Re:The sadest part of this is..

[stephanruby]

Then why does congress get this kind of protection when private citizens suspected of a crime do not?

It's an internal investigation. I recall one woman was accused of stealing a cell phone at her company. She refused to hand it over when someone saw her with it. The next morning, she had been fired and a notice was posted on every floor saying that she had been fired for theft of corporate property.

Later on, the woman sued for wrongful dismissal, won, and got some extra award for punitive damages. The cell phone she was using was indeed the exact same make and model the Corporation had purchased, but she had no trouble proving that she had indeed purchased the cell phone herself and been using it for quite a while.

So if your company starts accusing you of a crime, they're certainly free to tell everyone about it, not just their HR/legal personnel, but they better sure follow a process and be damn sure that you did commit such a crime -- otherwise -- that might get them in trouble otherwise.

Re:Connections

[UltraAyla]

You bring up a very good point - Lobbyists are one of the primary sources of information, but it is their job to be biased. While Congress (for us US people) has many agencies to give them expert analyses of important legislation, this analysis comes after a bill is written, and the agencies don't generally make recommendations for how to make changes that are good for the country. Additionally, these agencies are frequently limited by their mandates in how broad their analysis can be, so they are often incomplete or one-sided.