Byline: David McGuire
The music industry's latest tactic in its campaign to clamp down on Internet file-trading networks relies on something everyone can agree is bad: child pornography.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and a panel of witnesses told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) services like Kazaa, Grokster and LimeWire -- already known as tools for downloading pirated copies of digital music and movie files -- also are used to trade sexually explicit images of children.
The campaign so far appears to be working. Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) promised to make life tough for the networks if they don't take steps to remove illegal pornographic material.
"Unless you help us to help you to get rid of this material, you're going to be under constant attack, and ultimately we're going to have to do some things that will be very detrimental to your business," Hatch told a Kazaa executive at the hearing.
Hatch opened the hearing with a short video -- produced by the RIAA -- showing how people using the Kazaa network can inadvertently find files containing child pornography as they search for the latest songs by Britney Spears or videos of the Pokemon cartoon characters.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) also weighed in yesterday with a letter asking U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to initiate a government probe into child pornography on file-sharing networks.
Any kind of congressional action against the networks would be a boon to the recording industry. There are an estimated 57 million song swappers in the United States, according to the Boston-based Yankee Group research firm. Many of them use the networks to illegally download or trade copyrighted music for free.
The recording and motion picture industries, which have been waging battling file-sharing services since the rise of Napster in the late 1990s, claim to have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in sales to the Internet phenomenon. The RIAA's biggest members -- Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, BMG Entertainment and EMI -- also blame file sharing for falling compact disc sales, though the RIAA's critics say the companies sell an overpriced product.
The RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America have launched public education campaigns to put a stop to file sharing, and the RIAA this week filed 261 lawsuits against "egregious" file swappers. The association is expected to file several hundred more in federal courts across the nation. Federal copyright law allows damages of up to $150,000 per illegally swapped song.
The mother of one defendant, 12-year-old Brianna LaHara of New York City, settled with the RIAA for $2,000. P2P United, a lobby group that represents file-trading companies, offered to pay the settlement amount.
The RIAA's focus remains on music piracy, not pornography, but it is impossible to not take note of its presence on the networks, said Mitch Glazier, the RIAA's top lobbyist.
"It's fairly obvious when you're showing people how theft of your works occurs and half the results that come up are porn... that the threat is out there," Glazier said. "When people use our artists' names are being used to lure children into seeing pornography and child pornography we definitely have an interest."
But defenders of peer-to-peer networks objected to the child porn allegations.
The RIAA's campaign is an inspired but cynical move to ratchet up the pressure on the networks, said Mike Godwin, an attorney with Public Knowledge, a civil liberties group based in Washington, D.C.
"There's no question that the recording industry has an interest in tainting the whole idea of peer-to-peer file sharing," Godwin said.
The RIAA's tactics are "beyond reprehensible," said Adam Eisgrau, the executive director of Peer-to-Peer United.
Peer-to-Peer United later this year will unveil an online "resource center" to help parents combat the threat of child pornography, Eisgrau said.
File-sharing networks need to defend themselves against the recording industry's charges and convince Congress that they are legitimate businesses, said Alan Morris, business development manager of the Kazaa network.
In his testimony, Morris cited statistics from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children showing that file sharing accounted for only a tiny percentage of reported child pornography on the Internet.
Like most other file-trading sites, Kazaa does not host digital files on its network. Kazaa software allows users to connect to other users to exchange files that are stored on their computers' hard drives. That allows file-sharing networks to avoid Napster's fate. A federal judge ordered the service shut off because it violated copyright law by allowing people to download free music files from other members through a central server.
When users keep the files on their own networks, it becomes almost impossible for the companies to control what is being traded, Morris said.
Morris added that Kazaa is trying to develop ways to purge the network of the small amounts of child pornography that might be present on the network. Morris would not give details about those new technological fixes, but said they would be unveiled before the end of the year.
Glazier said file-sharing companies like Kazaa and Grokster have "purposely constructed" their networks to shield them from legal liability and personal responsibility. Rather than creating technology to block child pornography and other undesirable material, those companies have deliberately avoided building meaningful controls into their software, he added.
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