'Lawful Access' Rhetoric Rings Hollow When The Facts Are Wrong

from the muddled-analogies dept

Ever since our Public Safety Minister made the infamous claim that his opponents were standing "with the child pornographers", support for Canada's proposed "lawful access" legislation—which would force ISPs to turn customer information over to police without a warrant, and install network surveillance equipment—has been characterized by two things: sensationalism and a lack of clarity. This is hardly surprising in a debate that opened with accusations of supporting child porn (a seeming corollary of Godwin's Law) and nowhere is it better exemplified than Lorna Dueck's tragically confused column in Friday's Globe and Mail.

[Full disclosure: I work for one of the Globe's main competitors, but not in an editorial capacity.]

Dueck makes the bizarre claim that what should be a discussion about protecting children was "transformed" into a debate about privacy, as though there is no room to consider both. She then attempts to brush off all concerns about the bill, claiming it is akin to driving your car:

The car is your private property and you know how to use it, but some people keep making the road dangerous. You appreciate the radar gun or spot checks at the side of the road, and you take down a licence-plate number when a driver needs to be reported. It's a public service that keeps us safe. That's how police see access to your IP address – it will help them to identify lawbreakers.

The metaphor fits for why Bill C-30 is applauded by those on the front lines of child protection. Like using a radar gun, hackers employed by the police have developed software that catches images of child sexual exploitation. It's illegal images that are being tracked. Police will take that digital evidence to ask who's trading this, and that leads to an IP address – the licence plate of your car, if you will.

Unfortunately, Dueck has things backwards. C-30 is not about making IP addresses more accessible. Although the text of the bill does include them as one of the pieces of information that ISPs must hand over without a warrant, that is rarely, if ever, how online investigations proceed. Rather, police monitor networks to collect IP addresses that are exchanging child pornography, then investigate those addresses. In a way, IP addresses already do work like license plates (including the fact that they are not enough to positively identify an individual user/driver).

Currently, only a warrant can compel an ISP to hand over information, but they can also choose to cooperate with police. There are conflicting accounts as to how this plays out: supporters of the bill (including some police) claim that criminals are going uncaught thanks to the difficulty of obtaining warrants, while opponents, like Ontario's Privacy Commissioner, claim that ISPs already comply with the vast majority of warrantless requests when child pornography is involved. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Bill C-30 would force ISPs to hand over customer information without the warrant. Amusingly, Dueck's car analogy could have been more appropriate if she used it correctly, since the police do not need a warrant to trace a license plate back to its owner. But even this misses the key point that vehicles are publicly licensed by the government, while ISPs are private companies offering a service to private citizens. It's well-established that there is no right to drive anonymously, but C-30 legislates the end of anonymity online, and sets a disturbing precedent against the right to privacy when using any form of communication. Should the police be able to obtain customer information from printing shops without a warrant, just because some people distribute obscene or libelous flyers? That is a far more analogous question, and one that underlines the fundamental concept of privacy that C-30 violates.

We all want to prevent the exploitation of children, but the proposed methods for doing so would have unintended consequences, and that conversation can't be hidden behind emotionally charged rhetoric. An urgent goal does not justify a reckless solution—nor a reckless column that confuses the facts. Dueck calls the conflict over C-30 a "sideshow" and hopes to "elevate the debate", but in fact all she has done is join one of the existing sides—those who let the emotional resonance of child pornography override their sobriety, and believe that laudable motives excuse them from examining their methods or even understanding the details of the problem.

Filed Under: canada, child porn, internet, lawful access, spying, surveillance, vic toews

Dutch Economics Minister Says ACTA Is Designed To Shut Down Child Porn Sites... Even Though That's Not True

from the outright-lies dept

If you've been paying attention lately, you've probably heard SOPA/PIPA/ACTA supporters insisting that anyone against those bills is involved in a misinformation campaign. This seems pretty ridiculous, considering the level of misinformation that has been spewed for decades in support of these kinds of laws. But it's reaching a new level of crazy over in the Netherlands, where the Dutch Econimics Minister Maxime Verhagen has apparently announced that "ordinary" people have nothing to worry about concerning ACTA because its focus is to take down child porn sites. Talk about misinformation. ACTA is about intellectual property infringement and has nothing to do with child porn.

