A Panel from the House's Subcommitte on Commerce, Trade and
Consumer Protection met last Thursday to debate legislation to
crack down on the P2P networks, designed to combat the use of the
networks in the trade of child pornography.
The National Centre on Missing and Exploited Children in the US
documented a five-fold increase in P2P sites with child pornography
between 2001 and 2003. The House panel also heard arguments that
the use of P2P networks by children for downloading music has made
them familiar with the technology, and potentially more succeptible
to being exploited by P2P pornographers.
Giving evidence before the panel, Marty Lafferty, chief
executive of the Distributed Computing Industry Association, an
interest group representing Kazaa and other P2P networking firms,
stated that KaZaA has been co-operating with the FBI for several
months to track down child pornographers using the company's
technology.
Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, whose members
include Grokster, Morpheus and BearShare, proposed "Operation Milk
Carton" – placing pictures of wanted child-pornographers on the
front pages of web sites with links to contact the FBI, reminiscent
of 'missing person' adverts on the side of milk cartons in the
US.
