Gnutella's Wall Of Shame?

Sleen pointed us to a ZD story about ZeroPaid.com's Wall of Shame. Its pretty amusing actually: since gnutella is truly distributed, you know the IP of people who download things from you. ZeroPaid is posting the IPs of people who try to download their faked kiddie porn. This is an obvious side effect of using a totally distributed application to distribute information: the information can be distributed like wildfire, but the privacy concerns are significant.

Comments

they should fix some of the file names..

[medicthree]

Okay, some of the file names do indicate that there would be child pornography to be found. But others aren't so clear. For example, "hot teen.jpg", "schoolgirl.jpg", and "teen-sucking.jpg" aren't really too indicative of child pornography. There are plent of sites / images out there touting "teens" and "school girls" that don't have anyone under 18 pictured. Now, I realize that they do indicate which files the particular IP addresses have downloaded, but even so, this has potential to get out of hand and I think they should be a bit more responsible trying to choose their fake file names.

I'm not fan of pedophiles but ...

[|DaBuzz|]

I have to ask where does it stop? What is next, someone goes into a adult book store and snaps pictures of you buying "teen ass" magazine and runs it in a local newspaper ad? What if this person offers you the magazine himself then snaps the pic and labels you a pedophile even though "teen ass" is perfectly legal to buy and possess if you are an adult?

My point is, yes pedophiles are the scum of the earth and yes using technology as a vehicle of the exploitation of children is a horrendous crime, but what makes this person the ultimate authority on who is branded with the scarlet letter and who is not?

What if the tables were turned and someone from fbi.gov got a file listing of the supposed child porn this person is offering, what will they say when they are raided for intent to distribute?

People STILL do time for trying to pass oregano off as pot, and bank robbers STILL do time when they use their finger in their pocket to imitate a gun, why shouldn't these people do time for trying to pass off "gotcha" images as child porn?

Let the cops setup the sting operations and let the criminals go through the justice system and THEN label them pedophiles. All this is is a misguided attempt at vigilantism without cause.

I'm sorry, I don't trust you that much

[xiphmont]

>It's been said many times by others: if you have
>done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid
>of.

If you believe that for a second, I have a bridge to sell you. America is currently whipped up into such a 'protect our children' frenzy that it's practically a fetish; one of the few that regularly disturbs me.

I'll state the following for the record: I'm not a pedophile, consumer of kiddie porn, or any number of related horrible things. I don't want to see exploitation or torture of children any more than any sane adult would. I'm planning on having my own kids in the not too distant future (although perhaps slightly more distant than my wife ;-) and I want them to grow up happy, healthy and secure.

I am a consumer of net Porn. Not a particualrly rabid consumer, but a reasonably regular one. I see nothing shameful about pornography in general, and I don't care if *you* do. Over the past ten years or so (yes, porn predates the web), I've even had paying memberships at a few of my favorite sites.

Perhaps I'm sharing too much, but I happen to go for the really 'soft' stuff; hardcore action is just... kinda strange... Closeups of genitals and any number of other things that the mainstream porn industry thinks is oh-so-hot is a major turnoff. I like neutral, not particularly sexual poses of healthy, happy women. Pretty, happy women are a turn on... as they should be for practically any healthy het male! For this reason, I also like nudist photos (and generally am a believer in nudism myself). So far, I don't think anyone is particularly surprised or shocked. Feynman himself had more interesting tastes ;-)

For some reason though, alot of naturist and nudist sites also advertise themselves (often hidden in meta tags) as 'kiddie' 'illegal underage' or 'lolita' porn. Why? Heck if I know.
I think the whole net-porn industry needs a major dose of truth in advertising, but whatever. So it's the case that naturist sites often run hand in hand with fake (or real) kiddie sites. You can't tell until you visit.

Is someone logging the sites I go to? Am I gonna get a knock on my door at 7am because some asshole Yahoo who thought he was doing us all a major service saw I went to a site with 'kiddie porn' in a META tag and handed it to my local Police department? You might even find a pic or two in my Netscape cache from a site where I only hit the front page, (or more likely a banner ad). It almost makes me want to pull this stunt as a hoax ('turn in' a co-conspirator) in order to discredit the whole idea before it gets started.

When Megan's Law first started being enforced here in CA, several men were *PLACED ON THE SEX OFFENDER LIST ERRONEOUSLY*. One poor guy's neighbors noticed before he did, tried to burn down his house and in general sent alot of nasty death threats. Of course no one believed him when he claimed to be innocent! Who would trust someone on a Police list as a pedophile?