Because the Google translation was weird, I asked a native Dutch speaker to confirm the original translation, and, though he provided a bit more context, he confirmed the basic statement. Apparently Verhagen brings up child porn not once, not twice, but three times in the course of the interview. Sometimes it's just to provide an analogy, about how blocking internet sites is okay if it's child porn, so there's no problem if it's also done under ACTA, but that's a totally separate issue because child porn and infringement are extremely different situations. But on the third mention, as the article suggests, Verhagen does, in fact, link ACTA to child porn:

"Regarding internet users that download - this treaty doesn't cover that at all. It's about, for instance, the possibility to shut down a child pornography site (not the person who goes there, but the person who puts it online). Or when there's big-scale commercial abuse in such a way that the labor of the creator is taken away from him"

I recognize that he's saying the purpose of ACTA is to go after sites not users, but that really is besides the point. People are concerned about the wrongful censorship of sites, and ACTA itself has nothing to do with child porn. Using that and claiming that's what ACTA is about is simply fear mongering. Of course, it's become all too typical these days to wrap other forms of legislation in "child porn" claims. This comic from over a decade ago remains all too true, as we're seeing with politicians around the glob using child porn to press for draconian legal changes.

Filed Under: acta, censorship, child porn, copyright, maxime verhagen, netherlands

Lamar Smith Tries To Defend SOPA; Suggests That Infringement Is The Equivalent Of Child Porn

from the taking-the-high-road? dept

Rep. Lamar Smith, who introduced SOPA in the House, has now taken to the pages of the National Review to defend the bill... and yet he does so in a way that makes almost no sense at all. Frankly, some of it makes me wonder if he even recognizes what's in his own bill... and what existing law is. Let's dig in to some of it:

Claims that the Stop Online Piracy Act will censor legal activity on the Internet are blatantly false. Enforcing the law against criminals is not censorship.

Sigh. Not this again. Look: no one is saying enforcing the law against criminals is the problem. The concern is enforcing it against protected speech (i.e., not infringing speech). And even SOPA supporters' lawyer of choice, Floyd Abrams, has admitted that SOPA would block protected speech (just not enough to concern him). But, more to the point, it undoubtedly is censorship. Law professor Derek Bambauer has pointed out that any blocking of speech is censorship -- and that our society agrees that some forms of censorship are actually okay. The question is whether or not we agree that this form of censorship is okay.

The Stop Online Piracy Act specifically targets websites dedicated to illegal and infringing activity. Often based overseas, these websites are called “rogue sites” because they flout U.S. law and face zero legal consequences for their criminal activity. Rogue sites not only steal America’s products and profits; they steal jobs that rightly belong here at home. This bill cuts off the flow of revenue to rogue sites by preventing criminals from selling and distributing counterfeit products to U.S. consumers.

Fluff and rhetoric with almost no basis, for the most part. First, the problem many of us have is that the definitions are super broad and do not "specifically target websites dedicated to illegal and infringing activity." The definitions allow for much broader attacks. As for the so-called "rogue sites," many of them do face legal consequences at home (witness Swedish prosecution against the Pirate Bay, lawsuits against RapidShare, MegaUpload and others -- all three of which have been called rogue sites by supporters of this bill). Claiming they face no legal consequences is blatantly false. Furthermore, they all face significant business consequences. If they're consistently bad actors, that limits their ability to build a significant business. The final sentence reverts to "counterfeit products." Of course, just yesterday we went through SOPA supporters' own numbers on this and showed that the issue of counterfeit products is miniscule. The problem is when they lump in dealing with the narrow problem of counterfeit products with a very different issue: copyright infringement. Let's deal with the two problems separately. (Also, how do you "steal profits" and "steal jobs"? That's meaningless political rhetoric.)

