With the U.S. Supreme Court gearing to rule on whether Grokster and other peer-to-peer networks should be responsible for their users' activities, the P2P networks are in a growing quandary: trying to help bag child-porn distributors while maintaining their own status as unknowing conduits for, not active partners in, copyright infringement.
"[Child pornography] will always be something that the right approach is to eliminate it from this channel, whereas the copyright issue is more of a licensing issue," Distributed Computing Industry Association Chief Executive Marty Lafferty told the Dallas Morning News. He was addressing questions as to whether the P2P networks are being hypocritical in sharing child porn information with law enforcement while guarding suspected copyright violators' privacy.
Texas Deputy Attorney General Edward Burbach told the paper Texas and other states don't propose the P2P networks disappear. However, he said, a Supreme Court ruling that P2P networks aren't liable for the content swapped on them would make it harder for law enforcement to chase away child predators.
"We're proposing that in those cases where we've got a transfer of illegal items – copyright, child porn, others – that they recognize they can in fact help us," Burbach told the paper.
Where law enforcement and P2P network makers agree, the Morning News said, is that if child pornographers think P2P networks are no longer anonymous zones, they will "simply move to darker corners of the Internet where they're more difficult to catch."
P2P United Executive Director Adam Eisgrau did not return a query for comment before this story went to press, but he told the Morning News that those who think swapping actual or allegedly copyrighted materials is as serious as swapping child porn "really need to re-evaluate their priorities."
Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection Executive Director Joan Irvine told AVNOnline.com her group knows very well that there are more distribution methods for child porn and other illegal images online than through websites alone. That, she said, is one reason why her group joined DCIA in developing the CPHotline.org program for P2PPatrol, which is aimed at helping P2P networks rid themselves of child porn.
“We felt it was important to help other associations and industries combat child pornography by sharing our recently developed technology platforms," Irvine said, referring to some of the computer code that now powers CPHotline. "This saved the DCIA years of development and provided an immediate method for P2P customers to report suspected child pornography.”
