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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."
... does that mean that they're continually exposing themselves to child pornography at will? Wouldn't that make them party to the crime of spreading child porn?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Please remember the DMCA
So many people ignored it, simply because it was unconstitutional didn't stop it from becoming a law.
"...force P2P apps to include warning labels that users may be exposed to pornography"
They should put those labels on all web browsers too then.
This is a logical step for them. After all, they want to villify the program - since capturing the hearts and minds is the only strategy that'll effectively work for them, because less people = less sharing = less effective. Same strategy as the lawsuits they're mounting against Kazaa users. They know they can't sue everyone, so they're trying to make the service unusable. Your local P2P network's only as good as the users who use it. Write your local congressperson and denounce this strongly.
Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care. ~Terry Pratchett
They also use email, ftp, http, nntp... shall we outlaw those applications? (I know some of them are protocols, smeg off.) Doesn't make any sense. I must once again call for viruses which install freenet and make people freenet nodes, sharing all media files on someone's computer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think that this is hillarious. Porn seems to be the one thing in our society that everyone hates (in public anyway). They say it's bad, immoral, etc. So the RIAA is trying to associate file sharing with child porn. Now, if you use filesharing clients, you're a pornographer. Great.
Unfortunately for them, a search for a common song rarely turns up porn. Not a lot of porn around with MP3 headers. So rather than implementing a list of all subscribers, file sharing services could filter out all non-music files. Just like the RIAA made Napster do with certain songs.
So with only music on the P2P network, the RIAA could only object to "their" "copyright" being infringed upon. And nobody would care.
fp?
My other car is first.
And you can all protest this by downloading lots of pr0n this weekend.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I suppose we should put them on the insides of people's eyelids, as well. You can be 'exposed to pornography' walking down the street.
GL
"As a guy in the record industry and as a parent, I am shocked that these services are being used to lure children to stuff that is really ugly," said Andrew Lack, the chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment.
Has this guy even seen Kazaa? Doesn't he know you have to type in what you are looking for?
Could this be the most effective attempt on their part, so far? It's hard to argue against them, without being labelled as a supporter of kiddie-porn. It doesn't matter how legitimate your claims against this bill, you'll still have to put up with the obnoxious cries of, "think of the children!"
This is really slick, on their part, because they can try to humiliate their opponents, reglardless of the validity of their arguments. How can people easily claim that this is just profiteering and securing a closed market in which to play?
Obviously, I don't want to see this go through, and it likely won't (not on the first try, anyway). But, it is an interesting tactic.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
Or you can log on to nytimes.com with the username noreg and password noreg. It's nice :)
My other car is first.
The story doesn't explain what the bill sets out a 'beacon' to be, but basically the intent is to (within a year of the bill's passage) develop a US standard for a magical 'beacon' one can set on a computer that will prevent people from installing P2P software on it. While it's a great idea IF YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT COMPUTERS (hey, parents can keep kids from using evil Kazaa! and workplaces can prevent employees, too!) it's a stupid act. Stupid act. Anyone who votes for this act should it ever come up in Congress should be publically ridiculed in every venue available.
I see it's time to start the letter-to-Congress process...
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
I find this sort of bill among the more reprehensible things our legislature does. This bill has no chance of passage, and the authors undoubtedly know this. Further, if it were to pass it would be the target of a million legal challenges.
The purpose of this bill is almost certainly to force a "compromise" bill that achieves the achievable portion of these effects. By staking out an extreme position, the sponsors paint opponents as staking out the opposite extreme, and suggest that the difference be split.
Honest congressfolk: don't give in. There is no honorable compromise here. P2P is just folks communicating via computer---to restrict the medium of the net is the beginning of the end of free speech in America and around the world. I would rather see our civil liberties go down fighting than turn to the dark side voluntarily.
I got my M$ Monopoly, SCO, and RIAA news today.
