As the music industry's previously reported copyright infringement lawsuit against popular P2P service LimeWire works its way through the courts, a US politician has criticised the file sharing network on a different issue this week after an investigation into the distribution of confidential information on the internet.
Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight And Government Reform Committee, said that he was "astonished" how many private documents can be obtained via P2P networks like that enabled by LimeWire. Much of that information is available by mistake - users making their music collection available to share inadvertently also provide access to other folders on their computer. Waxman argues that the P2P firm are not doing enough to protect their users from the accidental sharing of such private files.
Waxman said this week: "We used the most popular P2P programme, LimeWire, and ran a series of basic searches. What we found was astonishing: personal bank records and tax forms, attorney-client communications, the corporate strategies of Fortune 500 companies, confidential corporate accounting documents, internal documents from political campaigns, government emergency response plans and even military operation orders. It is truly chilling to think of what private information an organised operation or a foreign government could acquire with additional resources".
Trade group P2P United has a code of conduct designed to prevent inadvertent file sharing of this kind, but Waxman said the code was ineffective, especially in LimeWire's case.
However, LimeWire chairman Mark Gorton, speaking to Waxman's committee's investigation into the matter, said that his company did all it could to stop such documents being shared. He told the committee: "At LimeWire, we continue to be frustrated that despite our warnings and precautions, a small fraction of users override the safe default settings that come with the programme and end up inadvertently publishing information that they would [presumably rather keep] private". But the LimeWire chief did say his company was developing new technologies in a bid to make it even harder for uneducated users to accidentally share confidential information.