[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
STUMBLING ONTO SMUT: THE ALARMING EASE OF ACCESS TO PORNOGRAPHY ON
PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 13, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-8
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
87-066 WASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800
Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Columbia
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas CHRIS BELL, Texas
WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota ------
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Peter Sirh, Staff Director
Melissa Wojciak, Deputy Staff Director
Randy Kaplan, Senior Counsel/Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Philip M. Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on March 13, 2003................................... 1
Statement of:
Koontz, Linda, Director, Information Management Issues, U.S.
General Accounting Office; John M. Netherland, Acting
Director, CyberSmuggling Center, Bureau of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security; Randy
Saaf, president, MediaDefender, Inc.; Daniel Rung, chief
executive officer, Grokster, Ltd.; and Patricia Greenfield,
department of psychology, University of California at Los
Angeles.................................................... 25
Shelley, Mistress, ninth grade, and Master Rob, tenth grade.. 12
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Davis, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Virginia, prepared statement of......................... 3
Greenfield, Patricia, department of psychology, University of
California at Los Angeles, prepared statement of........... 70
Koontz, Linda, Director, Information Management Issues, U.S.
General Accounting Office, prepared statement of........... 27
Netherland, John M., Acting Director, CyberSmuggling Center,
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department
of Homeland Security, prepared statement of................ 51
Rob, Master, tenth grade, prepared statement of.............. 18
Rung, Daniel, chief executive officer, Grokster, Ltd.,
prepared statement of...................................... 64
Saaf, Randy, president, MediaDefender, Inc., prepared
statement of............................................... 58
Shelley, Mistress, ninth grade, prepared statement of........ 14
Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California:
Charts from the Internet................................. 22
Prepared statement of.................................... 9
STUMBLING ONTO SMUT: THE ALARMING EASE OF ACCESS TO PORNOGRAPHY ON
PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2003
House of Representatives,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis (chairman
of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tom Davis, Waxman, Janklow,
Miller, McHugh, Putnam, Tierney, Shays, Turner, Ruppersberger,
Duncan, Kucinich, Cummings, Maloney, and Van Hollen.
Staff present: Peter Sirh, staff director; Melissa Wojciak,
deputy staff director; Keith Ausbrook, chief counsel; Randall
Kaplan, counsel; David Marin, director of communications; Scott
Kopple, deputy director of communications; Drew Crockett,
professional staff member; Teresa Austin, chief clerk; Joshua
E. Gillespie, deputy clerk; Nancy Scola and David McMillen,
minority professional staff members; and Jean Gosa, minority
assistant clerk.
Chairman Tom Davis. Good morning, a quorum being present,
the Committee on Government Reform will come to order. We are
here today to examine a growing problem for parents across the
country: the ease with which children can access pornography,
including child pornography, through file sharing programs on
peer-to-peer computer networks.
Peer-to-peer networks are Internet programs that allow
users to access each other's computer files. Typically, people
use these programs to share music, images, and video.
This technology is booming in popularity. At any given
time, millions of people around the world are sharing their
files. Napster, one of the first file sharing programs, had 1.6
million people exchanging music files, before being shut down
by court order because of copyright violations.
Newer file sharing programs have become even more popular.
KaZaA, one of the more popular networks, has been downloaded
more than 199 million times, with 4 million users searching and
sharing files at any given time.
Unlike Napster, these newer programs allow users to
download videos and pictures, in addition to music files, and
they do not operate through central servers. Without a central
on-line hub acting as a filter, children can receive images and
solicitations that normally would be blocked. In addition, the
programs are easy to install, and the electronic files can be
downloaded free of charge.
This leads us to the problem we are here to examine today.
These networks have become an increasingly popular mechanism
for the trafficking of very graphic pornography, including
child pornography. We will hear startling testimony today about
this problem.
At the request of Congressman Waxman and myself, the
General Accounting Office conducted a study which found that
child pornography is easily accessible on peer-to-peer
networks.
Searches for child pornography by the GAO and the Customers
Services on file sharing programs produced hundreds of
pornographic images, more than half of which was child
pornography and graphic adult pornography.
Also, research performed by MediaDefender, another of our
witnesses, found that nearly 6 million pornography files were
available for downloading on one popular peer-to-peer network
in a recent 2-day period.
These findings are very disturbing, especially because file
sharing programs are becoming increasingly popular with kids.
Research has shown that more than 40 percent of the people who
download files from file sharing programs are under the age of
18; and many of these pornographic images are appearing on our
children's computer screens--whether they ask for it or not.
Seemingly innocent searches for files using the names of
popular cartoon characters, singers, and actors produce
thousands of graphic pornographic imagines, including child
pornography.
