Team America, world police.

Government will fix all!

It's understandable that the government wants stop the sharing of classified information over P2P, but why was it even shared in the first place?

Somebody must have put the information on his MacBook and iPhone...

Great, what other freedoms will they take away now?

Anyone did not expect this to happen eventually?

Scary seeing as there are many legitimate uses for P2P networks. It would not surprise me if the negative political perception of things like Limewire leads to laws stopping use of P2P networks even within private IT infrastructures.

What about the rest of the world? Should we have to put up with Uncle Sam's meddling? I think not. I'm way out of jurisdiction, I'd like to see them sue me.

Instead of policing P2P how about you stop allowing computers with sensitive information to touch the internet.

The Federal Government has gotten out of hand. The Democratic Party has lost sight of what the United States stands for. It is within the Government's power to regulate commerce, but not what private citizens do on their own time. If I choose to use "P2P" to transmit information I own, or is for public use, it is not the Government's right to monitor that.

Such actions fall into a police action, which is illegal without a warrant. Unless they are going to monitor what we are transmitting, then what else is there to regulate?

So, you're a new IT person and you come in to see people with Limewire on their computers and no banned software list in the IT Policy. Who wouldn't point this out as a serious problem in the first meeting they attend? End users shouldn't be given too much slack, since they'll just hang themselves with it. But, instead of changing the way they handle things internally, its the horrible P2P software's fault. Grow some accountability, you fucking incompetent government sheep.

"...his overall opinion of popular P2P service LimeWire and its use in acquiring FBI files, Social Security numbers, medical records, and information regarding a safe house location for President Barack Obama."

OK. Let's see here. He is basing his opinion on one sight. He clearly does not know the importance of P2P protocols and how they are generally used and based on the above I have to say it sounds to me like the FBI and the overall government a lacking in knowledge and know how of technology in general. Basically I am saying they are a bunch of uninformed and possiably uneducated bunch of idiots. The very fact that this senator would say such things tells me that it is not the P2P that's the problem but the government and its offices that are not doing their job and once again instead of doing their job right, educating themselves on the technology and how to keep things private, they blame others for their lack of gross incompetence.

Who the hell uses limewire anyways?

This is IT 101. Don't let users install applications that aren't needed to do their job, and don't open ports in the firewall that aren't used by necessary services. If people are sharing sensitive files at home, don't let them take files home with them. Have them use a VPN connection or thin client instead.

I can only hope the FTC and FCC can see the folly in Towns' proposal. It seems a lot of nonsense has been coming out of the mouths of New York politicians lately. We should all write a letter to Towns explaining to him the ways of the world (snail mail, since he might not even know how to use email ¬_¬)

This sounds like the government trying to tax winnings at your weekly poker game over at Dave's house... I'm sure they're really LOVE to implement this, but good luck... most of the companies providing P2P clients or servers are well out of U.S. government jurisdiction.

+1 to montezuma by the way... this has nothing to do with interstate commerce and the 'federal' government needs to stop trying to impose other people's desires on a third party. Give us protection from violence from within and without as you were DESIGNED and LIMITED to do and let people live their life.

Government- Remember kids, sharing is BAD!

The government shouldn't be using unsecure software at all. Of course if they were serious about that then they would have ditched windows for Linux some time ago ^_^. Really though, people think they can use P2P software at work, on their work computer, and get away with it. I generally do stuff like that, like posting at Toms, from my laptop here. One of the nice things about being a web developer without an office ^_^.

Steel all the music/movies you can NOW.... just do it in one big swoop.

Trying to regulate the internet, are they?

They never learn, do they?

Pretty soon a law will come that specifies how many MB's you can download over P2P, and which files (like Linux iso's) are exempt from that.
The government is going into a socialistic, leading to a communistic approach. In the end the government will decide what downloads can be found on P2P networks,and what networks are allowed to exist (but with supervision).

That would totally be the worst case scenario.
I think that we can learn in what kind of a mess we have gotten us, trying to be more socialistic, and see how China (who was communistic) all of a sudden starts to live better, because they started becoming capitalistic.

"If you follow down the path of socialism, you end up with extreme communism"!

I love how when Republicans are in charge they get bashed as the evil party that wants to take away your rights when in reality it is the socialist left who most of the time are the culprits of draconian and asinine laws.

W.e under the patriot act the NSA copies just about all internet and phone usage int he united states roughly about 80% of it is re routed and copied to NSA servers right inside your service providers buildings one such building is the At&t building in San Fransisco, and some people wondered why the patriot act goes to far.

Why all the drama and conspiracy theorys? 100's of ignorant proposals get put out every term then shot down in subcommittees. This will never happen and it only made news because of how ignorant it is.

Why don't they regulate the idiots they hire that use lime wire on classified information computers.. Or better yet why don't they quit letting stupid mistakes go unpunished and quit blaming other people..

waste of tax payers money even trying
they should spend their efforts fixing the economy

No way the government regulates the data transferred over the network without first regulating the network. Once they limit P2P they'd limit HTTP, FTP, SMTP, etc.. Pretty soon (if not already), the U.S. will have its own great firewall, with some bureaucrat deciding what is and isn't appropriate for you to see.

And I have to follow with the same sentiment as others, how does sensitive information even get to the internet in the first place? You don't keep it on computers with internet access, you don't give it out on laptops, and you don't let people use thumbdrives or iPods. This is like shutting down the highway cause you can't keep the car keys away from your grounded teenager.

This will probably only amount to an extra lesson in the mandatory Info. Awareness training that most gov't employees are required to take. Still though, it is pretty amazing how ignorant these politicians can be, blaming the application/developer/industry versus the employee/IT team allowing the program to be used on government computers in the first place. One would think they would do some research to get a full understanding of the situation before making an ass of themself trying to introduce crazy nonsense laws.

Of course we use p2p to distribute our radio programing. But no politician would differentiate legal p2p use and illeagle p2p use.
http://www.mininova.org/user/KYCA

Will they also ban the new HP Veiled technology?