Canada: ‘Pedophile Haven’
p2pnet.net news:- Days after Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG fired their first broadside against their own customers in their bizarre sue ‘em all marketing scheme in 2003, RIAA spinster Cary Sherman told the US senate Sharman Networks’ Kazaa p2p file sharing application, “could be a tool for adults to lure children into having sex,” according to CNET News in a shock-horror story.
At a cost of $115 million, Niklas Zenstromm and Janus Friis’ Kazaa became part of the corporate community and is now one of the entertainment cartel good guys. However, back then it, and other independent commercial p2p programs such as Morpheus, whose owners are currently suing Zenstromm and Friis, among others, bore the brunt of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) onslaught.
With a little help from his friends, Orrin ‘Terminator’ Hatch saw the possibilities and used online kiddie porn to ram Hollywood-friendly bills through congress.
A pedophile could send “an instant message to the unwitting young person who downloads an Olsen twins or Pokemon file from the pedophile’s share folder on Kazaa,” Sherman says in the CNET story.
Four years on, online porn remains an invaluable political weapon to be picked up and used used by the Big 4 whenever, and wherever, a suitable occasion arises.
And an opportunity has just presented itself in Canada where the entertainment cartels, with the major music labels to the fore, are lobbying frantically to have Canada’s copyright laws changed to better suit industry segments.
“Fresh off unsubstantiated claims that Canada is a piracy haven, the media is now reporting that Canada is also a ‘pedophile haven’,” says Ottawa law professor and a net expert Michael Geist, continuing:
At least two groups are quoted in a CTV article claiming that Canada has lax laws and should require Internet service providers to take stronger action against pedophile and child porn sites.
Moreover, Conservative MP Art Hanger infers that the law should be changed to require ISPs to report sites, even if they are not illegal.
Pedophelia and child pornography are obviously unconscionable and all countries should have strong laws to criminalize such behaviour.
To my knowledge, there is no reason to think that Canada falls short in this regard. Not only are there criminal code provisions to address these issues, but Canadian ISPs voluntarily launched the controversial Project Cleanfeed initiative to block child pornography images.
Moreover, the OpenNet Initiative summary of Canada and the U.S. leaves no reason to believe that US ISPs face stricter scrutiny or liability for this form of conduct (several U.S. law initiatives have been struck down as unconstitutional).
Everyone wants to find effective tools for addressing this issue, but misleading and inaccurate characterizations of Canadian law is simply not the way to do it.
Also See:
CNET News – RIAA: Child porn rife on P2P networks, September 9, 2003
$115 million – Kazaa: the fat lady hasn’t sung yet, September 19, 2006
online kiddie porn – Merchants of Porn, June 22, 2004
piracy haven – Hollywood’s war on Canada, May 4, 2007
Michael Geist – Canada Labeled a “Pedophile Haven”, May 25, 2007
f your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
May 28th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
If you can twist something to use towards your own agenda, regardless of the damage to others, I suppose it’s all fair, right? I mean, let’s remember that this is ALL “for the children.” Of COURSE it has NOTHING to do with “for politicians to get votes.” (end sarcasm)