Can the man inside your TV really see you sitting there on your couch in your living room?

Of course he can’t. And peer-to-peer (P2P) technology has no more visibility into your personal computer files than the man in the TV has into your living room.

It’s absurd when you stop to think about it, much like the language in House Resolution 1319 also referred to as the “Informed P2P User Act” – a bill that intends to “prevent the inadvertent disclosure of information on a computer through the use of certain `peer-to-peer’ file sharing software without first providing notice and obtaining consent from the owner or authorized user of the computer.”

At first glance, the intent of this bill seems like a noble effort, indeed. Preventing the inadvertent disclosure of sensitive information on a computer to otherwise unauthorized users is something that everyone can agree is a good thing.

But the problem is that the proposed bill is much too broad in its scope, leaving the door wide open for a host of unintended consequences, particularly for the businesses (and their customers) that use P2P technology for legitimate file distribution. In other words, H.R. 1319, in its current form, has the potential to have an unintended and severely negative impact on the providers of P2P technology and their customers, each of which have nothing to do with file sharing.

The main issue is that the bill does nothing to differentiate between “P2P technology” and “file sharing software”. P2P technology itself does not enable inadvertent sharing of sensitive files from a user’s computer. “File sharing software” on the other hand, can enable users to search, find and copy files from one computer to another. The intent of the bill is to target the potentially negative effects of file sharing – that is, the inadvertent sharing of personal/sensitive files – but it implicates P2P technology as the culprit, not file sharing software programs that might actually expose users to risk.

P2P technology is not the problem here and should not be burdened with unnecessarily intrusive regulatory requirements. P2P technology is clearly playing an important role in the long and storied evolution of content distribution. At some point in the future, we will hopefully get to look back (and laugh) on the days when Congress tried to protect the Internet public from the online version of the man inside the TV lurking in your living room.

Click here to see the hearing or read the testimony transcripts reagarding HR 2221 and HR 1319.

Tags: HR 1319, Informed P2P User Act, P2P, P2P Best Practices, Solid State Networks