While they plan to launch a new software package to help parents keep their children from downloading copyrighted materials on peer-to-peer programs, the Distributed Computing Industry Association has already launched an online resource to educate P2Pers and their parents about guarding against child porn being passed over P2P networks.
"Child pornography needs to be addressed by initiatives like P2P PATROL (Peer-to-Peer Parents And Teens React On Line), that provide enforcement, deterrence, and education programs developed to respond to unique requirements of the P2P environment," DCIA chief executive Marty Lafferty said announcing the P2P PATROL launch.
"The newly launched P2P PATROL Web site, for example, promises to provide P2P users with the tools they need to recognize, remove, and report criminally obscene content inadvertently encountered online," he said.
The site provides information to help users distinguish child porn from child erotica; the latter, according to Lafferty, being offensive but not necessarily illegal, and an advisory on reporting child porn over P2P to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
"The DCIA represents content, software, and service companies (three groups), that we believe are necessary for commercial development of this still young industry," Lafferty said. "While (we have) grown from two to more than thirty members with balanced representation from these primary areas, we still have a long way to go to fully realize the potential of this promising and exciting new business opportunity."
That may also be part of the impetus behind Blockster, a new program from DCIA member SMARTguard Software, which will aim at monitoring P2P program use to restrict or block downloading of copyrighted materials illegally and block kids from downloading porn through P2P networks. SMARTguard was expected to demonstrate Blockster at this week's Federal Trade Commission public workshop on P2P.
"We are working with the entertainment industry, including record, movie, and software companies, to distribute our software to parents," said SMARTguard chief executive Tom Sperry, announcing Blockster. "It is important to both families and entertainment companies that P2P file sharing be used appropriately. A simple tool like Blockster that allows parents to set limits for their children will benefit everyone."
The DCIA also said they would introduce a new set of tools in February to help members – including Grokster, KaZaA parent Sharman Networks, and other P2P networks – link their programs to a DCIA hotline, CPHotline.org, through which P2P subscribers and members can send network location and other information from suspect images or videos to the DCIA, which would review the information and pass "actionable" leads to law enforcement.
"What we don't want to do is create a lot of leads that are not actionable by law enforcement," Lafferty said, adding that the DCIA is working with the FBI's cybercrime unit and with state police Internet Crimes Against Children task force units on that project.
Although RazorPop and Intent MediaWorks are the only publicly-announced participants in the program so far, Lafferty said the DCIA expects almost all its members to join in over the next six months to a year, "once technical issues are worked out."
None of this means the DCIA believes P2P has become a wild hotbed of child porn, as some of its critics sometimes accuse it of being. Lafferty said less than 1.5 percent of child porn complaints the NCMEC gets come from material discovered on P2P programs. But Lafferty said the child porn issue itself is so serious that finding "even one instance" of child porn on a P2P network is intolerable.
