On May 6, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection held a hearing on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, which allows users to share files with other users on the network. Witness testimony also addressed the Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography Act (H.R. 2885). Sponsored by Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA), the measure would prohibit the distribution of P2P file-trading software in interstate commerce.
Agreeing that P2P is an “ingenious and legitimate technology,” Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) stated, “The chilling fact is that pornographers are now using these P2P applications to target children and young adults with pornographic material by distributing files with deceptive names that disguise a pornographic file by labeling it with an entity popular with children or young adults, such as ‘Cinderella’ or ‘Britney Spears.’”
Ranking Member Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) expressed her hope that the subcommittee could help parents limit their children’s exposure to pornography without violating the First Amendment. She also noted that there are many beneficial uses of P2P file sharing and said that Congress must find a way to “balance concerns.”
Howard Beales of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) summarized the FTC’s efforts in educating consumers about the possible harm in downloading and using P2P file-sharing technology. He said that in July 2003, the FTC issued a consumer alert that “warned consumers that P2P file-sharing software may be used to exchange pornography, as well as games, videos, and music that may be inappropriate for children.” Mr. Beales explained that all of the P2P file-sharing programs examined by the FTC offered a filter to exclude unwanted content. “Kazaa and LimeWire provided filters that blocked access to materials that contained offensive or otherwise adult-content related words in the description of the file,” he stated, adding, “All four services gave users the ability to create their own filters by manually entering all the words that they wanted blocked from search results. All of these filters, however, operate by only examining language found in the title or descriptor of the file, rather than the content of the file. Moreover, these filters may not be effective when users label files inaccurately, which can result in the transfer of files with pornographic or other unwanted content.”
Testifying on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Kevin Lourdeau said that the Internet “has dramatically increased the access of the preferential sex offenders to the population they seek to victimize and provides them greater access to a community of people who validate their sexual preferences.” He cited a General Accounting Office report that indicated “a four fold increase” in the number of complaints concerning child pornography in P2P networks, explaining that pornographers are attracted to the apparent anonymity of the system. “IP addresses are the only way to definitely identify a particular user on a Peer-to-Peer network,” he stated, adding, “In this environment, users of Peer-to-Peer often believe they are anonymous. There is some degree of truth in this assertion as peers in these networks are anonymous to each other. That being said, they are NOT anonymous to law enforcement. Through the use of covert investigative techniques and administrative subpoenas, Agents can determine which individual users possess and distribute child pornography over these networks.” Mr. Lourdeau said that the FBI has created an investigative protocol for P2P investigations with the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Department of Justice, and a number of investigations are currently underway.
Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that the center’s “CyberTipline” has received 2,100 reports on the trading of child pornography via P2P networks. He also noted that P2P programs have made it more difficult to identify the users, stating, “In the past we were able to easily identify offenders trading child pornography using peer-to-peer programs because their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses were visible and they were required to reveal their e-mail addresses. This is no longer the case. When we receive reports to the CyberTipline, it is almost impossible to identify the perpetrators responsible for trading the illegal files. The anonymity of recent peer-to-peer technology has allowed individuals who exploit children to trade images and movies featuring the sexual assault of children with very little fear of detection.” Mr. Allen explained that law enforcement agencies face numerous challenges in prosecuting perpetrators because there is no central database of files and no organization to the network; there is no way to record activity in a central log; most of the file-sharing programs are free, so no subscriber information is available; and individuals from “all over the world” use P2P programs.
Calling the use of P2P networks for the distribution of pornography “regrettable,” Martin Lafferty of the Distributed Computing Industry Association explained that the most popular P2P software suppliers provide tools for parents to protect their children from “undesirable material.” “Users can choose options to block adult content, which is the default setting, add more keywords to be blocked, prevent all video and images from being downloaded, and password-protect their filter settings,” he stated, adding, “While parental controls designed for search engines and other Internet applications, or distributed as stand-alone programs, may not automatically work with peer-to-peer software applications, the customized filtering solutions that have been incorporated in the leading file-sharing software programs are unexcelled in the levels of protection they provide and are setting the standard. Use of these tools and monitoring of use by parents and custodians must remain the primary protection of children from inappropriate Internet content.” Mr. Lafferty also stated that websites, chat rooms, news groups, and bulletin boards accounted for 97 percent of the reported incidents of pornographic file sharing.
