The United States Patent and Trademark Office has released an extensive report on P2P File sharing Programs.
This report reviews public data about the behavior of five popular filesharing programs; it focuses on the programs BearShare, eDonkey, KaZaA, LimeWire, and Morpheus. The conclusions are quite gloomy : P2P is a threat to National Security.
This report seeks to answer two questions:
First: Are there now, or have there been, features in popular filesharing programs that can cause users to share files unintentionally?
Second: Do the totality of the circumstances suggest the need for further investigation to determine whether any particular distributor that deployed such a feature intended for it to dupe young or unsophisticated users into sharing files inadvertently?
The public data examined show that the answer to the first question is “Yes”:
There are now, and there have been, features in popular filesharing programs that can cause users to share files unintentionally. These programs have contained, and some still do contain, features that could act like duping schemes—like “technological features” that “induce users to share” infringing files unintentionally.
The public data examined also show that the answer to the second question is “Yes”:
The circumstances surrounding the behavior and deployment of “technological features” that can “induce users to share” infringing files unintentionally do justify further investigation to determine whether distributors intended for these features to dupe young or unsophisticated users into sharing files inadvertently.
For the Federal Government, this threat became manifest during 2005, when the Department of Homeland Security warned all Federal Agencies that government employees or contractors who had installed filesharing programs on their home or work computers had repeatedly compromised national and military security by “sharing” files containing sensitive or classified data. These users probably did intend to use these programs to download popular music, movies, software or games. But it seems highly unlikely that any of them intended to compromise national or military security for the sake of “free music.”
Too often, implementations of these features became more aggressive after their potential effects on users were, or should have been, known to reasonable distributors of filesharing programs.
Such conduct suggests the possibility of duping. The available data on users’ tendency to share files also suggests a potential motive: When sharing or uploading was a clearly voluntary behavior, few users chose to share files.
Until questions about duping are resolved, potential users of 4-and-5-series versions of BearShare should beware the smiling “icon of charismatic code”: In these versions, that happy little cartoon bear has teeth. And he will bite.
|
