Potential Child Porn Hidden in Large DLs

[enter8]

If this has been discussed, my apologies. I did a search and came up with nothing on this subject.

Very early in my file sharing days (a few months back ;) ) I DLed a pretty large porn torrent that had child porn pics buried in the end of it. It was a large collection of old playboy pics (probably about a gig) and the child porn started about 90% of the way through.

It was some really sick stuff (7 maybe 8 year olds at the most). Needless to say, it freaked me out. I gave some thought to alerting someone, but since it was from a public tracker, there was no forum to post to. I gave the thought of reporting it to the authorities a second, only to come to the quick conclusion that I sure as heck don't want the authorities knowing I'm DLing porn. I ended up just deleting everything and tried to put it behind me. Now that I'm primarily DLing with private trackers, thankfully, there's an avenue to address these types of issues.

What's coming back to haunt me, though, is,

What if I didn't look through the whole DL? I have a lot of porn that I look at some of the folder and, for whatever reason ;) stop looking at it and archive it for later viewing.

Pre-bittorrent, I probably had 30 gb of porn collected over 15 years. In the last 6 months, I've download (and uploaded) about a terabyte! How could I possibly view every picture/movie in a terabyte? There's just not enough hours in the day.

I guess using private trackers and paying close attention to comments will help allay my concerns, but I have to admit the thought of having child porn in my possession without being aware of it scares the crap out of me.

Any thoughts?

[HelenaP]

Slow down, delete, maybe start over, being more vigilant in watching what you have downloaded before downloading more?
Just some suggestions.
Brainstorming hurts...

[wavecatcher]

maybe you should not download so much at one time. it is just sick to think that child porn is out there and beening shared around

[fangoria]

There used to be a lot of underage porn stuff on emule couple of years ago. Not sure what the situation is these days, but back then you'd download some app or some film and it would be end up being child porn. I'd just delete it. I don't use emule anymore unless I'm looking for some really rare.

Really law enforcement should have some easy way for the average Joe Downloader to alert them to some child porn or other sick materials anonymously without having to risk going to jail for both piracy and possession of said sick material. If you try to alert the law, as of now, you're probably more likely to be a suspect and have your line be monitored for months than lauded for being a good citizen.

[HelenaP]

Sadly true enough.

...
Really law enforcement should have some easy way for the average Joe Downloader to alert them to some child porn or other sick materials anonymously without having to risk going to jail for both piracy and possession of said sick material. If you try to alert the law, as of now, you're probably more likely to be a suspect and have your line be monitored for months than lauded for being a good citizen.

Plus, it's hard to delete from a site when it's reported, as 90% is uploaded by RSS Feeds (non-user)...

[enter8]

maybe you should not download so much at one time.

That's like saying maybe I shouldn't breathe :smile: As we speak, I've got an appointment on the books to double my bandwith. I guess I could be a little more selective.

Child porn in itself is just plain wrong, but to hide child porn amongst the real stuff- to carefully hide it so that it's easy to miss, THAT'S especially twisted. I'm not a violent person but if I ever came across the person that uploaded that torrent, they'd probably be eating some fist.

[HelenaP]

LOL! Want some names?
Maybe you can get to then before I... never mind.

[enter8]

Really law enforcement should have some easy way for the average Joe Downloader to alert them to some child porn or other sick materials anonymously without having to risk going to jail for both piracy and possession of said sick material. If you try to alert the law, as of now, you're probably more likely to be a suspect and have your line be monitored for months than lauded for being a good citizen.

My thoughts exactly. If we rely on the authorities to police filesharing, we're apt to have them policing us. As a community we can't put people in jail, but we can make comments about illegal torrents in private trackers and we can get these scumbags banned. That's certainly a start to being self-policing.

