RIAA and MPAA quick to “welcome” news of another story chronicling the “abuse of P2P technology,” and emphasizes the “serious threat” it poses to both consumers as well as copyright holders.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sent letters to almost 100 unnamed companies warning them that personal information, including sensitive data about customers and/or employees, is available in on P2P networks.
The govt agency has also opened “non-public investigations” of other companies whose customer or employee information has also been exposed on P2P networks.
“Unfortunately, companies and institutions of all sizes are vulnerable to serious P2P-related breaches, placing consumers’ sensitive information at risk. For example, we found health-related information, financial records, and drivers’ license and social security numbers–the kind of information that could lead to identity theft,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz in a statement. “Companies should take a hard look at their systems to ensure that there are no unauthorized P2P file-sharing programs and that authorized programs are properly configured and secure. Just as important, companies that distribute P2P programs, for their part, should ensure that their software design does not contribute to inadvertent file sharing.”
The efforts are part of the FTC’s overall mandate that it enforce laws requiring companies to take reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect sensitive personal information, and that their failure to prevent such data from being shared on P2P networks may be in violation of such laws.
An excerpt from the warning letter reads:
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is sending you this letter because at least one computer file containing sensitive personal information from or about your customers and/or employees has been shared from your computer network, or the network of one of your service providers, to a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) network. One such file is ******. The information is now available to users of the P2P network, who could use it to commit identity theft or fraud. Your failure to prevent such information from being shared to a P2P network may violate laws enforced by the Commission.
The RIAA and MPAA were quick to “welcome” the news of another story warning of the dangers of P2P technology and the threat it poses to consumers.
“It’s an all-too common refrain: a story of another security breach caused by the abuse of p2p technology,” reads the RIAA’s statement. “Countless private citizens, corporations and government systems have been put at risk by entities that design a p2p product knowing that intense exchanging of files on open software programs brings unacceptable risk to others.”
It then tries to entwine the misfortunes of copyright holders with those consumers and businesses whom have been affected by “P2P abuse.”
“What else are we waiting for? Given the significant job losses endured by the creative community and profound evidence that no business or community is immune from the damaging effects of p2p abuse, what will it take to spur meaningful and long-overdue action against those who profit from nefarious use of p2p?”
You have to love it. Leave it to the RIAA to try and take advantage of a sensitive situation and twist it to serve its owen ends. Can’t we agree the real problem are the individual users who don’t know how to properly configure a P2P program and shouldn’t be using one at work in the first place?
The MPAA, god bless it, does the same thing in its response.
“For the millions of men and women working in film, television, music, software and other creative industries, P2P networks have become a serious threat to their livelihoods by serving as a major platform for illegal trafficking in stolen copyrighted material,” said Daniel Mandil, General Counsel & Chief Content Protection Officer for the MPAA. “Today the FTC is also sending out a strong warning that using P2P networks increases the risk that sensitive personal information will fall into the hands of identity thieves. The dangers are real both for business and home users of P2P networks, and we welcome the FTC’s efforts to spread the word about the risks.”
I’m not sure the movie industry has any “threats” being it just had the best year of its life. With ticket sales up 9% to a record breaking total of $10.5 billion the only thing it has to fear is fear itself.
The FTC notices went to both public and private groups, including schools and local governments, and ranged in size from businesses with as few as eight employees to publicly held corporations employing tens of thousands. The letters urged them to review their security practices and, if appropriate, the practices of contractors and vendors, to ensure that they are reasonable, appropriate, and in compliance with the law.
Here is another take: http://www.peer2peerterminator.com/ftc
the only threat it has is to moguls pocketbooks, and their underlings…. something interesting that popped out at me however is, “Given the significant job losses endured by the creative community ..” Now is that because of being fired or company losses, or because people are choosing to leave their employer to work on their own?
This has nothing to do with actual threats and EVERYTHING to do with the government wanting to control all internet traffic. CNN just had a 2 hour cyber scare program and along with this and a dozen other scares that to people in the know are ridiculous, but the dumbed down public will buy anything that scares them.
If you like you’re internet, better start spreading the word, it’s getting serious.
Because that’d be too easy. Why not investing a little time and effort finding the terminals and then employees responsible and reprimand them.
Maybe they should manage their networks better, you know like prevent enployees from installing any software their hearts desire.