The bill defines rogue sites as websites that are dedicated to the facilitation of the illegal sale and distribution of counterfeit or pirated goods. Websites like Facebook and YouTube that host user content are not “dedicated to” illegal activity and they certainly do not make a business out of “facilitating” the illegal sale and distribution of counterfeit or pirated goods. But if a user posts illegal content on a website like Facebook or YouTube, current law allows rights holders to notify the website to remove the illegal content.

I'm sure Smith wants to believe this is true. But, it's not. It's proven false by the fact that Viacom is already suing YouTube for a billion dollars. If SOPA had been in place in 2007, you can bet that Viacom would have used the provisions in SOPA to kill off all YouTube revenue first, rather than filing DMCAs and then suing. Viacom clearly believes that YouTube is (or at least was) "dedicated to illegal activity." And since Smith's own bill allows for this private right of action, it doesn't matter whether he really believes it will be used this way or not... all we need to know is how companies will use it, and we've got a long history under the DMCA to see that tools like this will absolutely be abused to shut down competitors and innovative threats.

The Stop Online Piracy Act is a constitutional bill that protects free speech and America’s intellectual property. The First Amendment is not an excuse for illegal activity. Simply because the illegal activity occurs online does not mean that it is protected speech. Like online piracy, child pornography is a billion-dollar business operated online. It is also illegal. That’s why law enforcement officials are authorized to block access to child-porn sites.

And this paragraph is the most problematic of all. First of all, we won't know if it's really "constitutional" until a court determines that. Many constitutional scholars have their doubts. Second, no one claimed that the First Amendment is an excuse for illegal activity. As we explained above, the issue is the collateral damage. Put forth a bill that narrowly focuses on actually infringing works, and this isn't a problem. Here, however, it's much broader. And, again, even the one constitutional lawyer defending SOPA (as part of his work for the MPAA), has admitted that, contrary to Smith's own claims, SOPA "may result in the blockage of some protected speech." Pretending this is an impossibility even when your most ardent supporter admits it... is weak.

But the bigger problem is bringing child porn into this. Smith claims that "law enforcement officials are authorized to block access to child-porn sites." That struck me as an odd statement, because the lawsuit I remember concerning that issue actually said that such a clause in a bill violated both the First Amendment and the Commerce clause. This left me scratching my head, so I emailed a bunch of internet lawyers... and no one was aware of any laws that said law enforcement could just block access to child porn sites. There could be criminal trials that lead to sites getting taken down, but no one knew of legal process that allowed requiring others to block access.

Is there a secret law? Is Lamar Smith making things up?

More to the point, copyright infringement and child porn are very different crimes. Child porn is a felony. Copyright infringement, in most cases, is a civil offense. Yes, in some cases it can be criminal, but SOPA doesn't just apply to criminal infringement. Punishment for the two should be quite different.

Similarly, this bill authorizes the attorney general to seek an injunction against a foreign website that is dedicated to illegal and infringing activity. The attorney general must go to a federal judge and lay out the case against the site. If the judge agrees, a court order will be issued that authorizes the Justice Department to request that the site be blocked.

Notice what Smith conveniently leaves out: in many cases under the bill (not all), they will go before a judge without the other side appearing.

According to estimates, IP theft costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs.

And according to analysis by the US Government Accountability Office, those estimates are complete bunk.

Congress cannot stand by and do nothing while some of America’s most profitable and productive industries are under attack.

The industries aren't under attack. The business models of a few legacy players are under attack. Let's be clear: there is more content (music, movies, books, video games, etc.) being produced today than ever before. There is more money flowing into these industries as a whole. People continue to spend and purchase these goods all the time. The attack is merely on a gatekeeper business model that focuses on trying to set up artificial scarcity.