:-)
Now just give me some newly released Apple G5 benchmarks and the day will be perfect
Error 407 - No creative sig found
They are trying to make paying for music more attractive through legal downloading services, and in the case of Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, slashing the price of most its CD's by 30 percent
Wow. 30 whole percent. What's that leave the profit margin at? $12 on a $15 dollar CD? I'll bet most of that %30 is coming out of the artists paycheck. Whoops! They never made %30 to begin with.
"warning this contains explicite..."
interesting. since the RIAA's members are promoting so much smut this days which is passed as "art" by them - eminem anyone?
This strategy seems bizzar to me. the RIAA should know what those "warning - explicite lyrics" stickers did for rap and hip hop..
What are the most effective methods of protest (short of a suicide bombing).
Stop giving them your money.
No, really.
Stop giving them your money.
I know it's hard. (Although it's a hell of a lot easier than blowing yourself up, I suppose.)
But that's the only way we can get through to them.
Stop giving them your money.
I think they have the wrong target. They should go for banning (photo)camera's. And let's not forget pens, brushes, paper and paint. They can be used to CREATE child porn. You always have to fight the root of the problem. O by the way, children can make very sounds that make people that are susceptible to such a thing very horny. Ever listened to a children's record? Here in Holland we have Kinderen voor Kinderen (children for children). Every year or so a new record with children's songs sung by childern appears in the shops. Who knows what can happen when people listen to that stuff... I say we ban the whole recording industry altogether. It's gone far enough.
-- Cheers!
Portraying the intent of P2P app developers in this manner is beneath contempt. Hiding behind his "shock" and "parenthood" while making them is cowardice. Coming from the upper eschelons of Sony, a company which has released more than its share of violent, sexual content in the form of movies and games, is pure hypocrisy. 'Lack' is truly an apt name for such an individual.
A study in March by the General Accounting Office found that KaZaA would be effective for someone looking for child pornography. The agency searched for 12 terms associated with child pornography, such as "incest" and "underage." It did not actually download the files it found, but it determined that 42 percent of them had titles or descriptions associated with pornographic images of children.
Didn't actually download them huh. Well, they must be porn. I'm now off to download everything on project Gutenberg and rename all the files 'porn underage kiddies sluts with barnyard animals.txt'. Won't the RIAA be disapointed when they find copies of Emma and The War of the Worlds.
That brings up a good point. The RIAA is trying to restrict P2P because their "could" be pr0n on it. Wake up, RIAA. The whole friggin' INTERNET "could" have pr0n on it, so why don't we shut it down, for the good of mankind?
Everything has drawbacks, but sometimes they aren't really that big. You can't just go around being more strict when a little problem arises.
When you don't have a leg to stand on, don't even get up.
KaZaA is just like Joe Camel," she said referring to the cartoon logo that had been used by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings to promote its Camel cigarette brand. "KaZaA has done an incredible job of attracting young people to their site, and as a result they have been really able to attack children."
I don't think I've ever heard Kazaa or such being associated with a product image specifically created to get kids to damage their health. She (Laura A. Ahearn, the director of Parents for Megan's Law) makes it sound like Kazaa is luring "kids" and then just giving them child porn.
I wonder how much she is getting paid to say stupid crap like that.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
On p2p the porn isn't waved in your face, but some spams are very explicit and you can't really avoid it unless you're clued up on spam filtering.
You think people who post things like this on /. are still giving them money? I doubt it. The only problem I have is convincing everyone else to stop giving them money.
Section 2: Findings spells out their beef with p2p software and it seems to be the same beef people have with that pesky first amendment.
Peer-to-peer file trading software has been very widely distributed. The most popular of these programs has been downloaded over 200 million times, and at any one time, there are over 3 million people using it.
Strange that they want to outlaw something that a substantial percentage of the public find useful enough to download. The people behind the bill obviously carry some heavy political currency.
(2) Peer-to-peer systems are emerging as a conduit for the distribution of pornographic images and videos, including child pornography. Child pornography is easily found and downloaded using peer-to-peer systems.
