Shamelessly stolen from Dave Farber’s Interesting People mailing list

Why is Department of Homeland Security worrying about file-swapping?

Simple, Dr. F:

a) MPAA posits that filesharing will kill the movie cartel.
{Dubious assumption - look at the Sony decision’s effects, but
follow along..}

b) If the movie cartel goes away, people will have less to fill
their time.

c) With less to do, the citizens may well start reading and
thinking again, as they did in generations past.

d) They just might run into the classic line from Pogo:

We have met the enemy, and he is us

and/or the Constitution while reading.

e) Armed with that, they might move to check the power
of Fatherland Security, and maybe even the Administration
as a whole.

f) Ergo, filesharing is a threat to them.

I guess that the Homeland Security boys and girls do some Risk Management after all.