Unfortunately, there are some critics of this legislation who are not serious about helping to protect America’s intellectual property. That’s because they’ve made large profits by working with and promoting rogue sites to U.S. consumers.

That claim keeps coming up without any evidence at all. It's hard to believe Google profits much at all from infringement. Almost no one is clicking on Google ads on these websites, and Google only makes money if people click.

Google recently paid a half billion dollars to settle a criminal case because of the search-engine giant’s active promotion of rogue foreign pharmacies that sold counterfeit and illegal drugs to U.S. patients.

Totally misleading and irrelevant. That was a case of sites directly advertising via Google. No one has claimed that any of the rogue sites targeted by SOPA are buying ads on Google. This is nothing more the mud-flinging against one company (of many) that are against this bill.

Filed Under: child porn, copyright, first amendment, lamar smith, pipa, protect ip, sopa

House Committee Approves 'Keep Every American's Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act of 2011'

from the unfortunate dept

A few weeks ago we wrote about a ridiculously cynical attempt by some in Congress (mainly, Reps Lamar Smith, Bill Flores, Randy Forbes, Dutch Ruppersberger and Debbie Wasserman Schultz) to sneak through a massive data retention bill by pretending it was an anti-child porn bill. Of course, as we noted, the bill does almost nothing to stop or prevent child porn. Instead, it adds tremendously dangerous data retention requirements that will decrease user privacy, increase the risk of data being exposed, increase the value of certain hacking targets... all because some law enforcement folks want to be able to cruise through the data at will. Thankfully there was at least some criticism of the data retention aspect of the bill, and an attempt to remove the data retention pieces from the bill... but none of it succeeded and the bill was voted out of committee, meaning it will go to a full House debate. Lamar Smith defended the bill with this bit of ridiculous insanity:

"Every piece of prematurely discarded information could be the footprint of a child predator.... This bill ensures that the online footprints of predators are not erased."

If he actually believes that, he's a fool. First of all, those who are actually preying on children likely already know how to disguise their "footprints" online. Second, just because some criminals might use some technology doesn't mean we should give up all of our privacy and civil rights. I mean, it would be just as easy to say that every piece of prematurely discarded email written by Lamar Smith could be the footprint of a criminal. It might not be. In fact, it likely isn't... but by requiring that all of Lamar Smith's emails be made public, we ensure that such online footprints are not erased. See the problem with that logic? Tragically, Smith apparently doesn't recognize how he's selling out the privacy of pretty much the entire country.

Kudos, however, to those who pushed back against this aspect of the bill. Rep. Zoe Lofgren brilliantly pushed a proposal (seriously) to rename the bill the: "Keep Every American's Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act of 2011." She's right. If only there were some sort of "truth in advertising" law for Congressional bills that would require such bills to be labeled properly....

Filed Under: child porn, data retention, lamar smith, privacy, zoe lofgren

How Copyright Lobbyists Are Making The Child Porn Problem Worse

from the sweeping-things-under-the-rug dept

Over the years, we've noted that the entertainment industry has gleefully tried to link "child porn" to internet filters, in an attempt to make it easier to force censorship around the globe on the woefully stupid theory that this will somehow reduce infringement. At times they're completely upfront about this, admitting that "child pornography is great!" because it gets politicians to do what they want. Rick Falkvinge has another such story of an industry exec enthusiastically embracing child porn on the belief that hyping up child porn will help get their filtering/censorship plans through. The article does a nice job highlighting similar stories around the globe.

But the key point is all the way at the end of the article. All of these attempts to link filtering to child porn doesn't help stop the problem of child porn. In fact, it makes it worse. Falkvinge quotes a group that helps victims of child porn:

But more emotionally, we turn to a German group named Mogis. It is a support group for adult people who were abused as children, and is the only one of its kind. They are very outspoken and adamant on the issue of censoring child pornography.