Emerging as a CONDUIT?!? Sense when do we go after the conduit. Speech is a conduit for unsavory ideas as are the radio, magazines, books, our minds. Shall we outlaw those too?
If the RIAA is behind this it is really the hight of hypocrisy. This is an organization that is happy to dress up a teenage Brittany Spears in next to nothing and pay here to wiggle around in front of a bunch of horny boys, but threaten their profits and suddenly they are the keepers of the moral flame. What a crazy world.
No group has done more to sexualize children for profit than the music industry. Go to amazon and pull up a photo of britney spears' first album -- she's wearing a school girl uniform. They have a lot of nerve talking about this now.
MTV actually did a promotional show for the snoop dogg girls gone wild video, the way they'd promote a hollywood movie. Not only is MTV's audience primiarly made up of kids, but the producers of those videos are probably going to go to jail for using minors in their tapes. Not one or two who slipped through -- several dozen young girls.
Don't get me wrong -- I believe in free speech, and I will defend their rights to promote music that sexualizes children, glorifies cop killing, rape, and drug use, and all of the rest of the stuff they promote. I don't like it, but I'll defend their right to do it.
But the sheer disingenuous of these sorts of statements is hard to take. I don't know where they find guys with the chutzpah to make them.
Perhaps the police should look on some of the RIAA's computers...so they can try to use the infamous Pete Townsend defense "we were just doing research".
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
The bill defines P2P as ...software that enables the transmission of computer files or data over the Internet or any other public network of computers and that has as its primary function the capability to do all of the following--
(A) enable a computer on which such software is used to transmit files or data to another such computer;
(B) enable the user of one such computer to request the transmission of files or data from another such computer; and
(C) enable the user of one such computer to designate files or data available for transmission to another such computer, but which definition excludes, to the extent otherwise included, software products legitimately marketed and distributed primarily for the operation of business and home networks, the networks of Internet access providers, or the Internet itself
So...
1. It is illegal to transfer files between two FTP-servers or HTTP-servers.
2. But if you use it for business, you are allowed to operate software like gnutella or kazaa.
I always thought that the US music industry has a weird thing with sex and young girls. There was an interview with a 15-year old Britney Spears in the Washington Post magazine a while back. She was all cute and wholesome and nice. Then, after the music industry got done prostituting her, we have her sucking face with Madonna on MTV...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
H.R.2885
Check the cosponsor list, your congressperson might be one!
For more info: Bill Summary & Status
This is nothing but a pre-emptive strike at FreeNet (and the anonymously routed, stenographically encrypted networks to follow.)
.gov ... (When an irresistable force hits an immovable object, etc.)
The RIAA knows that once that happens, their ability to stop piracy will be absolutely NIL. So their only hope is to criminalize P2P software before it gets to that point. If they can make it illegal to distribute (and eventually own) file sharing software, then FreeNet ceases to become an issue.
And you know where those "beacons" are headed, don't you? Think mandatory on every new computer, automatically contact your ISP if you so much as ATTEMPT to run P2P software.
I always wondered how the next generation of P2P was going to mix with the
Microsoft's Palladium (and its ilk) is going to be the champion platform for this, because the users can't control what is going on. The government can mandate anything they want, Microsoft complies, and the users don't get a choice.
Expect Palladium type controls to become mandatory within 3 years as well. They're just going to turn the internet into a passive entertainment medium like they've always wanted it to be. Just with more advertising.
That sounds appropriate.
Insert multi-subject RIAA rant here
Cheers, Ed.
does that mean that they're continually exposing themselves to child pornography at will?
They are doing worse. They continually market underage (or barely of age) girls in a way that sexualizes them (and their blind followers, the pre-teen crowd). Just look at what the latest so-called pop artists are wearing nowadays. Now look at the 12-year-olds at your local school.