I want to commend Congressman Waxman for bringing this
important issue to our attention. We need to alert parents to
this problem and discuss what they and we can do about it.
Research performed by the committee staff has found that many
of the tools available to parents to prevent access to
pornography on peer-to-peer networks are ineffective. Many of
the filtering devices within file sharing programs have
limitations, as well.
So what is a parent to do? The current dynamic leaves
parents in an untenable position; either watch over your
child's shoulder every second while he or she is at the
computer, or deny them use, or run the risk of exposure to this
disgraceful material.
The alarming ease of inadvertent, unsolicited access to
pornography on these networks threatens our children, period.
We are not talking about bad language or simple bad taste. We
are talking about ugly, graphic imagines that have no place in
our homes, and that does not even include the child pornography
that is just plain illegal.
Today we will be releasing two reports: one by the General
Accounting Office and another committee staff report. These
reports detail the problems of pornography on peer-to-peer
networks and evaluate the effectiveness of parental control
devices. I would like to thank all of our witnesses for
appearing today, and I look forward to their testimony.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.003
Chairman Tom Davis. I would now like to yield to Mr. Waxman
for an opening statement. I understand that, Mr. Waxman, at the
conclusion of our first set of witnesses, is going to walk us
through a demonstration of how a file sharing program works,
and how easy it is to access pornography using these programs.
Mr. Waxman, thank you very much.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; I am pleased to join
with you in this hearing today to draw attention to Internet
technology that gives kids easy access to incredibly graphic
pornography.
I am on the dias because I am a Congressman, but I do not
want to speak as a public official. I want to speak as a parent
and a grandparent. I want to speak about how difficult it is to
raise a child today, and to raise some of these new issues that
families must begin to consider.
We have two reports that we are issuing today on Internet
file sharing programs: one from the General Accounting Office,
and the other was prepared by our investigative staff.
What is in these reports should concern every parent in
America. There is a new technology. It is widely available, and
it allows teenagers to download ``x'' rated videos directly
into their home computers. The most popular of these programs
is KaZaA, which has been downloaded nearly 200 million times.
Other popular programs include Morpheus, BearShare, and
Grokster. At any given time, there are millions of teenagers
between the ages of 12 and 18 using these programs.
Now most adults I have talked to have never even heard of
any of these file sharing programs. I certainly had never heard
about it before it was brought to my attention by Robbie
Barnett, whose father is the counsel on the Democratic side of
this committee. He is our chief counsel of the Democratic side
of the Government Reform Committee.
Robbie told his father about these Web sites, and I am
pleased that Robbie is here to testify about it, before all of
us. I am also pleased and want to welcome our chairman's
daughter, Shelley, who is also going to be talking about this
issue.
We are going to hear from both of them about how young
people are being exposed to pornography that is being foisted
upon them, as they go on to these file sharing sites.
I know that many people hear about these issues with regard
to the entertainment industry, because they threaten
copyrights, and I certainly care a lot about that issue,
representing Hollywood.
But this hearing today is not about that issue. It is not
about recording company profits or freedom on the Internet. It
is about something more basic: how to raise children safely in
today's digital age.
We ask the company, MediaDefender, to assess how much
pornography is available to teenagers when they log on the
Internet with KaZaA or other file sharing programs and what we
learned was astounding. At any given time, as the chairman also
mentioned, there are 6 million pornographic files available to
kids to download. All of these files can be downloaded
completely free of charge, directly to any computer that is
connected to the Internet.
And if your child has access to a broadband connection, the
most hard care, triple-x videos imaginable can be downloaded in
just a few minutes.
Imagine if there was a library that held 6 million
pornographic videos and magazines. No parent would allow their
children to wander at will through its collections. But this is
exactly what can happen every day, in millions of homes across
American. Whenever a tech-savvy teenager logs on to programs
like KaZaA, he or she has access to millions of hardcore
pornographic files.
But it is even worse than this. As GAO has pointed out in
their report, kids will be bombarded with pornography, even if
they are not looking for it. GAO did searches for popular
entertainment figures, like Britney Spears and the Olsen twins;
and for cartoon characters like Pokemon.
What they found was that more than half of the files they
retried were pornographic. In fact, they even retried files
that contained illegal child pornography.
Now parents may think they are doing something about this
problem, when they put in these parental control software
programs, like Net Nanny or CyberPatrol. They think they can
protect their children from this pornography.
But our investigation also found that while these programs
might work to keep kids from pornography on the worldwide Web;
they do not work in the same way for file sharing programs.
There are some programs that can be configured, after some
effort, to block access to all file sharing programs.
