http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/060105dnbuschildporn.102ffe5a6.html

Child porn tests file-share firms

Case may shift balance between user privacy and fighting crime

10:53 AM CDT on Wednesday, June 1, 2005

By CRAYTON HARRISON / The Dallas Morning News

File-sharing companies have gotten caught between police and child pornographers.

Makers of software such as Grokster are walking a fine line, trying to help nab child porn traffickers while guarding users' privacy.

The companies don't want to appear to have too much control over what users trade.

After all, they're busy defending themselves against copyright lawsuits by the entertainment industry, which wants them to stop users from trading pop songs and movies.

A Supreme Court case is testing the P2P companies' delicate balance.

Entertainment companies led by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. are asking the court to hold Grokster Inc. and other file-sharing companies partially responsible for users' actions.

P2P companies say they're not being hypocritical by sharing information about child porn traffickers with police but leaving copyright violators alone.

Sharing explicit images of children and copying a musical recording are two very different things, they say.

Child pornography "will always be illegal," said Marty Lafferty, chief executive of the Distributed Computing Industry Association, a P2P trade group.

"It will always be something that the right approach is to eliminate it from this channel, whereas the copyright issue is more of a licensing issue."

It will be tougher to chase child porn traffickers if P2P software makers aren't liable for the content on their networks, Texas and several other states have told the Supreme Court.

The high court is expected to rule on the case in June.

"We're not proposing that P2P networks go away," said Edward Burbach, Texas deputy attorney general.


"We're proposing that in those cases where we've got a transfer of illegal items – copyright, child porn, others – that they recognize they can in fact help us."

There is a danger in aggressively pursuing child porn traffickers online.

If pedophiles believe the file-sharing networks are no longer anonymous zones, they'll simply move to darker corners of the Internet where they're more difficult to catch, police and software companies agree.

Most of the millions of people who use file-sharing software, of course, are trading copyrighted material for free, though the software has legitimate, legal uses.

Many P2P companies make money through advertising, and they don't want loyal users to worry that they're being watched.

Child porn traffickers must be tracked down and punished, but copyright violators shouldn't be treated so harshly, P2P companies argue.

Priorities

"Anybody who suggests that the misuse of P2P software to trade copyrighted materials by individuals is as serious a problem as child pornography really needs to re-evaluate their priorities," said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of trade association P2P United, which includes Grokster.

File-sharing networks are one of many places on the Internet where pedophiles lurk.

They also transmit their images through chat rooms, newsgroups, e-mail and even Web pages. "You can find them just going through Google," Mr. Burbach said.

The government has received far more complaints about child porn on Web pages than on P2P networks, according to a 2003 General Accounting Office report.

But the same report found that child pornography was so easily accessible on P2P networks that congressional staffers could download hundreds of illegal images using only a few keywords.

Police who specialize in child porn cases consider P2P networks dangerous because they can disseminate information to many people very quickly.

The P2P networks also give users the misguided impression that they're completely anonymous.

Most popular P2P programs don't have a central repository of data tracking which users are sharing specific material.

Even so, it's possible, with the right tools, to identify P2P users.

Entertainment companies have developed and bought tools that can identify the Internet addresses of P2P users.

Law enforcement agencies have more limited budgets, but they're reviewing similar options.

More powerful tools

Marc Freedman, chief executive of Dallas developer RazorPop, is selling a software tool called X-Files that helps police identify the Internet addresses of file sharers.

It can also help police target the hash codes, or identifying markers, of specific files.

He's talking to various law enforcement agencies about the product. Some want a more powerful feature that would scour all of a user's shared files, but that's a bad idea, he said.

"It's a consumer market," he said. "If you burden the software and tell people how to design one set of software, then consumers are just going to migrate to other software that doesn't have those restrictions."

Out of business

File-sharing companies could find ways to block known illegal files before they're sent, said Detective Greg Dugger, a member of the Dallas Police Department's Internet Crimes Against Children unit.

But then they'd probably have to do the same thing for copyrighted works, and they'd lose their users instantly, he said.

"If one of these clients does the right thing, they'll probably be out of business the next day," he said.

A Supreme Court ruling in favor of entertainment companies could be the way to make P2P companies aggressive about policing their own networks, Mr. Burbach said.

But if the court rules in favor of P2P firms, the industry may have to prove it's no haven for pedophiles, said Rick Wallace, a full-time student in Illinois.

His Web site, www.seewhat youshare.com, tracks the ways consumers make themselves vulnerable through P2P software.

"At a certain point, when you have children being exploited on networks the way they are, something's got to give," he said.

George, here is an example of that "slippery slope" I was talking about.