I charge that the RIAA is responsible for creating the image of children (the ones on TV and our own) in sexually suggestive clothing, poses and attitudes.
No, I'm not a parent. But someday I'd like to be (getting married next year).
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
If you don't like the seedy side of town, why do you go there?
Of course, this analogy falls flat, because some people are forced by economics to live a place they would rather not. Nobody is forced to use P2P apps. If you don't want your kids to use P2P apps, here's a hint: Don't let them. If you are unable to stop them, then you should think about your parenting skills before you shout "there should be a law..."
I forget what 8 was for.
With P2P you really don't know what you're getting. You may think you're downloading The Lion King but you may end up with Debbie Does Dallas.
Let's be serious. How often does this happen. I've been downloading contents from peer to peer networks since the advent of scour.net, and have had no gross misrepresentations of content such as you imply happen. The worst I've ever seen is badly labelled pornography (which was still clearly labelled as pornography). I maintain that this kind of misrepresentation happens on such an infrequent basis as to assume it to be insignificant.
P2P has NO SUCH MECHANISM to warn users about what they may actually be getting. Since the sharers have NO MEANS AVAILABLE to warn users what they're sharing then it's reasonable that the app itself must.
Christ, I know when I was a kid, that warning mechanism did nothing other than to encourage me to enter the site.
"Oh wow, you mean there's naked people on this site? Sweet!"
Seriously, though, the name of the file being downloaded is usually enough. Very few people have anything to gain from misrepresenting their content in such a large manner, and the few who do are just sick. Thankfully, some networks (such as KaZaA) have rating mechanisms for content. If it's being misrepresented, it's almost always marked as poor quality.
Ultimately, kids who want to view pornography are going to, much like kids who want to drink and kids who want to smoke. Prominently labelling content as being pornographic will only cause it to gain attention. Kids won't see the warning--their attention will only be brought to the fact that it's pornography. And as any good marketer knows, having attention brought to your product is the most important thing. Whether or not it's seen in a bad light or good light is secondary.
I also maintain that if such a mechanism is wanted by a sufficient number of people, someone will implement it without being under threat of law--and, even better, it will probably be implemented in a technologically sound way. If Sharman Networks wants to increase its subscriber base, it will add features that its clientele want. If they want this feature, it will be added.
Even better than all this, though, is that parents already have mechanisms for blocking kids from doing things that might be deemed inappropriate by the parents. Parents can restrict their children's user's rights, and they can actually parent their kids, watching them while they're on untrusted networks. Just as you wouldn't leave your kid alone on the streets of New York, you shouldn't leave your kid alone while he or she is surfing the internet. Sure, many parents don't have the desire nor time to do these things. However, are these same parents likely to put forth the time and effort to implement a mechanism for blocking access to peer to peer networks? How can parents even trust these mechanisms, in times like these where children often know more about the operation of computers than their parents?
No comment.
"Other distributors of pornography have also embraced the file-sharing networks as a promotional vehicle. They distribute sample pictures and videos in an attempt to attract paying customers to their Web sites.
"The adult industry, like others, is against the illegal downloading of their videos," said Gary Kremen, the chief executive of Sex.com, a directory of sexually explicit Web sites, "but they are much smarter than the music industry. They see p2p as money to be made."
"
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
My letter:
Dear Congressman Inslee:
I am a registered voter in your district, and serving my country in the Navy; currently stationed in Pensacola, Florida. I am writing to voice my strong opposition to HR 2885, "Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography Act of 2003".
The findings in Section 2 of the bill could easily apply to regular web browsing (HTTP) or USNET Newsgroup readers. As reported on the 7th of September 2003, by Saul Hansell, in the New York Times, "Aiming at Pornography to Hit Music Piracy", the RIAA strongly backs this bill, obstinately for the "protection of children". The truth is that this is another attempt by the RIAA to infringe upon the rights of consumers, to limit the use of new technology to distribute music, and to prevent independent musicians from legally distributing their music outside of the RIAA's monopoly.
