Gnutella's Wall Of Shame?

Sleen pointed us to a ZD story about ZeroPaid.com's Wall of Shame. Its pretty amusing actually: since gnutella is truly distributed, you know the IP of people who download things from you. ZeroPaid is posting the IPs of people who try to download their faked kiddie porn. This is an obvious side effect of using a totally distributed application to distribute information: the information can be distributed like wildfire, but the privacy concerns are significant.

they should fix some of the file names..

Okay, some of the file names do indicate that there would be child pornography to be found. But others aren't so clear. For example, "hot teen.jpg", "schoolgirl.jpg", and "teen-sucking.jpg" aren't really too indicative of child pornography. There are plent of sites / images out there touting "teens" and "school girls" that don't have anyone under 18 pictured. Now, I realize that they do indicate which files the particular IP addresses have downloaded, but even so, this has potential to get out of hand and I think they should be a bit more responsible trying to choose their fake file names.

I'm not fan of pedophiles but ...

I have to ask where does it stop? What is next, someone goes into a adult book store and snaps pictures of you buying "teen ass" magazine and runs it in a local newspaper ad? What if this person offers you the magazine himself then snaps the pic and labels you a pedophile even though "teen ass" is perfectly legal to buy and possess if you are an adult?

My point is, yes pedophiles are the scum of the earth and yes using technology as a vehicle of the exploitation of children is a horrendous crime, but what makes this person the ultimate authority on who is branded with the scarlet letter and who is not?

What if the tables were turned and someone from fbi.gov got a file listing of the supposed child porn this person is offering, what will they say when they are raided for intent to distribute?

People STILL do time for trying to pass oregano off as pot, and bank robbers STILL do time when they use their finger in their pocket to imitate a gun, why shouldn't these people do time for trying to pass off "gotcha" images as child porn?

Let the cops setup the sting operations and let the criminals go through the justice system and THEN label them pedophiles. All this is is a misguided attempt at vigilantism without cause.

Re:This is good, but not very useful on its own

I'm probably mistaken, but isn't that 'entrapment'?

There's a difference between being active and being passive. When the feds worked hard to get John Delorian to run drugs for them, it was active. He had no history of such behavior, and they should have never did it. In the same way, ATF agents asked Randy Weaver to saw a couple shotguns off just a little bit shorter than the legal minimum length. Again, it's entrapment, we don't know if he was into that sort of thing before (or if he even knew it was illegal).

The basic idea is that in these cases and others like them, the crime is actually created by the law enforcement personnel who convince someone else to actually commit it. I don't know why they did that to Delorian. They did it to Weaver so they could subsequently blackmail him into helping to entrap someone else. Charges were pressed only after he refused to go along with them.

The irony of the Weaver situation is that we have one of the whiniest government agencies, the BATF, actually making up crimes for themselves to fight. It's like a fire department setting fires. The BATF whines about needing more money, yet they apparently have enough that they can make up crimes to fight. If I didn't know better, I'd have to guess that actual crime no longer exists and these guys are wandering around trying to look busy.

The situation here (gnutella & zeropaid) is one which I actually have no problem with. Rather than actively recruiting would-be criminals, they are passively providing some bait, and keeping track of those who bite. It seems likely that people who bite in this situation are actually looking for kiddie porn and probably already have some.

So, obviously they've broken no laws since they downloaded something legal. But the fbi now has a list of folks to start watching. I don't think that's so bad.

-Michael

Re:they get what they deserve!

> are you trying to justify the downloading of
> naked kids? ARE YOU?!?

DOwnloading naked kids? hmmm can I download a
hamburger and french fries too? hmmm No Make that
some prime rib, and some good red wine....now
where exactly do I go to download this stuff
again?

> if you go around DL'ing illegal material that
> has a negative affect on our society.

hmmmm the transfer of bits from some other
computer to my hard drive can have a negative
effect on our society? Please explain. Also please
quantify the actual harm done per kilobyte.

> your whole view on the subject is narrow, and
> you seem to be too engrossed with yourself to
> have a truly valid argument.

A complete moron said something to me once, it was
the only thing he ever said that was correct...
"When you point your finger at someone, you point
3 back at yourself"

> (and yes, the internet IS public property)

Yes but....people are allowed to have private
conversations in public places. Personally, I
think laws saying people can't have sex, or
walk around without cloths are pretty draconian...
course...I only see 3 functions to clothing,
1) protection from the elements
2) pockets
3) naugahide (ever sat on it not wearing long
pants?)

