‘Please keep it in perspective’
p2pnet.net News:- Only a tiny fraction of tips from the public to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children between 1998 and 2003 involved p2p technology.
This was one of the points made by a group of p2p network operators, today, to an important US committee hearing on child pornography.
Asking the committee to keep things in context, “As the records of multiple and recent Congressional hearings document, unwanted online exposure to pornographic material is an unfortunate and innate characteristic of the Internet itself in all its many forms, and of peer-to-peer technology only as a comparatively small feature of that vastly larger electronic universe,” say FreePeers (BearShare), Manolito P2P (Blubster), Streamcast Networks (Morpheus), Grokster Ltd (Grokster) and MetaMachine (eDonkey2000).
Their remarks came in a statement to the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection hearing, Online Pornography: Closing the Doors on Pervasive Smut.
Through their trade group, P2P United, the network companies quote John Malcolm, former deputy assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, as telling the Senate Judiciary Committee, last September:
“While there is no question that there is a plethora of pornographic and obscene material on P2P networks, which is easily accessible by children, it is difficult to quantify what percentage of the dissemination of child pornography on the Internet occurs via P2P networks. The General Accounting Office report released on March 13, 2003 indicates that, while reports on P2Ps have increased, ultimately only 1% of the tips from the public received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children since 1998 involved P2P technology.
“There are several other avenues of Internet communication that, for a number of reasons, currently hold significant appeal for purveyors and seekers of child pornography. Among the most popular of these are commercial websites, newsgroups, and internet relay chats, or ‘IRCs.’
“Arguably, the most troublesome of these are commercial websites . . . . [I]ndeed, nearly everyone old enough to type words on a computer keyboard understands how to ’surf the web’ and access websites on topics of interest. Computers are sold with Internet browser software pre-installed. Capitalizing on the accessibility and commensurate popularity of the Web, child pornographers offer images and video files for sale on a vast number of commercial websites hosted on servers throughout the world.”
P2P United goes on to say Malcolm’s perspective was shared by Linda D. Koontz, director of information management issues for the General Accounting Office, who testified at the same hearing:
“[Peer-to-peer file-sharing] is not the most prominent source of child pornography. [...] since 1998, most of the child pornography referred by the public to the CyberTipline was found on Internet Web sites. Since 1998, the center has received over 76,000 reports of child pornography, of which 77 percent concerned Websites, and only 1 percent concerned peer-to-peer networks.”
