US House of Representatives: Internet pirates

TorrentFreak continues to crawl through YouHaveDownloaded, a database of IPs that have been logged by a BitTorrent-spying tool run by some folks in Russia. They've already revealed the downloading habits of the RIAA and DHS as well as the behavior detected at Nicholas Sarkozy's official residence, and now they're publishing stats on the US House of Representatives.

The House, of course, has been mired in Internet controversy since Rep Lamar Smith introduced his Stop Online Piracy Act, which establishes a regime of national censorship in the name of fighting copyright infringement. So it is with some amusement that TorrentFreak points out that more than 800 of the IP addresses assigned to the House of Reps were involved in copyright infringement over BitTorrent, according to the YHD database. There's a big trove of self-help books in there, with titles like "Crucial Conversations- Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High," and who knows, maybe that's what Mr Smith was reading when he decided to sell out America to Hollywood?

Something that immediately caught our eye are the self-help books that are downloaded in the House. “Crucial Conversations- Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High,” for example, may indeed be of interest to the political elite in the United States. And “How to Answer Hard Interview Questions And Everything Else You Need to Know to Get the Job You Want” may be helpful for those who aspire to higher positions.

Books tend to be popular in the House because we found quite a few more, including “Do Not Open – An Encyclopedia of the World’s Best-Kept Secrets” and “How Things Work Encyclopedia”. But of course the people at the heart of democracy are also downloading familiar content such as Windows 7, popular TV-shows and movies.

And there was another category we ran into more than we would have wanted too. It appears that aside from self-help books, House employees are also into adult themed self-help videos. We’ll list one of the least explicit here below, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

As for me, I'm just shocked (and a little bit heartened, to be honest) to learn that there's someone in the House who knows how to use the Internet.

While Drafting SOPA, the U.S. House Harbors BitTorrent Pirates

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Copyfight • law • petard • sopa • youhavedownloaded

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Daniel Smith

Do as we say, not as we dooooooooooo
- Jay Coleman
  
  That would be every policy by the US political class since, well, forever. F&*%$ing jerks.
irksome

Why should Representatives be afraid to use a simple series of tubes?
manicbassman

you do realise they’ll just claim it was for research purposes…
- psulli
  
  Or perhaps they will just vote to make pirating digital material legal for members of Congress just as insider trading is fine and dandy once you are elected to the hallowed halls of the US Capitol.
  - Jay Coleman
    
    I like your thinking there, peon!
http://obsidian.kokolis.net Chloramphenicol

And this is precisely why we need to use SOPA (if it passes) to file blacklist complaints against the government itself. Of course, voting out every single incumbent couldn’t hurt either…
- https://plus.google.com/117702410245683101961/posts Lucian Armasu
  
  Don’t kid yourself. At the hearing they were already talking about an amendment that would exempt the House from using SOPA against them.
IronEdithKidd

Our actual representatives wouldn’t sully themselves by touching a computer connected to the internet. That’s what interns are for.
Bink Binkerson

The information ministry in Orwell’s 1984 could access & read all banned items. Ditto today in China & elsewhere. SOPA will not affect the corporate-fascist regime.
- http://obsidian.kokolis.net Chloramphenicol
  
  Sometimes I wish BoingBoing had a ‘dislike’ function so that I could agree with you while expressing my dislike for the truthfulness of what you’ve said…
kmckee7

Maybe we got lucky and one of them actually *read* the “How Things Work Encyclopedia.”
http://about.me/eric.s.riley Eric Riley

The fact that “Crucial Conversations” is on this list just absolutely slays me. It’s published by McGraw-Hill, who are one of the nearly 20 publishers on the SOPA support list.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_T7L535EPDORPNCPMCXY53EDSCY Amir Taaki

This list was bullshit. Everyone verified that there were multiple inaccuracies on there.
http://twitter.com/Kisai Kisai

If you listen to them talking about copyright infringement, Congress itself is immune to copyright infringement, or so they say. One of the Anti-SOPA reps submitted the Lyrics to “The Internet is for Porn.”
http://www.movies-suck.com/ Wastrel Way

I have to reconsider my download activities if it means that I’m no better than a politician.
Pete Teoh

Can we serve a take-down notice for house.gov now?