Given those being the only 3 functions of
clothing that I recognize (special clothing
designed for extra suport aside), I don't see
any real problem with walking around naked (esp
on a hot day)

If you are offended by something, then its your
own fault for choosing to be offended. Can't
blame others for your choices.

I'm sorry, I don't trust you that much

>It's been said many times by others: if you have
>done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid
>of.

If you believe that for a second, I have a bridge to sell you. America is currently whipped up into such a 'protect our children' frenzy that it's practically a fetish; one of the few that regularly disturbs me.

I'll state the following for the record: I'm not a pedophile, consumer of kiddie porn, or any number of related horrible things. I don't want to see exploitation or torture of children any more than any sane adult would. I'm planning on having my own kids in the not too distant future (although perhaps slightly more distant than my wife ;-) and I want them to grow up happy, healthy and secure.

I am a consumer of net Porn. Not a particualrly rabid consumer, but a reasonably regular one. I see nothing shameful about pornography in general, and I don't care if *you* do. Over the past ten years or so (yes, porn predates the web), I've even had paying memberships at a few of my favorite sites.

Perhaps I'm sharing too much, but I happen to go for the really 'soft' stuff; hardcore action is just... kinda strange... Closeups of genitals and any number of other things that the mainstream porn industry thinks is oh-so-hot is a major turnoff. I like neutral, not particularly sexual poses of healthy, happy women. Pretty, happy women are a turn on... as they should be for practically any healthy het male! For this reason, I also like nudist photos (and generally am a believer in nudism myself). So far, I don't think anyone is particularly surprised or shocked. Feynman himself had more interesting tastes ;-)

For some reason though, alot of naturist and nudist sites also advertise themselves (often hidden in meta tags) as 'kiddie' 'illegal underage' or 'lolita' porn. Why? Heck if I know.
I think the whole net-porn industry needs a major dose of truth in advertising, but whatever. So it's the case that naturist sites often run hand in hand with fake (or real) kiddie sites. You can't tell until you visit.

Is someone logging the sites I go to? Am I gonna get a knock on my door at 7am because some asshole Yahoo who thought he was doing us all a major service saw I went to a site with 'kiddie porn' in a META tag and handed it to my local Police department? You might even find a pic or two in my Netscape cache from a site where I only hit the front page, (or more likely a banner ad). It almost makes me want to pull this stunt as a hoax ('turn in' a co-conspirator) in order to discredit the whole idea before it gets started.

When Megan's Law first started being enforced here in CA, several men were *PLACED ON THE SEX OFFENDER LIST ERRONEOUSLY*. One poor guy's neighbors noticed before he did, tried to burn down his house and in general sent alot of nasty death threats. Of course no one believed him when he claimed to be innocent! Who would trust someone on a Police list as a pedophile?

I don't know what it is about groups of people and mob mentality. Admit it: all we're looking for here, rather than a legitimate way of protecting children, is a new excuse for a witch hunt. Don't you just *love* that rush of righteous indignation? That justified feeling of hate for another human? That burning desire to wipe out the evil and ask questions later? The number of times folks in this comment lists have referred to the third-person, evil 'them' is disturbing.

If *I* got on a list by accident, could I trust all of you to stop and think for a second before tearing me to shreds?

I think I could not.

Monty
http://www.xiph.org/

Isn't that illegal?

I believe (it has been a while since I read about it) the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) (1996) makes it illegal to even insinuate such material. To photograph a nude or engaged 20 year old and call him/her 16 is illegal according to this statute. So then would be "reaming_a_12yo_butt.jpeg" by definition, since it alleges and describes an act that is contained within.

Shut up fascist.

First, your pseudo legal arguments suck. Then, if you had taken a look at the pages this article refers to, you would have seen that more than half of the reported entries had VERY UNSPECIFIC filenames (youngass, schoolgirl, hotteen, etc ...) that could perfectly well apply to even non pornographic pictures. Hell, you can find pictures of a 2 yo baby's ass in any image bank. And you see those pics in plenty of commercials. This is really such a nonsense. That kind of vigilantism will have ZERO positive impact, and has only drawbacks.

