It would appear that the entertainment industry's friends in Congress are now trying to blame just about anything evil online on P2P technology. A few months ago, a group of representatives started saying that P2P technology had to be regulated because it was a national security threat. The reasoning behind this? Because some idiot gov't employees ignored policies forbidding the use of unauthorized 3rd party apps (or putting sensitive data on home computers) and misconfigured P2P apps... ending up in secure documents being available for download. In other words, even though the real fault was stupid gov't employees ignoring policies and misusing the technology... it was the technology's fault.

Apparently, that argument didn't generate enough support for a new law against P2P technology. So now the exact same group of Congressional Representatives is claiming that P2P technology is evil and must be stopped... because it promotes identity theft. The politicians (many of whom just so happen to come from places where large entertainment firms are based... though, we're sure that's a coincidence) are clearly trying to come up with an excuse (any excuse) to come up with new laws against P2P systems. Today's action involved asking the FTC to investigate this perceived threat from P2P systems and also asked whether the FTC felt it had enough enforcement powers to address this problem, or if it needed help from Congress. In other words, the well-choreographed dance has begun. We'll soon see legislation introduced to crack down on file sharing systems, officially in the name of stopping identity theft, but really thanks to campaign contributions from the entertainment industry who still hasn't realized that it's harming itself. The more they do this, the more real innovation will move elsewhere.