As debate wound down for the year over the upcoming Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, the file sharing weblog TorrentFreak exposed an interesting group of hypocrites behind SOPA: users from the RIAA and the Department of Homeland Security were caught downloading music and episodes from Bittorrent sources. Add this in addition to movie studios caught pirating from each other.
To round up the trifecta of persons with double standards behind SOPA are revelations of IP ranges coming from the United States House of Representatives which were used to grab some free content on Bittorrent, as TorrentFreak reveals.
The culprits obtained files relevant to their daily profession with publications such as "Crucial Conversations- Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High" and "How to Answer Hard Interview Questions And Everything Else You Need to Know to Get the Job You Want," for lawmakers to easily master the skill of dodging questions from mainstream media and a crowd of angry anti-SOPA protesters on the Internet.
To round off the list of pirated content are the usual suspects of movies, books, copies of Windows 7, and some 18+ "entertainment" for those long hours of debate at the House. (Cleanup utensils not included.)
As with previous reveals, the downloads were retrieved from a small subset of Bittorrent traffic tracked by YouHaveDownloaded. Given the IP ranges involved are easily traceable to government computers, one has to wonder why lawmakers did not use their own residential connections to seek out illegal copies of politically beneficial advice. That"s common sense advice they forgot to pirate.
Thanks casper2 for the news thread in the forums!
Image Credit: TorrentFreak