In an illustration of how desperate the entertainment industry is to destroy P2P networks, the RIAA is attempting to smear file trading sites with the charge that they support and encourage the distribution of child porn.
In a U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing, which took place a day after the RIAA sued 261 alleged illegal file traders, its president, Cary Sherman told the U.S. Senate that the P2P service Kazaa could be used by adults to lure children into having sex. In his testimony that's posted on the Judiciary Committee Web site, Sherman said a pedophile could send "an instant message to the unwitting young person who downloads an Olsen twins or Pokemon file from the pedophile's share folder on Kazaa,"
In his testimony, John Malcolm, a deputy assistant attorney general said that "P2P networks are of significant law enforcement concern and focus, particularly because of their decentralized design and relative accessibility and ease of use...(The FBI) is currently considering a protocol for investigating child pornography cases in the relatively new area of P2P technology."
District Attorney for Suffolk County, N.Y., Thomas Spota, who filed child-pornography-related charges against 12 Kazaa users in July, has called for a new federal task force and said legislation is needed to "attack the owners and the distributors of these programs, who are reaping enormous profits." According to various online news reports both Spota and Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said the U.S. Department of Justice should create this task force to track down users of P2P networks who trade child pornography.
The RIAA has been using children as pawns in their quest to stamp out P2P networks for some time. In a U.S. government report released in March, Sherman claimed that that "a significant percentage of the files available to these 13 million new users per month are pornography, including child pornography." This claim is not supported by a recent report from the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) which revealed that a relatively small percentage of the millions of available files contained child porn.
The GAO staff supposedly used 12 keywords known to be associated with child porn and found 1,286 items on the Kazaa file-trading site, 34% of which were adult pornography. The report says that another 24% were non-pornographic. A search of the Kazaa network for child pornography found 341 image files, about 44% of which were child porn, according to the report.
The GAO report does not estimate how much child porn is now available on P2P services and Malcolm told the Committee that it is difficult to determine how large a problem child porn is on P2P networks. He also acknowledged that the DOJ is more concerned about child porn on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks, which he says can be used by pornographers to increase the size and diversity of their collections. "By contrast, offering files on P2P does not automatically result in receiving files in return," Malcolm told the Committee.
In a Sept. 9 letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Schumer pointed out that file-sharing software is "an effective tool for someone trying to get their hands on child pornography." Since P2P networks are a highly efficient way to exchange all data, this is true. It is also true that the entire Internet and specifically the Web is also an effective tool for spreading child porn.
You cannot blame the technology for the purposes that people use it for. Alan Morris, executive vice president of Sharman Networks, which operates Kazaa, noted in his testimony that most child porn is available on Web sites and the chance that someone might be exposed to a pornographic image on a pop-up ad is much greater than finding it via an innocent sounding search term on a P2P site.
Kazaa already has a pornography filter turned on by default. Nevertheless, Schumer and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) are looking into whether P2P operators are doing all they can to prevent child porn and how to hold them responsible for the content of files they often have no way of determining the contents of. Schumer is also condemning P2P services for introducing anonymity features claiming that they will assist sexual predators.
Schumer asked Kazaa if it had revoked the software licenses of the 12 Suffolk county residents charged by Spota. Kazaa's end user license already prohibits the sharing of offensive or illegal materials. According to various online news reports, Morris said Kazaa has not considered revoking the licenses of those people. It is important to remember that these are people who have been charged, not convicted, and therefore are still presumed innocent under U.S. law.
In a separate statement, Morris said Kazaa would be happy to assist any future task force and notes that it has already cooperated with law enforcement agencies investigating child porn. In his testimony, he said that only a handful of law enforcement agencies have contacted his company in the last 18 months about child pornography on the network.
"We are dedicated to the eradication of child pornography from P2P networks and will continue to cooperate with Congress, law enforcement agencies and dedicated non-governmental agencies in support of that shared goal," Morris said in his statement.
In an effort to fight the attempted demonization of P2P networks, six P2P providers announced Sept. 9 that they are planning to launch a "Parent-to-Parent Resource Center," which will give advice on how to shield themselves and their kids from child porn. Adam Eisgrau, executive director of Peer-to-Peer United said in a statement that, "the answer is not to restrict the technology, because technology isn't the perpetrator - criminals are. The answer is to track down and prosecute those who would exploit the youngest and most vulnerable among us, and to put them in jail where they belong."