RIAA Parses 'P2P' As 'Peer 2 Porn'

watchful.babbler writes "Having largely failed to galvanize public and political action against P2P systems, the RIAA has mounted a campaign to link P2P systems with child pornography (NYT, reg. required). The result is H. R. 2885 (available via Thomas), which has the remarkably clear and honest intent 'To prohibit the distribution of peer-to-peer file trading software in interstate commerce.' Amongst other things, the proposed law will require the creation of 'do-not-install beacon products' (do-not-ask, you really don't want to know), force P2P apps to include warning labels that users may be exposed to pornography, and require P2P developers and distributors to obtain and store users' personal information -- ostensibly for age verification, but one can think of other reasons that the RIAA might be interested in that info. Worse yet, even given the 'operation exemption' (Sec. (4)(b)(1)(C) in the bill), applications such as AIM and iChat appear to fall under these provisions."

Comments

They're casting too large a net here

[egg troll]

Please, everyone knows that pedophiles exclusively use Freenet, due to its anoninimity.

are videos soft porn?

[kardar]

One thing that I think most anyone who ever watches even a little bit of music videos on TV will notice is that there almost always seem to be some sort of attractive young dancers shaking their things. This shaking of things, in many people's opinion, often crosses the line between artistic expression and what could be called soft pornography, or near pornography. You may sometimes see parts of the image blurred because of some type of exposure. So certainly, sometimes, some of what you would see if it were not blurred out would definitely qualify as pornography without a doubt.

Now... we have child stars, probably the most notable amongst these, in a genre where go-go dancers are commonplace, for example, and I am not trying to pick on this artist in particular, but - you have artists in the style of Little Bow Wow. How can one be 100% in the current "style" without having something fairly promiscuous going on behind the scenes when it comes to "hip" music . If you look closely at some of the younger, or "child" artists' videos, you will in fact see very young girls (and boys), probably well under 13 yrs old, shaking their thing. Of course there are no "blurs", but in a music video style where it is not unthinkable that a "blur" may need to be added to retain decency, this is really, in my opinion, cutting a little close. You have very, very young dancers emulating a very sexually expressive, at times explicit style.

Obviously, these videos are more than likely produced by people who have the integrity to manage this situation just fine, but... music videos, in some genres (obviously not christian rock), are becoming synonymous with soft porn and go-go dancers and stripteasers dancing around a pole. What I find interesting here is that the music industry does in fact like to get many stars started early - Leann Rimes, for instance, has gotten a very early start. This is great, there are many very talented, very young artists. But shouldn't the music industry be a little more careful where the post-18 go-go dancing that is so commonplace in music videos these days, so common it has become a cliche, and the pre-18 child talent merge before they go and launch a media attach about "risks"?

Aspiring to be a dancer in a music video is different than aspiring to be a "dancer" is different how?