When our enemy can scare the hell out of everyone that open/free communication can also sometimes be used for evil instead of good, the OTHER evil steps up on the soapbox and pulls at the heartstrings of the sheep.

Devil in disquise and all that jazz.

We were all chatting just the other day about this very sorta thing.

Sure, EVERYBODY wants to stop child porn and limit their kids from being able to see porn (of any kind) on the net, but the PTC and all the "far right" moralists are being played like a fiddle by the content cartels.

(Just because I personally am a LIBERAL does NOT mean that I like to see those groups/organizations having their agendas co-opted by the likes of the RIAA/MPAA. I'd rather debate those folks on those kinda issues in different forums.)

BTW, thanks Tom

"It will be tougher to chase child porn traffickers if P2P software makers aren't liable for the content on their networks, Texas and several other states have told the Supreme Court."

...in other words, "If you don't hand over total domination and control of digital communication exchange between persons using the Internet to the RIAA/MPAA/BSA, CHILD PORN will result"

Give me a break! (They forgot to say "terrorism" and "bank robbery plans" and anything else you could think of.)

"File-sharing companies could find ways to block known illegal files before they're sent... But then they'd probably have to do the same thing for copyrighted works, and they'd lose their users instantly."

He says this like it is possible.

This story is obviously written by a recent college graduate because after a year or so in the real world, most of them discover that a paragraph can contain more than one sentence.

This is just the periodic P2P and porn smokescreen of bullshit. As long as you can type the word "sex" (and nothing else) into your browser and find what currently shows up, we can be assured that no one is really accomplishing a damn thing.

"But if the court rules in favor of P2P firms, the industry may have to prove it's no haven for pedophiles, said Rick Wallace, a full-time student in Illinois."

Huh? Which industry is he talking about? Not P2P. If they win, they don't have to prove anything at all.

If he's talking about the movie/music industry, that's kind of misplaced. The pron industry was $12 billion last year.

Sex, drugs, rock and roll. You can make all the laws against them you want. But Prohibition didn't stop people from drinking.

"When our enemy can scare the hell out of everyone that open/free communication can also sometimes be used for evil instead of good, the OTHER evil steps up on the soapbox and pulls at the heartstrings of the sheep."

On one hand, sheep are stupid. Their heartstrings are easily manipulated and they have an exceedingly short memory.

They're playing "Pin the Problem on P2P" which is rather like blaming the taxi driver for what happens after you get to the address you requested.

It's not possible to block any content. The best these companies can do is to have word filters which block certian search terms. Which, I know, has been extremely inneffective. Search for pokemon or digimon sometime and see what comes up. The world is full of sick, sick freaks, and the p2p software creators don't really have the tools to do anything about that. You can't block objectionable files if you don't even know what's in them.

"It's a consumer market," he said. "If you burden the software and tell people how to design one set of software, then consumers are just going to migrate to other software that doesn't have those restrictions."

That quote works for ANYTHING. (especially DRM infected stuff)

Besides, all that might be accomplished by attempting to BLOCK child porn is to drive the perverts underground so that they can't be found. Instead of fighting the technology, why doesn't law enforcement USE the technology to rid the world of this scum? And why doesn't the RIAA LET LAW ENFORCEMENT DO ITS JOB???

I posted a similar reply to another news item

http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/2005/06/01/hollywood_could_help_fight_child_porn_but_they_dont.php

bleh!

"all that might be accomplished by attempting to BLOCK child porn is to drive the perverts underground so that they can't be found."

Isn't that a much better place for them to be?

Depends. If they continue to pursue their activities to the detrement of our children, then the answer would be NO, only because it would be harder to bring them to justice, and get them to stop.

I agree with your principle, that P2P networks would be better served if these promoters of child porn didn't exist at all. How can that be accomplished? That's the real question.

Answering by saying that the P2P companies should filter them out isn't necessarily even possible. Yet the RIAA and MPAA have proven that you are NOT invisible on the internet. That alone should have driven these scumbags underground. Apparently they don't read the headlines.

"Child Porn=Music Sharing"

Yes but we are working on it:

2001: porn on p2p 90% RIAA stuff on p2p 90%

2003: porn on p2p 70% RIAA on stuff p2p 70%

2005: porn on p2p 50% RIAA on p2p 50%

2010: porn on p2p 0% RIAA on p2p 0%

Then the RIAA die. Ready indies?

i'm not waiting that long for this shit to happen man.

Me either!

Seems to me that, one tends to find what they are looking for .
So, it makes me wonder about these people who are always finding child porn, and then hollering about it. Why were they looking for child porn for in the
first place?

Because their collection is not complete?

YUP!