P2P PATROL, a new umbrella under which the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) will expand its online child porn fight, launched August 22.
"Eradication of child pornography should be the goal of every participant at every level in the distributed computing industry," DCIA chief executive Marty Lafferty said announcing the new plan. "We applaud our P2P software providing Members for taking a zero tolerance stance and backing it up in word and deed."
P2P PATROL is an acronym for Peer-to-Peer Parents and Teens React On Line, with the first program focusing on deterrence, beginning with a series of popup warning messages, the DCIA said. They'll be shaped like stop signs and appear when P2P network users enter search terms known to be tied to child porn. The messages will be field-tested with the Grokster P2P network before being offered free of charge to other networks.
The intended target of the popups, the DCIA added, are users "who appear to be on the threshold of involvement with child pornography." The first such message will read as follows: "WARNING -- The search term you entered has been associated with child pornography. Any person who receives, reproduces, or redistributes a visual depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct shall be subject to severe fines and imprisonment. P2P PATROL reports suspected violations of Title 18, USC 2252 to the FBI. -- PEER-TO-PEER PARENTS AND TEENS REACT ONLINE."
Lafferty said the warning should be an effective child porn fighting weapon for the umbrella.
They've got an enthusiast in Adult Sites Against Child Pornography executive director Joan Irvine, whose group's activity includes providing an online hotline for surfers to report suspect child porn and passing valid reports to law enforcement. "We are pleased to see that the P2P software providing members are taking the responsibility to eradicate child pornography and educate users," Irvine told AVNOnline.com. "Since, according to a government study, over 54 percent of the files downloaded on P2P systems are child pornography, they needed to be proactive."
P2P PATROL was established three months after at least two critical members of the P2P community – popular network KaZaA and interest group P2P United – announced their own part in fighting the child porn battle. KaZaA said in May they had been cooperating with the FBI over several months to help flush the child porn off their network, while P2P United began work on developing a milk-carton style campaign of posting the images of suspected child porners on the home pages of P2P networks.
P2P United executive director Adam Eisgrau told a U.S. House subcommittee holding hearings on the subject about the campaign plans. After the hearing, he told AVNOnline.com several subcommittee members, "while clearly concerned about the exposure of horrible material to children, also understood and asked questions regarding the fact that P2P technology is an outgrowth of the Internet and it is the Internet that creates this exposure. We are not only not the problem, we are instrumental elements of the solutions."
Some federal lawmakers had previously thought otherwise, accusing the P2P industry of being virtual partners in child porn merely because child pornographers were known to send their materials down the P2P pike.
They weren't exactly alone in such accusations. Titan Media, the gay adult production company, joined critics who had accused P2P networks of being careless in the past about the prospect that child porn was going over the P2P wire along with illegal copies of adult porn works.
Titan vice president Keith Ruoff sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a May 3 letter backing a bill to allow the Justice Department to crack down on Internet pirates, a letter in which Ruoff said the bill – known as the PIRATE (Protecting Intellectual Property Rights Against Theft and Exploitation) Act on Capitol Hill – had a double importance to Americans. "Not only does it strengthen and protect the rights of copyright holders," Ruoff wrote, "it also helps to punish those that make adult materials available to children in the peer-to-peer file trading networks."
The DCIA said P2P PATROL would bring forth more components as the program develops further, including notifications of suspect child porn trafficking to Internet service providers and law enforcement local, state, federal, and international. In November, however, P2P PATROL will present an education-focused program "to appropriate officials," a program aimed at giving general P2P users who come across child porn by accident the tools they need to recognize, report, and remove it from their computers.
"No amount of child pornography is acceptable," Lafferty said. "And we are committed to doing all we can to eliminate this illicit content from peer-to-peer file sharing environments."