Pedophiles/Statutory rape and the internet

To most of the world, the net is a buzzword. The image is a mess of pornography, hackers, and lawlessness. The reality is... partly the same. The issue is... nothing's wrong with this.

But pedophilia is a wholly different issue. They use the internet to network, to trade both pornography and victims. They use it to stalk. They use it to lure out new victims.

There is a real issue involved for any of us who administer any service online... public backlash against any community that makes itself pedophile friendly will cause no end of headaches. Moreover, it will cause some of us to attack you by means other than legal.

I am both a geek and, in one state, a licenced therapist for victims of sex crimes. I know pedophilia. I've dealt with it, run up against it time after time. It is not a sexual fetish that is simply not socially acceptable. It is the worst form of mental illness I know, and one of only two things that tends to make me physically ill. The other is extremely bad shellfish. I have never met a pedophile that was even remotely well in the head. Why deal with a problem when you can just jail it away? Well, the problem is, we can't. Too many pedophiles get away with it. There are virtually no exhibitors of the disease who do not practice its manifestation... this is something I've become sickeningly aware of. The least harmful still cop feels from victims too young or too terrified or ashamed to speak up. If we could just jail it away, it wouldn't be a problem.

The issue with age of consent isn't (or shouldn't be, in any case) the choice of minors to be sexually active. It is the choice of adults to exploit minors. The best law, from a therapist's point of view, would be a sliding scale... five years for seventeen, four for sixteen, three for fifteen, two for fourteen and down... I've seen it go to one at twelve, with prosecution shifted to parents, but I'm not sure that's well thought out...

The reason for an age of consent is simple. Sex should not be something a person with power extracts from someone without. Rape can be committed without physical force: blackmail, threat of firing, threats of any other kind... or exploitation of authority status. In short, adults having sex with children are committing rape, in the same sense that that rev. Moon character was...

We geeks are people with power... but often, we are people with neither ethics nor conscience. We consider ourselves a breed apart, above those petty issues. Unfortunately, some of those issues are far from petty.

hehe - I'm going to do the same

I'm going to post a bunch of mp3 files with song names of Britney Spears, Boyz2Men, BackStreetBoys, and all that, and post a Hall of Lame of those people that actually thought those songs were good! muahahah

Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)

Doh!!! Re:Some of the DNS names

I looked up some of the DNS names, I wasn't sure what I would find, but it looks like lots of dial ups and DHCP addresses.

Host Name: <lsanca1-ar8-048-168.dsl.gtei.net> IP Address: <4.35.48.168>
Host Name: <ci697303-a.lusvil1.ky.home.com> IP Address: <24.2.227.10>
Host Name: <PPPa86-ResalePhoenix6-2R7219.saturn.bbn.com> IP Address: <4.54.182.211>
Host Name: <cachef1-v105.kolumbus.fi> IP Address: <193.229.159.211>
Host Name: <tayhou-229-217.ev1.net> IP Address: <207.218.229.217>
Host Name: <du13055.blo.ptd.net> IP Address: <204.186.13.55>
Host Name: <CHCGB511-10.splitrock.net> IP Address: <209.254.67.10>
Host Name: <annex32.su.ic.ac.uk> IP Address: <155.198.152.42>
Host Name: <proxy2-external.snvl1.sfba.home.com> IP Address: <24.4.254.99>
Host Name: <w098.z208177014.dfw-tx.dsl.cnc.net> IP Address: <208.177.14.98>
Host Name: <host001083.arnet.com.ar> IP Address: <200.43.1.83>
Host Name: <dhcp93101233.columbus.rr.com> IP Address: <24.93.101.233>
Host Name: <c05-148.012.popsite.net> IP Address: <64.24.48.148>
Host Name: <52.atlanta-48-49rs.ga.dial-access.att.net> IP Address: <12.77.19.52>
Host Name: <5-168.casl.du.edu> IP Address: <130.253.5.168>
Host Name: <a24b31n93client144.hawaii.rr.com> IP Address: <24.31.93.144>
Host Name: <b12.med.pcpros.net> IP Address: <208.198.6.12>
Host Name: <p3E9B96E2.dip0.t-ipconnect.de> IP Address: <62.155.150.226>
Host Name: <slkc6400gw1poolC60.slkc.uswest.net> IP Address: <63.226.102.60>
Host Name: <adsl-77-226-243.atl.bellsouth.net> IP Address: <216.77.226.243>
Host Name: <ip229.dayton11.oh.pub-ip.psi.net> IP Address: <38.31.203.229>
Host Name: <dhcp-letts-158-219.american.edu> IP Address: <147.9.158.219>

George

I think I posted about this before ...