But there is really nothing that works effectively in
filtering out pornographic files, once a child has access to
these programs.
Now as legislators, we are always thinking about passing
the law. But I am not sure there is a legislative solution to
this program.
In this case, parental awareness, parental involvement
matter more than legislation. Parents need to better understand
these file sharing programs, and know if their kids are using
them. Parents need to talk to their children about what to do
when they come across this pornography. In short, we have to
close the on-line generation gap.
To help parents meet this challenge, Chairman Davis and I
have put together some straight-forward recommendations that we
will be distributing today. These recommendations will also be
available on our Web site.
I want to make clear that technical innovation on the
Internet is tremendously important. When we discuss problems
and challenges with computers in the Internet, we need to keep
in mind that these technologies afford us many opportunities,
and can be a great research to our children.
We should be aware that in trying to help children deal
with the challenges of our times, we must not stifle the sort
of innovations that have made the Internet and computers such
powerful tools. But we also must make sure that the experiences
on the Internet are safe ones.
I thank Chairman Davis for holding this hearing. It is an
important one to get this issue out to people who otherwise
might not know about it, which is probably the case for 90
percent of the parents in this country.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.005
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Waxman, thank you very much; and
thank you very much for your leadership on this.
Are there any other opening statements? Mr. Janklow.
Mr. Janklow. Mr. Chairman, thank you very, very much for
convening this particular hearing. Mr. Chairman, in my previous
capacity as Governor of South Dakota, we convened the first
Statewide conference in the Nation, back in 2001, to deal with
this issue.
Let me, if I can, give you some additional statistics to
add to what it is; and material that you and Mr. Waxman so
graciously have provided.
We all know that if you go to whitehouse.com, you are going
to get the wrong thing. You are going to get a pornography
site. Parents cannot deal with this. Parents cannot fix this.
These are accidental things.
If you go to playstation.com, you are going to get a kids'
station. If you make a mistake and hit an ``m'' instead of an
``n''. You are going to go a pornographic site.
So if you to crazyhorse.org, you are going to get the Crazy
Horse memorial. If you go to crazyhorse.com, you are going to
get a pornographic site.
These pornographic sites have cookies in them, which then
make it so that you cannot get them off your screen. The more
you try and delete them, they more they are added to the
scenery.
As a matter of fact, back in 2001, the Federal Trade
Commission, in 2 weeks, shut down 5,500 sites that were called
copycat sites, where people were able to mistakenly get onto
these things.
You talk about the cartoon network. If you hit
cartoonnetwork.com and make a mistake in the spelling, there
are 15 different derivatives of that, that will give you a
pornographic site for children that they cannot get off of
their computers.
There are 41 variations of Britney Spears' spelling. Only
the accurate spelling of Britney Spears will get you into a
good site. All the rest of them will get you into a
pornographic site, that children will get their hands on.
If you talk about how many sites there are, in 2001,
according to google.com, there were 1.4 billion registered
domains; 168 million, approximately 12 percent were
pornographic sites; 12 percent of 1.4 billionsites. That is
about 168 million pornographic sites in the world for children.
According to a study done by the University of New
Hampshire of students age 10 to 17, 20 percent of these
students that were surveyed by the University of New Hampshire,
these students had received unwanted sexual solicitations
during the previous year.
Three percent had been actually asked to meet off line, had
been called on the telephone, or sent money or gifts by a male,
which are called aggressive solicitations.
Also, according to that survey, 97 percent of the
solicitors were strangers; but something more important, only
10 percent of the students indicated that they had ever told
their parents or teachers about having been contacted on these
sites.
In addition to that, the sexual solicitations, one of the
things we have to recognize, we all argue about the first
amendment. Seventy percent of these solicitations of these
students, according to the University of New Hampshire's
survey, were done at home. They were not done in school and
they were not done in libraries.
But I also submit, Mr. Chairman, the first amendment was
never written to take care of predators. It was never written
to allow anybody to prey on our children.
Also, if you look at what we need to do, we need to do
something, in a legislative sense, to get these people away
from computers, to scoop them off the street. Where we have
mountain lions that attack people, where we have grizzly bears
that attack people, we deal with them.
These predators are worse than an animal. An animal will
just kill you. These predators will prey on people and destroy
them as human beings.
So Mr. Chairman, I thank you for convening this meeting.
This is something that is incredibly important, and it is a far
bigger problem than any of us can imagine. You stumble onto
these sites. You cannot get off of them.
Once children start being subjected to these kinds of
things, it is a very, very quick maneuver to get them to the
point where they continue moving forward with it. Thank you
very much.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much; well, if there are
no other statements, will move to our first panel of witnesses.
