Plan is to impose a “giant filter…(to) continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works,” that some form of censorship is okay. Once it’s established the entertainment industry would be able to demand additional filtering criteria, i.e. copyrighted material.
The entertainment industry is plotting a diabolical new tactic in the war against illegal file-sharing that even I must admit is ingenious. It involves using child pornography as a pretext for filtering the Internet.
“Child pornography is great,” International Federation of the Phonographic Industry lawyer Johan Schlüter told an audience recently a at Stockholm, Sweden seminar titled “Sweden — A Safe Haven for Pirates?”.
”It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file-sharing sites.”
Exactly. It’s the same sort of tactic it used in the past to convince NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to muscle ISPs into discontinuing free Usenet access in order to “shut down major sources of online child pornography.”
“I applaud Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint for working with my office to address this growing problem,” he said at the time. “These companies are leading the industry and instituting new and innovative ways to stop their service from being used by people looking to distribute and access child pornography. I call on all ISPs to follow their example and help deter the spread of online child porn.”
Never mind that it had little effect on the problem or that criminals simply switched to alternative methods. The truth didn’t seem to matter so as long as it gave Cuomo a chance to sound tough on crime. Child porn is something everybody hates, and it gives politicians an easy chance at favorable press and copyright holders a toehold on filtering the Internet.
”One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA,” continued Schlüter, apparently with a wide grin and sense of pride. “We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand.”
Christian Engström, Member of the European Parliament for Piratpartiet, Sweden, elected to the body after an outpouring of support from the country’s youth following the conviction of the Pirate Bay, was one of three pirates in attendance at the seminar, and describes the tactic best.
“Start with child porn, which everybody agrees is revolting, and find some politicians who want to appear like they are doing something. Never mind that the blocking as such is ridiculously easy to circumvent in less than 10 seconds. The purpose at this stage is only to get the politicians and the general public to accept the principle that censorship in the form of ”filters” is okay,” he says. “Once that principle has been established, it is easy to extend it to other areas, such as illegal file-sharing. And once censorship of the Internet has been accepted in principle, they can start looking at ways to make it more technically difficult to circumvent.”
He mentions how the tactic was already tested out years ago against the Pirate Bay. Back in 2007 the IFPI tried to get the BitTorrent tracker site included in a child porn blacklist maintained by police. The effort failed, but it was a shocking harbinger of things to come.
“If the police would find anything wrong – shouldn’t they first contact us, then bring us in for questioning regarding the content, ask for our help or bring us to court for our wrongdoings?”
Not once did authorities try to contact the Pirate Bay to verify the claims nor did they even have proof that child porn was available on the site.
“The big film and record companies want censorship of the net, and they are perfectly willing to cynically use child porn as an excuse to get it,” continues Engström.
Child porn has also been used as a pretext for filtering in Australia where that country’s Broadband Minister, Stephen Conroy, cited it as the reason for a voluntary Internet filtering regime. It quickly became mandatory and morphed to include P2P, video games, gambling, and other “inappropriate content.” It’s a filtering proposal that critics pointed out, and much to the delight of despots everywhere, would be even “stricter than Iran.”
In short, it’s up to us to keep politicians honest and informed about any efforts to filter the Internet. The public may not have the financial resources of multinational entertainment corporations, but they do have a far more powerful weapon – their vote. Warn politicians that you’re watching and educate friends and family members before it’s too late. Perhaps even join a local Pirate Party.
Either way, act before it’s too late.
Stay tuned.
Related Stories
- RIAA Uses Net Neutrality to Lump Together Fight Against P2P, Child Porn
- Trade Group Fights Child Porn On Peer-To-Peer Networks
- Porn Anti-Piracy Group Gives Up on File-Sharers, Targets P2P Sites Instead
- Aussie Christian Group Demands Mandatory Porn Filtering
- Music Biz Uses Net Neutrality to Equate P2P with Child Porn – Again
piracy is surely a crime. but i dont really understand about child porn part.. what does it mean ?
