The Informed P2P User Act

Abstract

(Testimony of Thomas Sydnor before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, Committee on Energy and Commerce) Although voluntary self-regulation should always be an option of first resort, the narrowly-tailored Informed P2P User Act would successfully supplement existing law. Popular programs continue to contain features that perpetuate inadvertent file-sharing, illustrating a failure of the voluntary best practices adopted by distributors of peer-to-peer software. Congress should not rely on continued self-regulation by distributors file-sharing programs because certain companies have repeatedly proven themselves to be untrustworthy -- specifically, the deployment of a search wizard upon a new installation of the LimeWire file-sharing program, which recommends users share all or almost all files in their My Documents folders and subfolders. Since first time users of file-sharing programs tend to be teens or preteens, the addition of this feature is deliberate and an intent to deploy a known means of directing absurdly dangerous guidance towards a program's most vulnerable users in order to cause them to share files inadvertently. Since the search wizard function was deployed after a Code of Conduct was agreed upon by distributors of file-sharing software, the actions of LimeWire has illustrated self-regulation will not work in this instance. The Informed P2P User Act complements existing law without needlessly burdening legitimate, law-abiding uses of such technology, because it narrowly and rather gently targets critical root causes of inadvertent sharing.