I do believe I posted about this before. Without any means to trace or stop distribution of files illegal files will run rampid on systems giving free reign to anyone who wants them. This does involve copyrighted material and other lude materials.

I think condemned.org has it right on actually doing something besides complain about kiddie porn. They not only take a stand they do something about it. I am very proud of this group .

There needs to be a to moderate distributed file systems. If theres not then we will have a problem. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Can disgruntled sysops ....

log in as their bosses and go hit the fake porno ?

publicised surveillance => public spoofs

A stunt, and not a very good one.

This smells to me of a publicity "look how much we care stunt." Probably in light of the Napster controversy (notice how Napster and such are discussed on the main page) they're putting their best face foward. I mean, who can argue with folks that don't like pediophiles?

However, looking over the pages with the file names, few of them seem to be any different from the usual dross you find on the net or here about in spam or see in newsgroups. The names are rarely distinctive.

I wonder if this is a new trend - trying to find ways to look good so you don't get caught up in the recent controversies over the net and technology.

This is good, but not very useful on its own

I've tracked back some of the IP addresses they have posted. Some of them are dial up connections to ISPs, some trace back to .edu and seem to be static addresses.

Without matching the time and port to a specific user login at an ISP, this is mostly useless. But matching can be done quite easily, as most ISPs keep login records and will willingly give them over to law enforcement when asked or marketing research firms when paid.

This is good because it will make people a little nervous about using gnutella and similar distributed file systems to spread around questionable material. If it helps keep the worst pr0n and blatantly ripped copyrighted material off, then gnutella will be more acceptable in areas such as universities. PR stunts such as this will also raise the knowledge level of how anonymity on the internet is a rather dodgy concept. It is so very easy to track you through your IP address, but most of the clueless people believe the hype you are completely out of reach of repercussions when connected to the internet.

We'll have to see if other services like this one pop up, especially those who have an evil political agenda. Marketers who harvest IP info and match it up to other records in doubleclick to spam you more effectively. Imagine a company putting out files named "christs_love.txt", and seeing who DLs it, and then targeting them with religious ads. Or "suicide_help.doc", and then selling the results to insurance companies.

Expect to see more of this in the near future.

the AC

Acceptable behavior from a private citizen

If the government set up a sting operation to prosecute people in this fashion, I'd be outraged. If a company tried to convince people to use their site and then did this, I'd boycott. But this is being done by someone who is TRYING to get people to quit using his site. (He wants pedophiles to stop using Gnutella.) I have no problem with that. This would be bad behavior from the police, but it's just fine for a person- he's not making anybody use his stuff.

STUPID STUPID

Quote from the web page:

> I'm all for freedom of data sharing but not when it comes to exploiting children.

Quick vote who here thinks he is really concerned about children and who thinks this guy just wants some attention.

Moreover while we all know molesting children should be illegal why to we legislate against child porn? Does not for profit child porn increase the number of children abused or decrease it?

Who gets busted in regards to free child porn? middle aged men sitting in their basements harming no one. While the commercial rings encourage the abuse of children the man next door just needs some conseling not jail time. Moreover does the availibility encourage more molestation of children or discourage it because their impulses are satisfied other ways?

Does the laws against non-commercial distribution make it easier to catch the actual molesters or harder by encouraging everyone else involved not to squeal so they themselves are not prosecuted.

We don't know the answers to any of the above questions. But we do know making non-commercial consumtion illegal seriously infringes on our rights.

How often have you heard someone say they support freedom of expresion except for child porn. What other crime can you commit in the privacy of your own home with GIMP and artistic skills (yes in order to make child porn laws enforceable they also made images which only appear to be child porn illegal).

The child porn issue is a wonderful wedge which convinces otherwise stalwart defenders of free expresion and privacy to cave and make allowances. It is the first step on a slippery slope which will eventually make illegal bondage photos.

First womens groups campaign and get images of women getting raped made illegal (sounds reasonable just like child porn). But then we need to make images which only appear to show women getting raped illegal as otherwise everyone may just claim they thought it was fake. Eventually all bondage porn is illegal. Then eventually all porn.