I don't know what it is about groups of people and mob mentality. Admit it: all we're looking for here, rather than a legitimate way of protecting children, is a new excuse for a witch hunt. Don't you just *love* that rush of righteous indignation? That justified feeling of hate for another human? That burning desire to wipe out the evil and ask questions later? The number of times folks in this comment lists have referred to the third-person, evil 'them' is disturbing.

If *I* got on a list by accident, could I trust all of you to stop and think for a second before tearing me to shreds?

I think I could not.

Monty
http://www.xiph.org/

Pedophiles/Statutory rape and the internet

[Brand X]

To most of the world, the net is a buzzword. The image is a mess of pornography, hackers, and lawlessness. The reality is... partly the same. The issue is... nothing's wrong with this.

But pedophilia is a wholly different issue. They use the internet to network, to trade both pornography and victims. They use it to stalk. They use it to lure out new victims.

There is a real issue involved for any of us who administer any service online... public backlash against any community that makes itself pedophile friendly will cause no end of headaches. Moreover, it will cause some of us to attack you by means other than legal.

I am both a geek and, in one state, a licenced therapist for victims of sex crimes. I know pedophilia. I've dealt with it, run up against it time after time. It is not a sexual fetish that is simply not socially acceptable. It is the worst form of mental illness I know, and one of only two things that tends to make me physically ill. The other is extremely bad shellfish. I have never met a pedophile that was even remotely well in the head. Why deal with a problem when you can just jail it away? Well, the problem is, we can't. Too many pedophiles get away with it. There are virtually no exhibitors of the disease who do not practice its manifestation... this is something I've become sickeningly aware of. The least harmful still cop feels from victims too young or too terrified or ashamed to speak up. If we could just jail it away, it wouldn't be a problem.

The issue with age of consent isn't (or shouldn't be, in any case) the choice of minors to be sexually active. It is the choice of adults to exploit minors. The best law, from a therapist's point of view, would be a sliding scale... five years for seventeen, four for sixteen, three for fifteen, two for fourteen and down... I've seen it go to one at twelve, with prosecution shifted to parents, but I'm not sure that's well thought out...

The reason for an age of consent is simple. Sex should not be something a person with power extracts from someone without. Rape can be committed without physical force: blackmail, threat of firing, threats of any other kind... or exploitation of authority status. In short, adults having sex with children are committing rape, in the same sense that that rev. Moon character was...

We geeks are people with power... but often, we are people with neither ethics nor conscience. We consider ourselves a breed apart, above those petty issues. Unfortunately, some of those issues are far from petty.

This is good, but not very useful on its own

[anticypher]

I've tracked back some of the IP addresses they have posted. Some of them are dial up connections to ISPs, some trace back to .edu and seem to be static addresses.

Without matching the time and port to a specific user login at an ISP, this is mostly useless. But matching can be done quite easily, as most ISPs keep login records and will willingly give them over to law enforcement when asked or marketing research firms when paid.

This is good because it will make people a little nervous about using gnutella and similar distributed file systems to spread around questionable material. If it helps keep the worst pr0n and blatantly ripped copyrighted material off, then gnutella will be more acceptable in areas such as universities. PR stunts such as this will also raise the knowledge level of how anonymity on the internet is a rather dodgy concept. It is so very easy to track you through your IP address, but most of the clueless people believe the hype you are completely out of reach of repercussions when connected to the internet.

We'll have to see if other services like this one pop up, especially those who have an evil political agenda. Marketers who harvest IP info and match it up to other records in doubleclick to spam you more effectively. Imagine a company putting out files named "christs_love.txt", and seeing who DLs it, and then targeting them with religious ads. Or "suicide_help.doc", and then selling the results to insurance companies.

Expect to see more of this in the near future.

the AC

this law was overturned...

[SethJohnson]

This law made it a criminal offense to have images that appeared to depict children in illicit sexual acts while the subjects are actually of legal age. It was overturned just before that guy from Infoseek went to trial over having solicited a woman posing as a 13 year old to come have sex with him in Santa Monica. Half of the evidence against him (the child porn he had e-mailed said woman) was thrown out of court because of the overturning of the afformentioned law. It would have to be PROVEN that the people in the pictures were underage after the law was overturned.

Also, since this law was overturned, it was disputed that he should even get in trouble for soliciting the woman because she wasn't really 13 and it was all play-acting.

He ended up plea-bargaining, I think.

If this law were still in effect, I am pretty certain that American Beauty would have been a difficult movie to release in the US.

