"By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 6, 2004; Page E01


Online file-sharing networks, used by millions of consumers to trade digital music, videos, games and software, are beginning to work with law enforcement to crack down on child-pornography purveyors who use their systems.

Officials of two trade associations representing several companies doing such "peer-to-peer" -- or P2P -- file sharing said yesterday that they are cooperating with the FBI to attack the problem, which has drawn the ire of several members of Congress.

One group, P2P United, hopes to develop a system similar to the once-common placement of missing children's pictures on milk cartons. P2P United's members, including Grokster, Morpheus, Blubster and BearShare, would showcase photographs of individuals wanted for child pornography on their home and installation pages, said Adam M. Eisgrau, the organization's executive director.

The largest file-sharing network, Kazaa, has been cooperating with the FBI for months to help track down known child-porn traffickers on its system, said Marty Lafferty, chief executive of the Distributed Computing Industry Association.

FBI officials did not return calls for comment last night.

The moves represent a turnabout for an industry that argued for some time that it merely provided a vehicle by which individuals share digital material, and that it could not monitor or help police their behavior.

On Tuesday, five U.S. senators sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to investigate P2P networks, and a congressional hearing on Internet pornography is scheduled for today.

Under the P2P United plan, pictures would be drawn from data the FBI already provide to the television show "America's Most Wanted." The photos would contain links to help users then contact the FBI with tips or leads about the suspect.

Final details with the FBI have not yet been resolved, Eisgrau said, but he hopes to have the program up and running in 60 to 90 days.

In circumstances of "a serious criminal abuse" of Kazaa's technology, the company will "pull out all the stops" to help locate the suspect, Lafferty said. In addition to helping with enforcement, Kazaa is working on technology that will enable users to flag pornographic files, which are sometimes disguised with innocent keywords, Lafferty said.

Lafferty said his members' efforts are designed to send a message that "P2P is the dumbest place you could ever want to put up criminally obscene content. It's like standing up in the town square and shouting, 'I've done something illegal.' "

The use of file sharing for pornography, and especially child pornography, has been a potent political weapon for the movie and recording industries, which have sought to shut down the services because they also enable the exchange of copyrighted works for free.

Kazaa alone boasts that nearly 2 million files were downloaded in one recent week. The music industry, in particular, has blamed file sharing for sagging sales and losses of millions of dollars a year.

But the industry lost a key challenge in a California federal court, which ruled that just because some consumers used file sharing for illegally distributing digital media and software, the programs themselves were not illegal."

PLEASE READ THE REST OF THE SOURCE ARTICLE ONLINE AT:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5659-2004May5.html

It is time consuming to sort through a whole list of peoples porn to find the file you're looking for, and it seems to only be getting worse.

Child pornography is one of the worst things to ever come into existence.

It is our duty as file-sharers to help track this shit down and get it off the system NOW!

Congressional committee hearing on SMUT in peer-to-peer now. Listen at
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/05062004hearing1264/hearing.htm

carla...THANKS!

Who creates child porn? Internet people? Or parents, relatives and friends who exploit their own children.
I'm sick to death that they are making this an internet, peer-to-peer problem.

this is a total hatchet job....EVERYONE SHOULD LISTEN TO THIS

If I remember correctly, the FBI busted an internet child porn ring where the kids (as small as 3 years old) were being abused by their own parents. This ring had kids performing all forms of sexual acts and being photographed. It stretched as far as Europe.

While my age limit at the current moment is 17 (I'm 20. Not a perv) I find no appeal in looking at underaged women or men. But I do have to say that in certain places, girls are married at 12 or 14. How am I or anyone else to regulate the countries or nations that have people that post pictures of their marriage onto the internet (there are people like that... I hate control freaks myself but I'll leave that for another battle) and it is perfectly legal. Here in Japan, there was (Key word here...) a consent to sex at 16. Does that also mean that someone in the US can download a pic of this legalized consent if the woman or man decided to post it on their website?

To me there's a lot of holes in this enforcement. If you honestly look on the networks right now, you really won't find crap about porn unless you are actively looking for it. Common sense says that some people like porn. Common sense also says that trying to enforce morality on someone that can't or won't look at it the same way you do will only hurt your own cause.

To reiterate my point: I DON'T LIKE UNDERAGED BOYS OR GIRLS!!! But if it's accepted outside of the US, how can the US enforce it on their own people or protect them when there are so many viewpoints for and against?