This is the issue where we finally see the true color of internet libertarians. The truth is they do nothave a great respect for the first ammendment and the willingness to tolerate that which offends them but rahter they just like porn so they don't want to see it banned.

this law was overturned...

This law made it a criminal offense to have images that appeared to depict children in illicit sexual acts while the subjects are actually of legal age. It was overturned just before that guy from Infoseek went to trial over having solicited a woman posing as a 13 year old to come have sex with him in Santa Monica. Half of the evidence against him (the child porn he had e-mailed said woman) was thrown out of court because of the overturning of the afformentioned law. It would have to be PROVEN that the people in the pictures were underage after the law was overturned.

Also, since this law was overturned, it was disputed that he should even get in trouble for soliciting the woman because she wasn't really 13 and it was all play-acting.

He ended up plea-bargaining, I think.

If this law were still in effect, I am pretty certain that American Beauty would have been a difficult movie to release in the US.

Seth

no presumption of privacy for logs?

As far as I know, there is no presumption that logs of your accesses will remain private on a particular service. People already post aggregate statistics (so many .edu hits, so many from Japan, etc.) that although posting information about individual IP addresses is quite a large step, it is probably legal.

That being said, the real issue is security through legal means versus security through mathematical means. Even if it a law made it illegal to publish non-aggregate server logs with specific access information, you still really aren't safe. Anybody could be sniffing your packets between dialup042.aol.com and pr0nserver.net, whether they publish logs or not.

The situation is analogous to the whole DeCSS issue. Sure, you could just use weak encryption and depend on the law to prevent people from doing something, but there's always going to be someone out there with the tools and the desire to get around that. You can make it illegal to keep or publish access logs, but the tools exist and someone will be able to monitor your access whether you like it or not.

Not that I'm interested in helping out child pornographers here, but if, for example, you're reading this in China and searching the 'net while planning your revolution, don't depend on any laws to prevent your identity from being known. Your only real protection on the Internet is strong cryptography, in this case probably augmented with anonymous proxies in several different countries with - shall we say - recalcitrant attitudes towards cooperation with global law enforcement.

Bottom line: you are ultimately responsible for your own safety and/or anonymity, not the government.

Fun fun fun

Code up a gnutilla client that forges its return address and requests files. Set the return address to whitehousel.gov, christiancoalition.org or godhatesfags.com and let the fun begin!

Not without precedent

For example, this guy [frenzy.com] has used a semi-intelligent bot script to troll for pathetic horny teenagers on IRC. The difference there is, however, that the human experience is published without publishing the exact identities of the humans involved.

The Wall-of-Shame fellow ought to be careful about slapping names like "pedophile" on random people. He's just begging for a libel suit.

Legal Nightmare

What are these morons thinking?? Yes this will result in defamation of character. IP addresses can be traced back even if only to the point of writing a note to the sys admin. How many corporations allow their employees to dial into the corporate server from home as a perk? What about .edu's? Some guy does a wildcard search on *suck* and gets 500 returns, one of which includes younggirlsucks.jpg. Who wants to look through all of them first? Download all of them at once, convert to thumbnails, preveiw them and delete the trash? I look at lots of porn (I'm an adult and this is my right) and this is how I do it. I have gotten lots of pics that were down right illegal or just plain grossed me out. They went to the trash. Now how do I explain to my boss or school officials that I was not by any means looking for child pornography? If I were to loose my job because someone pointed out to the sys admin, that my name had appeared on this site, I would file a law suit in seconds. A law suit against my and employer and one against zeropaid.
Want an even scarier scenario? Look at abortion doctors who get murdered. Look at the gay man who was murdered after the Jenny Jones show. Wasn't her show held responsible for liability? I can't really remember if they were. What if one of these whacko's, willing to kill abortion doctors manages to trace an IP back to the user, and decides to play vigilante. Some guy downloads youngtits.jpg and gets shot for it? You bet zeropaid will be hauled into court. Very extreme scenario, but not impposible.
Who gives these guys the right to play thought police? I am personally biased against public displays like this anyway. I feel that police blotters in newspapers are a violation of consitutional rights. This is no different. Public humiliation is unfair punishment. Not to forget the fact that you are being publically humiliated before even being convicted of anything. This is exactly like putting someone in the stockade to allow people to walk by and spit on them. I had a freind who came home one day to find a party being thrown at his house with the police handcuffing people. He was arrested as well. Some of the people were underage. His name was in the police blotter with the notation "endangering the welfare of a minor". Judge found him innocent of anywrong doing, but he still had the pleasure of explaining to his boss that he didn't have sex with a 15 year old. This is wrong, wrong wrong. Let me make this clearer. It is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The Wall Must Come Down

