[IP] Dallas Morning News: CP Tests File-Share Firms
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From: "Lin, Herb" <HLin@xxxxxxx>
Date: June 3, 2005 9:34:02 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: FW: +++ Dallas Morning News: CP Tests File-Share Firms
For IP if you think relevant
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
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.
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