Seth

Fun fun fun

[Greyfox]

Code up a gnutilla client that forges its return address and requests files. Set the return address to whitehousel.gov, christiancoalition.org or godhatesfags.com and let the fun begin!

Not without precedent

[/]

For example, this guy has used a semi-intelligent bot script to troll for pathetic horny teenagers on IRC. The difference there is, however, that the human experience is published without publishing the exact identities of the humans involved.

The Wall-of-Shame fellow ought to be careful about slapping names like "pedophile" on random people. He's just begging for a libel suit.

Re:I think I posted about this before ...

[ecampbel]

I believe the is truly a bad thing. Assuming if someone searchs for "schoolgirl.jpg", "little girls.jpg", "younggirlxxx.jpg", young-tits.jpg, .etc are necessarily looking for pedophilia is wrong and quite possibly illegal.

If I saw my IP address on their Wall of Shame after searching for a innocuous term like the ones above clearly labeling me as someone who is looking for child pornography, I would sue them for defamation of character because they would have no proof that I actually desired child pornography, yet still went ahead and labeled my search as shameful and me a pedophile.

Also, they really should not consider themselves holier then thou when they clearly advocate Internet users to break the law by distributing copyrighted music. Remember, outside of the Fair Use portion of our copyright law, an author of a copyrighted work has the sole desecration of how their work is distributed. They can't pick and choose the laws that they wish to uphold.

Re:Child Pr0n is g00d

[alkali]

The case which explains why it's not just illegal to make child porn is New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1982). The majority opinion in that case reads, in pertinent part:

The distribution of photographs and films depicting sexual activity by juveniles is intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children in at least two ways. First, the materials produced are a permanent record of the children's participation and the harm to the child is exacerbated by their circulation. Second, the distribution network for child pornography must be closed if the production of material which requires the sexual exploitation of children is to be effectively controlled. Indeed, there is no serious contention that the legislature was unjustified in believing that it is difficult, if not impossible, to halt the exploitation of children by pursuing only those who produce the photographs and movies. While the production of pornographic materials is a low-profile, clandestine industry, the need to market the resulting products requires a visible apparatus of distribution. The most expeditious if not the only practical method of law enforcement may be to dry up the market for this material by imposing severe criminal penalties on persons selling, advertising, or otherwise promoting the product. Thirty-five States and Congress have concluded that restraints on the distribution of pornographic materials are required in order to effectively combat the problem, and there is a body of literature and testimony to support these legislative conclusions.

[ . . . ]

Third. The advertising and selling of child pornography provide an economic motive for and are thus an integral part of the production of such materials, an activity illegal throughout the Nation. "It rarely has been suggested that the constitutional freedom for speech and press extends its immunity to speech or writing used as an integral part of conduct in violation of a valid criminal statute." We note that were the statutes outlawing the employment of children in these films and photographs fully effective, and the constitutionality of these laws has not been questioned, the First Amendment implications would be no greater than that presented by laws against distribution: enforceable production laws would leave no child pornography to be marketed.

Fourth. The value of permitting live performances and photographic reproductions of children engaged in lewd sexual conduct is exceedingly modest, if not de minimis. We consider it unlikely that visual depictions of children performing sexual acts or lewdly exhibiting their genitals would often constitute an important and necessary part of a literary performance or scientific or educational work. As a state judge in this case observed, if it were necessary for literary or artistic value, a person over the statutory age who perhaps looked younger could be utilized. Simulation outside of the prohibition of the statute could provide another alternative. Nor is there any question here of censoring a particular literary theme or portrayal of sexual activity. The First Amendment interest is limited to that of rendering the portrayal somewhat more "realistic" by utilizing or photographing children.

Id. at 759-64 (footnotes and citations omitted).

Stupid idea, lame implementation.

[Nicolas MONNET]

The idea is stupid: there are plenty of legitimate reasons to want to look at suspicious looking files. If I found *real* pedophilia, I would probably report it to the police. But you would have to know what it is before doing this: hence you'd have to download it. Then just plain curiosity. With all that fuss about pedophilia on the internet, I'd be interested to actually find some to begin with, as opposed to just believing the media gossip on it. So merely downloading what looks like pedophilia does'nt mean that one is a pedophile.

Then the implementation sucks BIG TIME. Come on, youngass.jpg? Is a 21 yo ass OLD? I don't think so! It does'nt have anything to do with pedophilia. What about teenxxx.jpg? Last time I checked 18yo were both teens AND adults. Hardly qualifies for pedophilia! And then, there's plenty of teensomething.com sites out there that just carry playboy style pr0n.

So it's lame. The guy is just looking for attention. He got it!