Censorship hides the problem and causes more children to be abused, they say. Don’t close your eyes, but see reality and act on it. As hard as it is to force oneself to be confronted emotionally with this statement, it is rationally understandable that a problem can’t be addressed by hiding it. One of their slogans is “Crimes should be punished and not hidden”.

This puts the copyright industry’s efforts in perspective. In this context they don’t care in the slightest about children, only about their control over distribution channels. If you ever thought you knew cynical, this takes it to a whole new level.

The conclusion is as unpleasant as it is inevitable. The copyright industry lobby is actively trying to hide egregious crimes against children, obviously not because they care about the children, but because the resulting censorship mechanism can be a benefit to their business if they manage to broaden the censorship in the next stage. All this in defense of their lucrative monopoly that starves the public of culture.

We've made this point before about those who try to censor based on child porn claims. Like most folks, I find child porn to be a horrific and dangerous issue. But the way to deal with it isn't through censorship and filters. It's to go after those who are actually responsible for the stuff. It's to track down and prosecute those who are creating and distributing the stuff. Putting up filters for censorship doesn't stop those who are creating and distributing. It just drives them further underground. If anything, it actually makes it more difficult for law enforcement to track them down and stop them.

But, thanks to copyright industry efforts, that's what we're getting. And for what? So that they can get ISPs to start putting in filters in a weak and unworkable attempt to stop infringement. It's really quite sickening that some in the copyright industry would go this far, but when you see just how often copyright lobbyists bring up child porn, and advocate for filters, it's hard not to be disgusted at the lows to which they'll stoop in their quixotic battle, where the end result is actually to make life worse for the victims of child pornography.

Filed Under: child porn, copyright, filters, lobbying

Congress Tries To Hide Massive Data Retention Law By Pretending It's An Anti-Child Porn Law

from the oh-come-on dept

We all know the cynical and obnoxious trick by politicians to get questionable laws passed by claiming that it's "for the children." The latest, however, is particularly nefarious. Some politicians (and lots of folks in law enforcement) have been pushing for the US government to adopt data retention laws for years. These laws would require online service providers to keep all sorts of data about users for many months, just in case law enforcement wants to come knocking later to get the details. Of course, data retention is controversial. You know what's not controversial? Being against child porn. We're all against child porn... so, rather than calling your bill a data retention law, why not refer to it as the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011. Yes, that's the bill put forth by Texas Congressional Rep. Lamar Smith, and co-sponsored by Reps. Bill Flores, Randy Forbes, Dutch Ruppersberger and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The bill actually has very little to do with stopping child pornographers, but a lot to do with requiring online service providers to retain certain information (mainly IP addresses) on users for 18 months. Of course, as Chris Soghoian points out, the bill exempts WiFi providers, so it's woefully ineffective at stopping child porn, since anyone who wanted to do that just needs to go to Starbucks.

But, for legitimate service providers, there are serious costs. On top of that, there are significant privacy issues -- and this is at the same time that we keep hearing about data leaks. You want to encourage more data leaks? Require companies hold onto data much longer than they need to do so. The really pernicious part in all of this is that it's really just a way for law enforcement to do an end run around the 4th Amendment. Julian Sanchez explains how this works:

Thanks to an unwise Supreme Court decision dating from the 70s, information about your private activites loses its Fourth Amendment protection when its held by a “third party” corporation, like a phone company or Internet provider. As many legal scholars have noted, however, this allows constitutional privacy safeguards to be circumvented via a clever two-step process. Step one: The government forces private businesses (ideally the kind a citizen in the modern world can’t easily avoid dealing with) to collect and store certain kinds of information about everyone—anyone might turn out to be a criminal, after all. No Fourth Amendment issue there, because it’s not the government gathering it! Step two: The government gets a subpoena or court order to obtain that information, quite possibly without your knowledge. No Fourth Amendment problem here either, according to the Supreme Court, because now they’re just getting a corporation’s business records, not your private records. It makes no difference that they’re only keeping those records because the government said they had to.

