This has not been one of peer-to-peer's more pleasant weeks. First, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled P2P companies could be held liable for their users' copyright-infringing file swapping. Two days later, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report was released criticizing P2P for blocking porn access inadequately.
The same report also criticized Google, Yahoo!, and MSN search engines for being less effective than they could be in filtering porn "and erotic images."
"Pornographic images are easily shared and accessed on the three P2P programs we tested – Warez, Kazaa, and Morpheus," the GAO report's summary said. "Juveniles continue to be at risk of inadvertent exposure to pornographic images when using P2P programs."
The GAO produced the report at the request of the U.S. House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, which has held two previous hearings on P2P issues and plans more.
"Our oversight demonstrates that these networks have become an increasingly popular mechanism for the trafficking of very graphic pornography, including child pornography,” said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Virginia), the committee's chairman "This latest GAO report confirms that many of the tools available to parents to prevent access to pornography on peer-to-peer networks are ineffective.
"The current dynamic leaves parents in an untenable position: either watch over your child’s shoulder every second he or she is at the computer, or deny them use, or run the risk of exposure to this disgraceful material," Davis continued. "Based on the report’s findings, the Committee intends to hold more hearings on this issue."
The summary did note Kazaa and Morpheus use filters while Warez does not, but the filters' effectiveness vary. Kazaa's filter proved effective during GAO searches, but Morpheus's filter proved "largely ineffective in blocking pornographic content associated with words entered into the filter."
Kazaa's filter uses words found in titles or metadata (descriptive information tied to files), the GAO said, while Morpheus requires users to enter specific words to be filtered.
"[W]hen searching Kazaa using a word known to be associated with pornography, 65 percent of the 31 images downloaded were adult pornography, 19 percent were non-pornographic, 13 percent were adult erotica, and 3 percent were child pornography," the GAO report said. "When searching Kazaa using an innocuous word, 46 percent of the 13 images were cartoon pornography."
Warez could not be reached for comment, but Morpheus spokesman Brian O'Neal said the company wants to review the GAO report further before commenting on the critique. Kazaa representatives were unavailable for comment before this story went to press.
The GAO said MSN's filtering was as effective as Kazaa's in "consistently blocking" adult and erotic imagery but Google's was not quite so effective. Yahoo's filter, the GAO said, compared to Morpheus' filter for being "largely ineffective in blocking pornographic and erotic images."
"For instance, when searching Google using a known search word, we were able to
download 79 images, of which 11 were adult erotica," the report said. "Similar to Morpheus’ filter, Yahoo’s filter was largely ineffective in blocking pornographic and erotic images. During the filtered searches, Yahoo’s filter did not block a substantial number of pornographic and erotic images on two of the known word searches and did not block erotic images on the third known word search."
None of the three search engines returned calls for comment.
