Porno for Pirates

According to an article in the Times, the music industry is using the availability of porn (and especially the dread kiddie porn) on peer-to-peer file trading services to garner support for a crackdown from people who might not get quite as worked up over a few bootlegged Britney albums. I'm not sure how one goes about regulating a decentralized system like Morpheus (which is really just a client for the open Gnutella network), let alone, say, Freenet, but I'm sure that won't stop them trying.

I also noted this rather implausible paragraph from the story:

A study in March by the General Accounting Office found that KaZaA would be effective for someone looking for child pornography. The agency searched for 12 terms associated with child pornography, such as "incest" and "underage." It did not actually download the files it found, but it determined that 42 percent of them had titles or descriptions associated with pornographic images of children

To quote the UFO nut from Slacker, there just aren't that many perverts out there. Well, not the sort that get off on adolescents, anyway. I'd wager that 99.9% of these alleged kiddie porn files feature some 40 year old in pigtails and a plaid skirt, not actual children. (Kinda creepy in its own right, but not criminal.) If they were looking for terms like "teen" or "school," they probably also caught a bunch of 19 year old college students. Not to say there's no genuinely awful stuff available out there, but I find it difficult to believe that it's really that prevalent.

Comments

[Pete Guither]

If you want to see what they're trying to pass, check out HR 2885 (go to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and enter HR 2885 in bill number).

It bizarrely requires the technological development of a "beacon" which people could install on their computers. If such a beacon is there, it would be a crime to distribute file-sharing software to such a computer.

It also requires that any person that distributes file trading software (or authorizes others to do so) obtain verification of majority or verifiable parental consent. They must also maintain records of compliance.

This means that P2P networks would essentially have to maintain records on those who have received the actual software to do file trading. This will make it easier for RIAA to go after file traders (or nail the network if they don't comply with the provisions).

As we have seen so often, when you want a bill to serve a purpose, all you have to do is claim that you're protecting children.

[Plutarck]

NOTE: THE following has some extreme language due to the nature of this topic, so skip it if you don't want to read it.

As a former experience Gnutella user, I shall explain a bit about the wording:

A major problem with Gnutella has been "keyword packing" - some people, typically to advertise for porn sites, take some given porno file and then pack it with all sorts of words that have nothing to do with what it actually shows, often to the point of having file names which are so long that they would reach across an entire computer screen multiple times.

Some also take the same file and just rename it, leaving the same content and byte-count, again with the same purpose of just getting it downloaded.

In fact, I would wage that this is precisely why they actually did not download the material and check it - because they would find only a tiny amount of the hits actually ARE child porn.

Here is a real example of this that I personally found (once you learn about the packing you just ignore the actual names of files and just look at the byte-count):

Teen Raped In Pool Incest Xxx Fuck Porn Sex Fisting Oral Blow Job Pre-teen Asian Big Tits Boobs Breasts Vaginal Anal.asf

*ahem* In this film there is no rape, the person is obviously not a teen, there is no incest, no one is asian, there is no fisting, there is no non-oral intercourse shown, and the woman's lower wibbly nibblies are not featured.

There is a site called "sexworldwest.com" that also has lots of little files on gnutella, but their names typically have nothing to do with the actual content. They, however, to my knowledge do not use child-porn keywords to try to trick people into downloading them.

The term "underage" and "lolita" is also used with an absolutely remarkable prevelancy - and I cannot think of a single one that actually featured any such thing, as they are typically just ads for porn sites and/or little clips taken out of relatively mainstream porn movies.

It's a great trick they are playing, though - it requires a great deal of specialized knowledge to know that it's utter bullshit.

[Gene 6-Pack]

The didn't download, they just infered from the name...

I guess they never surfed the web before.

[Jeff Clothier]

This little diversion only shows the lengths to which RIAA will go to circumvent technological change that affects its members' bottom lines. They just don't get that instead of procecuting their customer base, they should court them. Approach them on their preferred technological platform, give them an easy way to pay REASONABLE fees for downloaded music - Apple's Music Store is the most attractive model, it seems to me, although I am biased as an avid Apple user - don't force people to buy entire albums if they only want a single, allow them to create their own albums of preferred cuts, and the fans will flock.

The downside of P2P networks is their unreliability and the sketchy availability of any but the most popular titles, which bounce across the net until everyone has a copy. Let RIAA build something downloaders can use the way they used Napster, or the way Gnutella is used now, but more reliable and reasonably priced, and they won't have to sue and arrest their customers in order to keep their revenues up.

[Mike Joyce]

The Supreme Court has ruled that fictional, written descriptions of child molestation are protected speech. Why would a fictional title or image be any different?

[Steven Crane]

Sshh, or you'll have the guvmint stepping in saying they need to protect people from "filesharing fraud" or something.

[Stmack]

Charges of filesharing fraud would not come as a surprise but it might be a result the RIAA is not counting on since it is one of the tacticts they regularly use.

[Steven Crane]

I dunno... I've found a lot of not-so-popular songs on Kazaa (namely jazz tunes i can't find the albums for)

[Stmack]

I covered Apple's iTunes Music store over at Hold the Mayo. As for the RIAA search for kiddie porn I wonder how may of the files they claim to have fond were really blank Microsoft Word documents on a computer in the next office.

[Joanne McNeil]

Activists like to put their propaganda up on Kazaa marked "AsianTeenHardcore" or something similar. Madonna notably scammed would be file-sharers last season. Unless someone's a mind-reader, there's no way to tell a file isn't falsely labeled.

[Lefty]

Err, I get music and porn over Google all the time. Does that mean we need to outlaw browsers?

[pops]

Did anybody see this one in Thursday's NY Times?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/04/technology/circuits/04lurk.html

Near the end there's a semi-dire warning about that darn Kazaa the kids are all talking about. The NYT has a real love/hate thing with the Net that provides no end of amusement to watch.

[Anonymous]

eerr,

I can get music and porn on my television - and with some music videos I don't even have to change chanels.

[Anonymous]

The title of this thread gave me a thought. There is a lot of "stolen" porn out there on the web, but very little in the way of claiming it as intellectual property, even though it is covered (heh heh) by copyright law.

[nm156]

To Post-share from another regular: But it's for the children!

[nm156]

Stop it.

[Pete Guither]

Lefty,
Yep. Next thing you know you'll have to present a credit card for proof of age to do a search, and browser companies will have to keep records of who downloads their software.