Current law already allows law enforcement to require retention of data about specific suspects—including e-mails and other information as well as IP addresses—to ensure that evidence isn’t erased while they build up enough evidence for a court order. But why spearfish when you can lower a dragnet? Blanket data requirements ensure easy access to a year-and-a-half snapshot of the online activities of millions of Americans—every one a potential criminal.

But, of course, if you complain about this or argue against the law, the title alone makes it sound like you're defending child pornography. How nice.

Filed Under: child porn, data retention, lamarr smith, privacy

Recording Industry Using Net Neutrality Debate To Try To Link Child Porn With Copyright Infringement Again

from the it's-not-the-same dept

We've already seen how music industry execs and lobbyists cynically use "child porn" to their advantage (even, sickeningly, declaring "child porn is great") by lumping it in with copyright infringement in trying to force filters or other third party policing of the internet on politicians and companies. What's amazing is that they don't seem to have any shame at all in doing so. The latest example can be found in the "open letter" put together by a bunch of music industry trade groups (RIAA, A2IM, AFM, AFTRA, ASCAP, BMI, NMPA, SESAC, SoundExchange, the Recording Academy, the California Songwriters Association, the Music Managers Forum, and the Nashville Songwriters Association International) to Verizon and Google asking them to make sure their proposed "framework" for net neutrality still doesn't cover forcing ISPs to be copyright cops. It's no surprise why they sent this letter, but the inclusion of "child porn" with copyright infringement is really ridiculous:

The music community we represent believes it is vital that any Internet policy initiative permit and encourage ISPs and other intermediaries to take measures to deter unlawful activity such as copyright infringement and child pornography.

The industry seems to work overtime to try to link these two concepts together, despite the vast differences between them. It's really an incredibly cynical, exploitative and disgusting move by the recording industry, and people should really start calling them on it.

Filed Under: child porn, copyright, net neutrality, recording industry
Companies: a2im, afm, aftra, ascap, bmi, nmpa, riaa, sesac, soundexchange

Disgruntled Ex-Wikipedia Guy, Larry Sanger, Accuses Wikipedia Of Distributing Child Porn

from the desperate-much dept

It's no secret that Larry Sanger is no fan of Wikipedia. He's often credited as being a co-founder of the site, though some dispute this. He was involved in the creation of Nupedia, Wikipedia's predecessor, which was more of a traditional expert-edited online encyclopedia. While many involved in Wikipedia these days downplay his role there, Sanger has made a pretty compelling case that he was heavily involved in the early days. Either way, since he left, he's gone way out of his way to distance himself from Wikipedia, while setting up a competitor (again, an expert-edited encyclopedia) that doesn't get much usage. Every few months or so, he seems to find some way to pop up in the news, often using his connection to Wikipedia as the hook for why the press should cover his competitor, which appears to get almost no traffic whatsoever.

His latest tactic is really pretty low. SimonTek points us to a Fox News article all about Sanger calling on the FBI to investigate Wikipedia for distributing child porn. While Fox of course plays up Sanger's Wikipedia credentials, they leave out the fact that he has been working on a failed competitor for years (they mention the company name, but not that it's a competitor). They also leave out much of the animosity between Sanger and Wikipedia.

This story actually got some attention a few weeks ago on Slashdot, where many commenters, rightfully, took Sanger to task. Sanger responded to the criticism by arguing a few points, saying that he was required by law to report his findings to the FBI. To some extent, on that point, he is correct, though it is an issue with the law that focuses on criminalizing even those who accidentally run across questionable material, rather than focusing on those who create and purposely distribute the material (the real problems). However, he does appear to go somewhat out of his way to publicize this claim. He could have just alerted the FBI and been done with it... but he republished his letter to the FBI on a mailing list. That certainly raises some serious questions.

