This week, a popular blog caught federal staff downloading content illegally.
“Busted: Canadian Parliament hosts BitTorrent pirates,” reads the Jan. 1 entry on TorrentFreak, a blog dedicated to the popular file sharing program.
They investigated the downloads associated to the House of Common’s IP addresses, an internet ID number, and found that there were a number of illegal downloads from these addresses.
Surprisingly, this included TWO versions of the Maroon 5’s popular song “Moves Like Jagger” (apparently even our politicians can’t resist that song) and a copy of the Need for Speed video game.
The blog also linked to the Pirate Party of Canada, a political movement that advocates for copyright reform which found the same information from the IP addresses.
However, the founder of TorrentFreak says that Canada isn’t unique. They have found illegal downloads linked to IP addresses to the U.S House of Representatives and the French President’s residence.
This comes at an ironic time for the Canadian government as they’re just in the middle of proposing a highly controversial copyright bill that would put a lot heavier penalties for downloading things illegally including huge fines and up to five years of jail time. Critics of the new bill argue that the “digital lock” hurts the rights of the consumer.
I think that the government should take a more relaxed stance on this bill since apparently everyone, including our country’s politicians, are internet pirates. I don’t disagree with the fact that this is an issue in the 21st century, especially for the people who are producing the content but I think that the government may be too harsh. That being said, if this bill does end up passing I would like to see the Canadian government prosecuting their own employees for doing this illegal activity just as they would any other citizen. This is an issue that clearly affects everyone, so no one should be safe from the reprecussions.