There’s a similar parallel regarding Free Speech and ‘hate speech’. Anybody who wants to quash free speech just points to Nazis or other hate groups and says “Nazis want free speech, are YOU a Nazi?” And this is the same goddamn thing with a different coat of paint.
Let’s not forget the real reason governments worldwide are pushing for this, and that is to control information. I agree that once it’s accepted, then political dissent and basically anything that is deemed “threatening” or “offensive” will be blocked. Just look at the ridiculous “No Fly” list, over a million “terrorists” really?
Everyone knows there will always be ways to circumvent filtering, this is designed for the masses, the same “idol watching” uniformed public will hear “Child Porn” and lay right down.
The Entertainment industry is just making it easier to implement because they sweeten the pot for state a lower tier politicians to get on board.
It’s hard to watch how easily people give away their freedoms.
Personally, the legal part that irks me is that the IFPI is basically trying to put file-sharing in the same league as child pornography. I am very hard pressed to find any legal precedent that says so.
Child pornography is a criminal issue. It is, in most countries I am aware of, illegal to manufacture, acquire, collect, distribute, etc. It hurts pretty much everyone involved.
File-sharing, on the other hand, is a civil issue. There are studies that show that file-sharing is either a break even proposition to content creators or a profitable proposition for content creators in the simple fact alone that the cost of marketting is zilch. In fact, there are rumours that Viacom used a marketting firm to illegally post copyrighted material for marketting purposes, then passed the blame on YouTube and suing them for distribution afterwards. That hasn’t been confirmed, however, in my mind, as a content producer, it’s hard not to believe it for a big corporation like that.
While copyright holders say file-sharing is a vitcimless crime, I would argue that there will be plenty of victims the moment the internet is filtered. That includes content creators and distributors who would otherwise contribute to the economy. Look at the study I reported on earlier. Fair use contributes trillions to the US economy alone. What content producers are proposing through anti-circumvention laws and filtering schemes is tripping away that mountain of money that would otherwise be a net benefit to society. They can think it’s helping themselves, but it’s not. In a filtered internet, everyone loses.
just like 90′s with freon verses the ozone layer.
concerned parents trying to get the stuff banned because their kids abuse it as a drug to get high (imagine that a child cracks open an air conditioner or refrigerator and sniffs the gas)
or drug enforcement community wanting it banned to reduce the meth labs.
the government refuses to ban it so they turn to the environmental science community to do fake research to say it destroys the ozone layer so they can get it banned and have another reason to raid a meth lab or stop someone from sniffing it.
”It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file-sharing sites.”
It is mindboggling to me that someone would basically admit in public no less that they don’t really care about cp, that it’s just a means to an end to kill file sharing. To actually come out and admit it like that and there is NO MASS OUTRAGE just blows my mind.
Just wait till cafes and restaurants start eliminating public access Wi-Fi in the UK per the DEA. If that won’t anger people nothing will.
The pirate bay warned of this a while back, and went so far as to refuse the removal of a website that defended child pornography. They understand that by creating a society in which an icon is automatically evil, that icon can be used to achieve other evils without proper discourse. We are also going to see some stupid debates where debating against a filter is considered supporting child pornography. What we are seeing is just the start, there is a stupid cloud looming just around the corner.
Didn’t Australia have a similer debate to this a year or two ago?
Yep, and that’s the thing. Conroy in Australia has already tried to demonize his critics as defenders of child pornography.
Darn, you beat me to this one.
In my personal opinion, this is an outrage. The industry has stooped to suing children and dead people. They stooped to changing laws for the worse in the US, they’ve stooped to the level of being a part of an international conspiracy through ACTA and CETA which takes backdoor negotiations to a whole new level. Now, they’ve sunk to a brand new low by applauding the existence of something so disturbing, dusgusting and outright immoral of applauding the existence of child pornography. The IFPI has never stooped to this level in my opinion and, frankly, I don’t think they can get much lower than this.
I think the person who applauded child pronography should resign their commission for making these comments. There is no pre-text that would support the abilitiy to call child pornography “great” under any circumstance. This person is the very definition of sick.