On top of that, his complaint is not about actual photographs of child pornography, but drawings. Indeed, the courts have found that even such depictions count as child pornography -- though many people find that arguable about whether or not a made up drawing exploits a child in any way.

The real problem, of course, is that this (like so many arguments over this stuff) takes away from the real issue: which is stopping those actually responsible for child pornography. Attacking Wikipedia is not the answer and does little to help the issue -- especially when the attack comes from someone with a long history of animosity towards the site, and a failing competitor. Why not focus those resources on actually dealing with the real problem? Wouldn't we all rather that the FBI is focused on actually stopping those involved in the production of child pornography than wasting time going after Wikipedia? Part of the problem is certainly with the way the law is structured today, but it does seem that Sanger went out of his way to try to broadcast this attack when that absolutely was not necessary.

He makes it even worse in the Fox story by claiming that he was doing this to alert educators that Wikipedia is dangerous for school children. That's flat-out ridiculous. For the most part, it is not. It's quite unlikely that anyone is going to accidentally stumble onto those drawings on Wikipedia -- and they're equally as likely to find similar (or worse) stuff elsewhere. To call out all of Wikipedia as being unsuitable because of this is clearly going way too far.

Filed Under: child porn, larry sanger, wikipedia

Anti-Piracy Group Says: 'Child Porn Is Great' Since It Gets Politicians To Block File Sharing Sites

from the wow dept

For many years, we've seen the entertainment industry make totally bogus and unsubstantiated claims about file sharing sites being hotbeds of child pornography in an effort to get them to regulate or shut down those services. Of course, the actual evidence shows that file sharing porn is no worse than what's on the wider internet. But that doesn't stop the entertainment industry from making such bogus claims -- and it seems like they're gleefully admitting it these days. Jamie Love points us to an account of an event in Sweden, entitled "Sweden -- A Safe Haven for Pirates?" put on by the US Chamber of Commerce, where someone from the Danish "Anti-Piracy" group spoke out about how great child pornography is, because it makes it easy for them to get politicians to block or shut down file sharing sites.

"Child pornography is great," the speaker at the podium [Johan Schluter] declared enthusiastically. "It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites".

Of course, this is no surprise, but having him say so directly is a bit surprising. He goes on to admit that the entertainment industry is planning to use child porn as a wedge to demand "a giant filter" for copyright:

"One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand."

Of course, those filters don't actually work, and using them to force entire sites to be blocked, despite them having a relatively tiny proportion of such content isn't just dishonest and underhanded, but dangerous. We're all in favor of trying to stop child porn, but you do that by focusing on the source, not by putting up filters willy-nilly in a misguided attempt to get politicians to also protect your business model.

Either way, it's incredibly disgusting to have anyone claim that child porn is "great," just because it can be improperly exploited for the sake of protecting another industry's business model. That he's basically admitting that he doesn't remotely care about stopping child pornography, but prefers to use it to his advantage is downright sickening.

Filed Under: anti-piracy, blocking, child porn, file sharing

Teens Face Child Porn Charges... For Taking Nude Photos Of Themselves

from the victimizing-themselves dept

There was just that report noting that 20% of teens admitted to sending around sexually explicit photos of themselves -- and now, six high school students in Pennsylvania are facing child porn charges because the three girls took naked photos of themselves and sent them to some boys (thanks to everyone who sent this in). The girls are charged with manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography, while the boys who received the photos are charged with possession. Now, it's pretty clear that the girls did something dumb here -- but teens do an awful lot of dumb things. It's part of growing up. Getting charged with child porn for taking photos of yourself and then being labeled a sex offender for the rest of your life seems... a bit extreme. This is why we've pointed out that laws, like the one in Georgia, that require sex offenders to hand over not just their emails, but passwords to all their accounts, are so ridiculous. If someone is actually found to be dealing in child porn, that's one thing -- but casting such a wide net is clearly overkill.

Filed Under: child porn, teens