Once again, law enforcement and government types have discovered something that the adult Internet community has known for years. People can download free porn from Peer-to-peer networks.
On Thursday, March 13, a hearing entitled "Stumbling Onto Smut" was held before the Government Reform Committee. The Government Accounting Office submitted a 37-page report detailing their study of the matter. The GAO worked in cooperation with the US Customs CyberSmuggling Center to determine and classify the content of files resulting from their research.
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"Free porn from file sharing and newsgroups has always been a problem for the adult Internet Industry." |
Since they knew they were searching for possible Child Pornography and because the mere possession of such is a crime, the GAO had to use the CyberSmuggling Center who has authorization to view and assess such imagery.
The CyberSmuggling Center did a P2P search using keywords often implemented by those who look for CP. From such a search on Kazaa, they retrieved 1286 files/titles. Of those 1286, 24% were non-pornographic, 34% were adult pornography and 44% were CP. Using three keywords (popular singer, child actor, cartoon character) that are commonly applied by actual children, 177 images were found on Kazaa. Of those 177, 44% were non-pornographic, 34% were adult pornography, 14% were cartoon pornography, 17% were child erotica and 1% were concluded to be actual CP.
Randy Saaf (who is President of P2P tracking firm MediaDefender) claimed his company's system did a similar search from 3/06/03-3/10/03 and found
"328,349 unique IPs that were running Kazaa and sharing files that appeared to be child pornography. Of course MediaChance's methodology is flawed because they never opened the files and made their judgement by file name only. Saaf also claimed that "Naturally, the largest demand and supply for video files on Kazaa is adult content."
The dubious intentions of MediaChance aside, the reality is there's a lot of porn on P2P. Duh.
What's disturbing to me is how yet again, the adult Internet is left out of the loop. When the hearing was held, Raaf testified. A couple of kids testified. Even the president of Gnutella testified. But did anybody ask someone from our industry to testify?
Why is it when it comes to expert opinions and testimony about Internet pornography, they don't include us? After all, aren't we better informed than anyone else is about the dirty dealings of a small faction within our realm? Representative Henry Waxman asked:
"Can anyone on the panel tell us if pornographers are making money by putting pornographic files on the file-sharing programs?"
The answer he got was that Gnutella was making big bucks and that maybe some pornographers made money by seeding files with ads. The truth is they had no idea how we felt about P2P porn or had any concern about our loss of income because of it. They just continue to lump us in with the CP propagators.
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Free porn from file sharing and newsgroups has always been a problem for the adult Internet Industry. Search any adult webmaster message board and you'll many find topics on that very subject. Adult webmasters are constantly looking for ways to combat unauthorized use of our content. We find and contact those that illegally share adult content on a daily basis. We are the ones seeding the P2P networks with ads because we don't want our products out there -for free- anymore than the government does.
This is something the government and morality watchdogs just can't seem to fathom. They refuse to accept the fact that the adult Internet Industry is not interested in exposing children to adult content. They continue to believe that are the enemy when in truth, we are a self-policing force. We hate child porn and report it to ASACP. We set up AVS systems to keep kids out. We make warning pages. We don't want kids on our pages because we provide ADULT CONTENT.
The mission to protect children from adult content and from CP is a noble one. The adult Internet works diligently from within to prevent such abhorrence. ASACP is a prime example of our dedication to the protection of children.
Unfortunately, ASACP is only capable of tracking and reporting CP on World Wide Web pages. ASACP doesn't have the capabilities to monitor P2P networks or Usenet. Nevertheless, if you find CP on file-sharing networks or in newsgroups, ASACP is more than happy to guide you and direct you as to what to do about it.
It's a shame we aren't included in discussions and hearings that directly affect us. It's a shame that lawmakers are so shortsighted. They could save themselves a lot of work and trouble if they asked us how to combat CP and illegal file sharing.