Finally, someone who agrees with me. Earlier last week, NY Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, urged ISPs to block Usenet Newsgroup access to take a stance against the distribution of illegal child porn. I fundamentally disagree with the position that Cuomo has taken and is a sad attempt to help bolster his political career.
Let me remind folks that Child Pornography isn’t primarily distributed via newsgroups. Despite the fact that Usenet usage is isolated to technology evangelists, it’s not a very attractive distribution mechanism. From my experience in detecting people who exploit children, they use direct IM, e-mail and P2P file sharing.
The cliche of “protecting the kids” can be extended to a variety of means. For example, speed limits, Internet access, music, movies, television, etc.
I decided to examine the dark side of my favorite ISP’s Chat Rooms. Let’s see how many rooms suggest* child exploitation and endangerment. These AOL member-created Chat rooms are created by users on their own accord. Of course, this doesn’t count the number of private chat rooms that have potentially harmful context:
Regardless, blocking or disabling access to a medium — such as Newsgroups or Chat Rooms — isn’t the answer. ISPs shouldn’t alienate Child Molesters, ideally they should want to catch them in the act and send the Feds to kick down their door and charge them.
Even though I know the process as to how these Chat Room names are moderated for AOL, I am not in a position to disclose it. (Sorry.)
The correct way to stand “against” child pornography is to moderate their activity and work proactively with law enforcement to close the loop against illegal and unsafe activity. In this context of moderation, I don’t mean having hosts sit in the Chat Room, I mean stealthily, silently watch the activity.
A plausible argument might be, “What about users’ privacy?” I rebuttal that with the implication that Chat Rooms (and other public community devices on the Web) are inherently public and it is the right (and reasonable expectation) of the provider to monitor such activity.
AOL isn’t alone, they are just one of many players in the game against child pornographers. Yahoo caved in from the potential legal liability and PR damage and shut down their member-created Chats. Since that change in 2005, Yahoo’s chats are filled with sexual innuendo, misogyny and other distasteful topics. (Not that Internet user’s behavior has been getting any better on the Internet, either.)
I validate my point with this excerpt from Techdirt:
Those who still produce and make use of child porn will still get it from other sources — but it will be more underground, making it more difficult for authorities to track down. Also, this sets an awful precedent in that the ISPs can point out that it’s ok for them to block “objectionable” content where they get to define what’s objectionable without any review. For those folks who support network neutrality, this is highly questionable, because it’s clearly going against the basic principles of network neutrality — but in a way no one will protest because they don’t want to be seen as siding with child pornographers. But the truth is this “stand” against child pornography won’t do anything to stop child pornographers other than making them harder to track down
So I ask again, how does shutting down alt.* newsgroups prevent child pornography? If anything, it will just make the criminals become less detectable and will encourage less enforceable means to distribute illegal images over the Web.
Oh, and how much do you want to bet those chat rooms on AOL are safe?
* Although I have not necessarily proven the context, these types of Chat Room are known to discuss illegal topics such as child pornography, accounts of rape/incest and even promote the topics of “trading” children for the use of child exploitation.