Congressional Offices Tied to Illegal Downloads
05 April 2013
Members of Congress have, in recent years, discussed a number of antipiracy laws, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). SOPA, which was intended to increase punishment for those who obtain copyrighted materials illegally through the internet, did not pass.
Those members may need to discuss the intended legislation more thoroughly with their staff members.
According to a report by US News and World Report, staff members in the US House of Representatives have continued to illegally download movies and television shows on their work computers. The report, using information from October and November 2012, says that IP addresses tied to Congressional offices downloaded movies including The Cabin in the Woods, Life of Pi and The Dark Knight Rises and television shows including Supernatural, Downton Abbey and Glee.
Over the last four months, employees of the House of Representatives have illegally downloaded dozens of films and TV shows, the US News piece says, citing reserach done by ScanEye, a website that tracks what IP addresses have downloaded on BitTorrent, a protocol for sharing large files over the internet. Unauthorized downloads of copyrighted material is illegal in the US.
US News was able to ascertain a number of IP addresses associated with Congress using the IP geo location website MaxMind. The magazine notes that the report does not include IP addresses associated with every congressional office, and that “the number of illegal downloads may be higher.”
