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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 9/7/2003 1:22 PM (GMT -6) |   | Aiming at Pornography to Hit Music Piracy
September 7, 2003
By SAUL HANSELL
The recording industry, struggling to curb music piracy, is
shining the spotlight on another demon lurking on the
Internet: pornography.
The industry is trying to enlist broader public support
with a campaign intended to show that its nemesis - the
peer-to-peer networks for swapping files like KaZaA and
Morpheus - are used not only to trade songs but also
pornographic images, including child pornography.
"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.
Others ask whether raising this issue is more than a little
cynical from an industry that heavily promotes music with
sexual and violent themes.
"The entertainment companies have engaged in a deliberate
and despicable campaign of lies to smear peer-to-peer
technology for political purposes," said Philip S. Corwin,
a lobbyist for Sharman Networks, the publisher of KaZaA,
the largest file-sharing service. "They are trying to
associate us unfairly with the most vile element in
society, child pornography."
Pornography has been actively traded through file-sharing
services from their start. But the record labels have
recently started lending lobbying and logistical support to
antipornography and child protection groups that are
raising the issue. For example, Dan Klores Communications,
which represents Sony Music and other music clients, has
been promoting Parents for Megan's Law, a Long Island group
involved with preventing child abuse that has been critical
of child pornography available through file-sharing
services, like KaZaA.
Their efforts are having some result. A bill has been
introduced into the House, with the endorsement of the
recording industry, that would require children to get
parental consent before using sharing software. And on
Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing
to look into the connection between file-swapping services
and pornography, called by its chairman, Senator Orrin
Hatch, a Republican of Utah.
The labels, which blame online piracy for declining music
sales, are fighting the downloading services on many
fronts. 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.
They are also trying to turn up the heat on those who
continue to download songs without paying for them. This
week the Recording Industry Association of America said it
was going to start filing hundreds of lawsuits against
individuals accused of swapping large numbers of
copyrighted songs. The association also is planning to
offer an amnesty program that would exempt from prosecution
people who destroy all their illegally downloaded songs.
But in perhaps the most extreme sign of the industry's
desperation, it is trying to focus the attention of
lawmakers and others on how the peer-to-peer, or p2p,
services can connect users with a range of ills including
computer viruses, software that steals personal information
and unwanted pornography.
"P2p stands for piracy to pornography," quipped Mr. Lack.
The file-sharing companies respond that the risk of
children seeing pornography inadvertently on their systems
is being overstated and that their software is no different
from Web browsers and e-mail programs that can be used to
find all sorts of material.
Mitch Glazier, the senior vice president for government
affairs for the R.I.A.A., says the industry's current calls
for parental controls on file-swapping services is not
inconsistent with its longstanding defense of the artistic
freedom of songwriters.
"We are not trying to stop people from expressing
themselves," he said. "We say you should do what we do and
give notice and disclosure" as in the labels warning of
explicit lyrics on compact disc packages.
The antipornography campaign also puts the music labels in
league with the legal pornography industry, which faces
some of the same problems from piracy. Titan Media, a San
Francisco producer of erotic gay videos, has seen a sharp
drop in sales it attributes to file sharing.
"Every movie is traded 10 times the amount it is sold,"
said Gill Sperlein, Titan's general counsel. Another
problem from the file sharing, he said, is that material is
available to any user, regardless of age.
"We spend a lot of money and effort trying to make sure our
material only gets into the hands of adults," he said.
The bill in the House backed by the music industry -
introduced by Representative Joseph R. Pitts, a Republican
from Pennsylvania, and Representative Christopher John, a
Democrat from Louisiana - would require the file-swapping
services to get parental consent before being used by
children.
Such a law would face both technological and legal
challenges. It envisions a system of "beacons" that parents
could place on their computers to prevent the installation
of file-sharing software, technology that does not
currently exist. Moreover, several of the major
file-sharing services are based outside of the United
States, making enforcement difficult.
There is no argument that file-sharing services can be used
to download pornographic images and videos - both legal and
illegal.
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.
A second aspect of its study measured the likelihood a
child would inadvertently be exposed to pornography using
KaZaA. It examined 157 files downloaded in response to
three search terms of interest to children - Britney,
Pokémon and Olsen twins. It classified 49 percent of those
files as pornographic.
"Our artists' names are being used to lure kids and defraud
them into finding pornography," said Mr. Glazier of the
R.I.A.A.
The GAO study vastly overstates the likelihood that
children searching for popular music will in fact find
pornography, according to studies by Public Knowledge, an
advocacy group on intellectual property issues.
"We find you don't really accidentally download porn," said
Mike Godwin, the group's senior technology counsel.
The file-sharing services say that they are being unfairly
singled out and that they are no more a conduit for
pornography than e-mail programs, chat rooms, search
engines and the Internet itself.
"This has nothing to do with concern about adult material
and everything to do with commercial issues," said Alan
Morris, executive vice president of Sharman Networks. He
said that KaZaA introduced a parental control feature last
year that can be used to block searches for pornographic
material.
Laura A. Ahearn, the director of Parents for Megan's Law,
argues that the file-sharing services are different because
their main use is for trading music, an activity that
disproportionately appeals to teenagers and young adults.
"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."
The available evidence does not show that pornography on
file-sharing systems is growing any faster than through
other online vehicles. Indeed, the federally financed child
pornography tip line run by the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children found that 1.3 percent of the
reports of Internet child pornography were related to
file-sharing services so far this year, down from 2.1
percent last year. Nearly three-quarters of child
pornography reported is on Web sites. The Web sites
typically charge fees for access while the file-sharing
services are free.
Mr. Morris of Sharman Networks, which is incorporated in
the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu and managed from
Australia, said that most of the pornographic material on
file-sharing services was not illegal child pornography but
legal material intended for adults. Sharman Networks's
affiliate in the United States, Altnet, which tries to
profit by selling content through KaZaA, does offer some
pornographic material for sale.
"While it may not be what you and I choose to do, adult
individuals may share material between themselves the same
way adults can watch it on cable television or buy it at
airports," Mr. Morris said.
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."
www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/technology/07PORN.html?ex=1063965322&ei=1&en=e28a451a5043185c
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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