I believe the is truly a bad thing. Assuming if someone searchs for "schoolgirl.jpg", "little girls.jpg", "younggirlxxx.jpg", young-tits.jpg, .etc are necessarily looking for pedophilia is wrong and quite possibly illegal. If I saw my IP address on their Wall of Shame after searching for a innocuous term like the ones above clearly labeling me as someone who is looking for child pornography, I would sue you for defamation of character because you would have no proof that I actually desired child pornography, yet still went ahead and labeled my search as shameful and me a pedophile. Also, they really should not consider themselves holier then thou when they clearly advocate Internet users to break the law by distributing copyrighted music. Remember, outside of the Fair Use portion of our copyright law, an author of a copyrighted work has the sole desecration of how their work is distributed. They can't pick and choose the laws that you wish to uphold.

Re:This is good, but not very useful on its own

I always wondered why FBI never set up a series of "sting" sites for just such logging. It wouldn't take much to convince a judge that regularly searching for, and downloading, files with names like those mentioned on the site could constitute reasonable grounds to begin an investigation. And while we're on the subject, why hasn't RIAA/MPAA done the same thing for Gnutella or Napster.

Of course, maybe they have. Oops, here come the men in black...

Bottom line, if you're (l)using anything that involves direct connection over IP between your box and the other guy's box, you have to trust the server on the other end of the connection.

Meanwhile, why hasn't anyone posted that the logs mentioned in today's article are available as screenshots, not text, and are consequently unlikely to be indexed by search engines? I'd say the loggers went as far out of their way as they could to preserve the loggees privacy while still making it very clear that Everything You Download From Someone Else's Computer Can Be Logged.

Meanwhile, for sheer laughs, dig The Misanthropic Bitch [shutdown.com]'s list of referrers [shutdown.com].

And no discussion of stupid people on the 'net would be complete without a link to Baiting [baiting.org].

Hunny pots (a la Winnie the Pooh)

I remember a slashdot article awhile back about creating honeypots for script kiddies to hack so that their methods can be learned and used in the future to bolster the security arsenal. I wonder how many site are on the web right now that does the exact same thing, but instead of for hacking or script kiddies, for everything else?

I know there have been FBI sting operations for piracy and stuff like that, but being that the Internet is so uncontrollable, and we know the proliferation of illegal activities such as MP3 swapping, software piracy and porn is so rampant, I'd think that a large part of law enforcement's plans are to setup such honeypots to just keep track of demographic information on individuals who are prone to participate in certain kinds of illicit activities. I could imagine that the government could run some of the most successful porn sites, etc. to keep tabs on would be offenders.

In fact, Napster can be one such honeypot, and by the look of the thing with Metallica, has been used as such to some degree.

Isn't this something we need to be concerned with?

This is *sort* of good, yes. But there is a danger

I have to wonder how long it will be before services like ZeroPaid, which are clearly controversial in nature, become sponsored promotional sites.

"This anti-pedo web site brought to you by Nike, because only we know how to properly abuse children in factory conditions!"

Re:The good turning bad

Hmm. So searching for child porn is free speech and should be protected, but publishing people who search for child porn is not free speech and should be shut down? What a load of crap. This argument doesn't make logical sense.

In fact, your example of someone running the loser's underwear up the flagpole is actually better suited to the anti-porn argument. What if you stripped the loser naked and took pictures of him, and then ran that up the flagpole? Do the people who did that get to remain anonymous?

The reason child porn is illegal is because children can't be reasonably expected to consent to having pictures of them taken--never mind being raped while having their pictures taken.

Civil liberties cut both ways. And, by the way, so does free speech. If the KKK marched in my town, it is their right to do so. However, it is MY right to stand beside them and yell anti-racist slogans. Free speech does not guarantee anonymity. If you bother with U.S. legal precedent, you'll remember that the KKK tried to march in NYC with masks, and were told that they had to march maskless.