The irony of the RIAA's stance is that they are guilty of sexualizing children through the behavior of performers like Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilera, and other young women who project a hyper-sexual image. Teen and pre-teen girls view these performers as roll models, and try to dress and act in their image. Young girls dressing in skimpy outfits encourages the deviant adults who prey on children. The RIAA and MTV put children at greater risk due to the behavior of the artists they promote.
Child pornography is evil, and those peddling in such material should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. However, excessive government regulation of an entire class of software in the effort to "protect children" is the wrong direction we should take. Sufficient laws are on the books to effectively prosecute Child Pornographers, and more importantly to protect children. HR 2885 is an oblique attempt by the RIAA to further protect its monopoly on the creation and distribution of music.
If this bill comes to a vote, please vote "NO".
Very Respectfully,
Craig Newcomb
Would their definition not include server's too? Lets take Apache for example:
(A) enable a computer on which such software is used to transmit files or data to another such computer;
This is Apache's main purpose.
(B) enable the user of one such computer to request the transmission of files or data from another such computer; and
HTTP is a two way thing, not broadcast. The "client" needs to be able to send data to a server to request files. If not GET, the POST directive meets this. I'm using it to send this post.
(C) enable the user of one such computer to designate files or data available for transmission to another such computer, but which definition excludes, to the extent otherwise included, software products legitimately marketed and distributed primarily for the operation of business and home networks, the networks of Internet access providers, or the Internet itself;
Okay, this part is kind of vague. Designation of the files is program specific, but but Apache and most P2P software do something along the lines of "you put the files in a shared dir". The excluded part is REALLY vague. P2P software IS legitimately marketed and distributed. It only fails to meet that part is it is already illegal by this bill.
The actual exclusions seem to be written by someone who has no clue about networking. Lets see... Home(non-business) and business networks are excluded. Government networks are about the only thing that isn't excluded. ISP networks, which are yet another business network, are then specifically excluded.
Of course, if that isn't enough, the internet itself is excluded. WTF do they think "the Internet itself" is??? Some palpable item? The internet is formed OF the other types of networks(most of which were excluded). They either include the application layer in these exclusions, or they don't. P2P is excluded if the other servers are excluded. For that matter, it's possible to use Apache FOR P2P type things. P2P is just another service on the internet.
Or is there something I'm missing and I need to RTFA better next time?
> The DMCA is not unconstitutional.
/.
Sorry, but it most certainly is. Forbidding the mere discussion of copy restriction schemes certainly runs smack into "Congress shall make no law...." and if you can't figure that much out on your own you are part of the problem. The Constituition isn't a hard document to read, you don't need to be a lawyer or philosopher to understand the plain language of the Founding Fathers. They didn't write any weasel words or leave anything ambigious, it is mostly stark Thou Shalt... Thou Shalt Not sort of rules.
> The concept behind it was rather needed, which is to say extending
> copyright (or at least atempting to define copyright) for digital
> products.
What does the distribution media have to do with copyright? Copyright is copyright, whether graven on stone tablets, stamped onto 120mm aluminum and acrylic discs, beamed down from a geostationary sat or downloaded via a DSL circuit via Gnutella.
> *This* bill however, does nothing to clarify the legal code, nor
> does it help to resolve any existing problems therin. Further most
> people know what P2P is and they can imeditatly see why such a bill
> would be a bad thing. It's not going to go anywhere.
Don't bet on it. They are playing the trump card; "Do it for The Children!" and that trick often works. Sure they only have a pair of jackoff, noname congresscritters for now, but they don't EXPECT to pass it this session. But watch it turn up again next year.... during an election year. As far as I'm concerned no living Congresscritter is innocent of violating their oath of office so we are only safe when the legislature is out of session.
> A rally call of "Remember the DMCA" is all well and good, but there
> are much more dangerous pushes for legislation (see patriot act II)
> out there with a far biger push (see Ashcroft and the US goverment)
> to get them passed.