[xanax15mg]

I just saw on msnbc.com that Spain arrested 70 people for downloading child porn. The article says the downloads were from "websites", but considering how tech-tarded most of the media is, that could very well mean file tracking sites. Does anyone know how exactly law enforcement finds these people? Obviously if they are going to some pay website and buying kiddie porn that's an obvious way, but can they track downloads from emule? As the previous poster stated he had found one embedded in a "legit" file it makes me concerned, what happens if unbeknownst to me that file I downloaded on emule or bit torrent public tracker was embedded kiddie porn. Would interpol have a way of kicking in my door? I'm skittish now to even get innocuous crap that no one would care i downloaded like last week's episode of "Top Chef".

[enter8]

Xanax, if they said website, it probably was a plain old web site. If you downloaded something that was fake, found out it was fake and then immediately deleted it, I think you'd be alright legally. My big issue is storing this stuff indefinitely and not being aware of it.

If you're really concerned, stick to private trackers that have plenty of members who comment frequently. A fake torrent will either be removed or denoted in the comments area pretty darn quickly on most private sites.

Btw, just as a side note, Top Chef airs on Bravo, which happens to owned by NBC Universal. NBC is pretty notorious for policing their work. I, myself have an infringement email from them for Battlestar Galactica. I'd be careful about DLing any NBC/NBC owned shows- especially publicly and especially during the time right after they air (which is when they're being watched the closest).

[qwnpr]

xanax15mg: I think none of them were casual downloaders, police released images of one of the suspect's home, with hundreds of CD spindles allegedly full of child porn. I didn't hear this case's specifics, but in other massive child porn related arrests which recently occurred in Spain also, suspects were from a closed board and from the eMule network. Never heard of any arrests due to BitTorrent.

I took a "Tech Law" course in my Uni (I'm Spanish) given by a judge last semester. I recall someone asking about misleading filenames which were actually child porn, and he said that they usually prosecute only massive downloaders, not casual ones.

[zite]

I wonder if you have child porn on your computer but haven't looked at if if that's still illegal. There should be pretty definitive proof that you haven't, with last accessed / modified dates. Somehow though I doubt our justice system would be that savvy.

I used savvy in normal conversation +1 pirate points.

[enter8]

I used savvy in normal conversation +1 pirate points.

LOL.

Aye, but ye won't fullfill yer true sparrowism until ye use the term as a verb rather than an adjective.

Savvy?

[Mr. T]

If you downloaded something that was fake, found out it was fake and then immediately deleted it, I think you'd be alright legally.

Nope.

It will vary depending on where you live, but if you are a resident of North America criminal charges arise on the point of access. If it was ever on your hard-drive, regardless of circumstance, you have broken the law and should turn yourself in for possession of child pron.

[charlesmelissa]

This sounds like a good place to mention that there is an organization that deals with this issue. It is Cyberangels. the URL is www.cyberangels.org/
I have a friend that is a member and was involved in one of the largest kiddie porn stings. If anyone is interested in volunteering some time helping keep children safe, it is a great place to visit.

[enter8]

Cyberangels, huh? That's good to know.

[cgfiend]

Sorry for the late addition.

In response to the original poster... The best thing you could do is limit your consumption of adult pictures. To be honest, there's really no reason to keep thousands of pictures you'll probably never look at. I used to download thousands of pics from newsgroups but eventually realized that it's a waste to save so many pics. I ran into the same problem with newsgroups and had to block pic downloads from certain users, but it's a constant and losing battle.

I recently started getting into web-based imageboards (example: iichan.net) but I found out quickly that the most perverse people frequent them. I've run across cp on 4chan.org and evilchan.com repeatedly, among the more prominent adult content. I love imageboards because of the randomness of them, but what I saw posted there had me seriously concerned. Like you I felt like reporting the sites, but I'd been browsing them for weeks, so I decided the best thing to do was not go back to the sites and try to find others that I can enjoy, like iichan.net for instance. It's getting to the point where, if you're searching for adult pics, you end up finding cp wherever you go.

I don't have an answer for you, but I've decided for myself the best way to go is to be frugal and careful.