Furthermore, some kinds of speech are illegal (fire in a crowded theater, etc.), because they have social harms. Child porn certainly meets that test.

I do care about free speech, and have been a member of the ACLU for 10 years. But "free speech for me" arguments don't just come from people who want to censor--they come from people who don't want to be criticized. This is, in fact, what makes free speech work--people
allowed to say whatever they want, INCLUDING that what someone else said is wrong. That is, the benefit of free speech is that BOTH sides can express themselves. You seem to think that free speech means that someone else can't respond.

Besides that, let's not forget that what we're talking about here is the exploitation of children. It's not just producers who should be punished (and, again, judicial precedent agrees with me). I think people who produce it AND
consume it should be locked away in a deep dark cell, if not subjected to the same kind of torture they either (a) put kids through or (b) enjoyed watching. Every picture tells a story. These things were created out of real human suffering. DB

P.S. I'm only anonymous because Slashdot took forever to send me my password. My username is/will be wdball. And you can post that wherever the hell you want.

Your name on the Wall of Shame

Unless my analysis of the Gnutella protocol is incorrect, the IP numbers that is getting logged can be forged fairly easily. Innocent people could have their IP added to the Wall of Shame. Gnutella transfers happen via intermediate servers, so the Wall of Shame cannot just log the IP number of the host that connects to it. This is unfortunate since such IPs are much more difficult to forge. An attack would occur as follows: Imagine that someone wanted www.whitehouse.gov to show up on the Wall of Shame. They could just set up a rogue Gnutella server which would generate requests that it pretends to have recieved from a fictional Gnutella server on www.whitehouse.gov. The Gnutella server hosting the Wall of Shame has no way of telling the difference between real requests from www.whitehouse.gov and fictional requests generated by a rogue server. In fact, the Gnutella routing protocol guarantees that all responses will be routed back along the same path, allowing the rogue server to create a seamless illusion. Would someone with a more detailed knowledge of the Gnutella protocol or exactly what the Wall of Shame logs please confirm or deny this?

Re:I think I posted about this before ...

I believe the is truly a bad thing. Assuming if someone searchs for "schoolgirl.jpg", "little girls.jpg", "younggirlxxx.jpg", young-tits.jpg, .etc are necessarily looking for pedophilia is wrong and quite possibly illegal.

If I saw my IP address on their Wall of Shame after searching for a innocuous term like the ones above clearly labeling me as someone who is looking for child pornography, I would sue them for defamation of character because they would have no proof that I actually desired child pornography, yet still went ahead and labeled my search as shameful and me a pedophile.

Also, they really should not consider themselves holier then thou when they clearly advocate Internet users to break the law by distributing copyrighted music. Remember, outside of the Fair Use portion of our copyright law, an author of a copyrighted work has the sole desecration of how their work is distributed. They can't pick and choose the laws that they wish to uphold.

On the contrary

"This is good because it will make people a little nervous about using gnutella and similar distributed file systems to spread around questionable material."

Right, so they'll start using anonymous remailers and the like, spoiling THOSE for everyone else also.

There is only one way to make someone not do something: Make it against the person's interest to do it. This takes many forms:

1) Money (charge more for products you want to discourage, like cigarettes)
2) Shame (make fun of the person who broke the rule, like the Wall o' Shame in this article)
3) Punishment (typical method of law enforcement, tickets, fines, prison, etc).

#1 works very well because it applies to every instance. #2 is pretty rare because not everyone has any shame and other people want to be "polite" and "nice" (in quotes because real etiquette has no problem with punishing miscreants). #3, if spottily applied, loses its effectiveness. To me, this is the best argument in the world against creation of new laws (and removal of many existing laws). Having unenforced or unenforcable laws weakens the power of ALL laws. With the Internet's current technology, there is no reliable way to link an act to an individual. Making laws that assume there is only makes things worse.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?