Actually I'm far more worried about DMCA than Patriot. Patriot was an expected excess after an excessive provacation. But even then Congress at least had enough sense to write in a sunset clause and it is unlikely to be renewed. And while longterm Patriot would pose a greater threat to civil liberties I haven't heard of a lot of abuses of Patriot but DMCA is being wielded as a club against a LOT of people. And DMCA has no sunset clause.
Are you sure you aren't just so blinded by hatred of Bush and Ashcroft you are seeing the ghost of Sen. Mcarthy[sp?] behind every rock? Does seem to be a common meme here on
Democrat delenda est
The NYTimes has become more of a shill for the RIAA and conservatives in the government. In the article they actually printed this as credible information:
They go on to present the opposing side of the issue, but it doesn't really refute the meme of massive amounts of child porn on the net:By even lending any credence to a study that did not actually download the files the NYTimes is showing how easily they can be used.
A little clue here folks, these descriptions are what's commonly referred to as false advertising. 99% of that "42 percent" will not contain child porn. At most you'll get some badly dubbed European movie from the 80's where some 30 year old woman is wearing pony tails and trying to act coy. Those sorts of mile-long filenames with every sex search term you could think of are leftovers from files that have been passed around for years on services like Hotline where you either pay or upload other files in trade to download pirated porn or software.
These file names are just like the stupid search engine spamming where porn sites used to put as many porn words in their meta tags and white-on-white body text to get to the top of the results. Someone sharing on Hotline wanted to generate as much traffic as possible to their server. Then in order to download this forbidden fruit, you had to upload more warez or pr0n or pay them, thus increasing the size of the server owners collection and/or wallet.
Later in the article they (correctly) pick up on another reality of P2P porn: a lot of it is now just advertising for pay sites. Now let's see... do you think that the porn site operators name the files that they share in a way that clearly shows that you're going to download an ad? Well, no they also use the same sorts of filenames with every graphic description that you could imagine - which often doesn't have much to do with the actual contents.
If the RIAA members had half a brain, they'd stop pouring money into getting songs on the radio and MTV and just load up all the good singles and videos onto KaZaA. Then they'd all take a few clues from Apple and UMG and make it easier and cheaper to get the albums electronically or on CD. Oh, but wait, they've stopped making good albums.
Maybe this is a bad example, but I really can't comprehend the school of thought in journalism where you just report the statements of opposing sides of an issue with equal weight and little personal analysis. In this particular case it would be very dangerous for a reporter themselves to download potential child porn. If they actually found some they would be committing a serious crime.
The real problem here is that I read far to many articles by journalists who are generalists. They are taught that there is this universal approach to researching and writing stories and they can apply it to any subject - which is complete bullshit. Sure you can start learning from a general standpoint, but journalism should be about trying to present the facts as they are. That requires an understanding of the subject matter, which requires some expertise and experience.
Unless this particular article was completely watered down and edited to death, I get the impression that the reporter has never actually downloaded porn through a P2P service.
Give me a break...
I had to laugh when i read this though.
2 things.
1) Britney... No kiddin. Look to MTV for the reasons there! I believe that many outraged people (who wrote piles of letters to newspapers) would consider the 2-second kiss to be of that nature.
2) So, the lessons to be learned here are:
a) Files can have misleading search information associated with them, and
b) Some people will use "common" search terms to attract attention to specific files that have no association with them.
Well of course they say they didn't download them, admitting they did if they did would be a crime.
But wait, didn't we learn from 2a & 2b above that often people use search terms to attract attention to files that don't necessarily have any association, just to generate interest?
Non sequitur and propaganda, plain and simple.
So which US slashgeeks are going to run for office and replace these incompetent people?
Toss the two named terms in google and find dozens of "legitimate" sites seeking the same type of attention.
This is sad.
-dave-
Looking for YOUR peer-to-porn engine? Get it here!
The pig browse. With Google. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.