Re:Child Pr0n is g00d

The case which explains why it's not just illegal to make child porn is New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1982) [findlaw.com]. The majority opinion in that case reads, in pertinent part:

The distribution of photographs and films depicting sexual activity by juveniles is intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children in at least two ways. First, the materials produced are a permanent record of the children's participation and the harm to the child is exacerbated by their circulation. Second, the distribution network for child pornography must be closed if the production of material which requires the sexual exploitation of children is to be effectively controlled. Indeed, there is no serious contention that the legislature was unjustified in believing that it is difficult, if not impossible, to halt the exploitation of children by pursuing only those who produce the photographs and movies. While the production of pornographic materials is a low-profile, clandestine industry, the need to market the resulting products requires a visible apparatus of distribution. The most expeditious if not the only practical method of law enforcement may be to dry up the market for this material by imposing severe criminal penalties on persons selling, advertising, or otherwise promoting the product. Thirty-five States and Congress have concluded that restraints on the distribution of pornographic materials are required in order to effectively combat the problem, and there is a body of literature and testimony to support these legislative conclusions.

[ . . . ]

Third. The advertising and selling of child pornography provide an economic motive for and are thus an integral part of the production of such materials, an activity illegal throughout the Nation. "It rarely has been suggested that the constitutional freedom for speech and press extends its immunity to speech or writing used as an integral part of conduct in violation of a valid criminal statute." We note that were the statutes outlawing the employment of children in these films and photographs fully effective, and the constitutionality of these laws has not been questioned, the First Amendment implications would be no greater than that presented by laws against distribution: enforceable production laws would leave no child pornography to be marketed.

Fourth. The value of permitting live performances and photographic reproductions of children engaged in lewd sexual conduct is exceedingly modest, if not de minimis. We consider it unlikely that visual depictions of children performing sexual acts or lewdly exhibiting their genitals would often constitute an important and necessary part of a literary performance or scientific or educational work. As a state judge in this case observed, if it were necessary for literary or artistic value, a person over the statutory age who perhaps looked younger could be utilized. Simulation outside of the prohibition of the statute could provide another alternative. Nor is there any question here of censoring a particular literary theme or portrayal of sexual activity. The First Amendment interest is limited to that of rendering the portrayal somewhat more "realistic" by utilizing or photographing children.

Id. at 759-64 (footnotes and citations omitted).

Stupid idea, lame implementation.

The idea is stupid: there are plenty of legitimate reasons to want to look at suspicious looking files. If I found *real* pedophilia, I would probably report it to the police. But you would have to know what it is before doing this: hence you'd have to download it. Then just plain curiosity. With all that fuss about pedophilia on the internet, I'd be interested to actually find some to begin with, as opposed to just believing the media gossip on it. So merely downloading what looks like pedophilia does'nt mean that one is a pedophile.

Then the implementation sucks BIG TIME. Come on, youngass.jpg? Is a 21 yo ass OLD? I don't think so! It does'nt have anything to do with pedophilia. What about teenxxx.jpg? Last time I checked 18yo were both teens AND adults. Hardly qualifies for pedophilia! And then, there's plenty of teensomething.com sites out there that just carry playboy style pr0n.

So it's lame. The guy is just looking for attention. He got it!

Freenet-ish caching in Gnut

I sent this message to [e-mail]:

------------------------------------------------ -
This message is informational, not a flame:

I recently added Freenet-style automatic caching to gnut, one of the
gnutella clients. The way the caching algorithm works is that as well
as functioning as a normal gnutella node, gnut also watches the
query_response stream as it routes it to other clients. Every once in
a while, it chooses a random file offered for download in response to
someone else's search request, and downloads it into a local cache,
making it available to gnutellanet from a new location.

The idea is to propagate popular files to make it easier to find them
and to spread out bandwidth usage between servers. Popular files
would, presumedly, be requested more often and thefore occur in query
responses more often as well.

Since the system chooses random responses, it's quite possible that
some queries will occur from the cleaner without the user actually
requesting the file. In testing, my caching gnut client seems to
download random porn about 5% of the time.

I'm not saying that the cleaner is a bad idea, but I wanted you to be
aware that this new feature might lead you to put someone's IP address
up for the world to see even though they haven't tried to download
files from you. Since this feature is fairly new, it's unlikely to
have occurred yet, but if caching becomes widespread, it's likely that
you'll see download requests that have no real user behind them.

One way to prevent misinterpreting a download request is to keep a
list of GUIDs of searches that you've responded to, and use that list
to corroborate download requests. If a client downloads a file
without having searched for it, it's likely to be due to caching.

Just so you're aware,
Ray Jones
------------------------------------------------ -

BTW, Gnut is available here:
http://www.umr.edu/~jjp