We have Shelley, a 9th grader, and Robert, a 10th grader, who
will discuss their experiences with these file sharing
programs.
It is the committee's policy, the ladies go first, Robert;
so Shelley?
STATEMENT OF MISTRESS SHELLEY, NINTH GRADE, AND MASTER ROB,
TENTH GRADE
Mistress Shelley. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Waxman, and
members of the committee, thank you for allowing me to be here
today to discuss problems related with Internet file sharing
programs.
I am a 15 year old ninth grader from Falls Church, VA. Kids
my age across the country are using file sharing programs to
retrieve a variety of items. I, personally, have many friends
who use programs like KaZaA and Grokster.
These programs are easily accessible and not complicated.
All you do is log onto the Internet, go to the program Web
site, and download the program, which does not take very long.
Once you have the program on your computer, it is very
simple to search and share files; and the file sharing is free
of charge and downloads in a matter of seconds.
Many of my friends use programs like KaZaA. When they
search for materials by specific singers or actors, they are
often surprised with their results. For example, when you type
in Britney Spears, some files with her name come up. However,
some of the file names that come up contain pornographic
language; language that I would rather not repeat before the
committee.
The vast majority of files that appear have pornographic
language and, if downloaded, become visuals. Most of the
descriptions suggest that the file is not related to the
search, Britney Spears, at all.
My friends are very uncomfortable and apprehensive about
using these programs. They can be very scary. Minimal effort is
required to find this kind of pornography. Among teenagers and
kids, this is a widespread situation.
Although this is a big problem for kids my age, my main
concern is for the younger children. You have to work very,
very hard not to get pornography when you use these programs.
Without proper parental supervision, young kids can be exposed
to this harmful material at a very young age.
I thank you for allowing me to give my views on this very
important topic, and hope you take my words into consideration,
thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mistress Shelley follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.008
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Rob, thanks for being with us.
Master Rob. Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chairman,
Congressman Waxman, and the rest of the Members here today. I
am here to share with you a kids' perspective on file sharing
programs.
In the past few years, the popularity of file sharing
programs has increased dramatically. A major group of users
consists of high school students, such as myself, and it is not
hard to see why.
Rather than spending $16, $18, or even $20 on a CD, any
teenager with access to the Internet can type in a few words
and download any song, free of charge. This simple action saves
both time and money. Unfortunately, there are many problems
with these file sharing programs.
I know that record companies worry about copyright issues,
but most kids are not too concerned about that. A real problem,
though, is the fact that file sharing programs provide easy
access to illegal pornography.
Even worse, much of this pornography is deceptively shared
under the names of popular singers or actors. A child searching
for a song or a movie is likely to stumble upon imagines or
videos of a pornographic nature. Most people using file sharing
programs have probably stumbled upon pornographic files at one
time or another.
Even if your computer has a parental control program
installed, it probably will not work. For the most part, file
sharing programs go unnoticed, both by parental control
programs and by parents themselves.
Most kids are aware of these problems, and have learned to
deal with them by filtering their searches or skipping over
pornographic material. However, many parents do not realize the
prevalence of pornography on file sharing programs, and are
understandably surprised when they learn that their teenager
may have been exposed to inappropriate material.
It is important that we bring this issue into the public
conscience, so that parents can discuss these issues with their
teenagers. In order to protect teens from viewing illicit
material, the ease of access to pornography on file sharing
networks must be addressed; thank you.
[The prepared statement of Master Rob follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.009
Chairman Tom Davis. Well, thank you very much. I know you
are both eager to get back to school. [Laughter.]
Let me just ask each of you, do you think more parental
supervision is needed when kids are using these services?
Mistress Shelley. Yes, I do. Parents need to be aware and
more involved with their child's use of the Internet,
especially file sharing software.
Chairman Tom Davis. Rob.
Master Rob. I do. It is important that parents are aware of
this problem, and that they watch their kids, to make sure that
their kids are not looking at anything they should not be
looking at.
Chairman Tom Davis. Well, let me just say for the record, I
just only became aware of the nature of the seriousness of this
as we were preparing for this hearing. I would just say, as a
concerned parent, I want to do everything I can to remove the
file sharing from computers that our kids use.
This is really very alarming to me, as a parent who thought
he was tech-savvy on this kind of thing, to see how far this
has gone.
Mr. Waxman, do you have some questions?
Mr. Waxman. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you
both for your testimony. We often hear from witnesses who have
represented different organizations or trade associations or
economic interests. They come in with their prepared testimony,
screened by their lawyers and very carefully calculated, and
they get some legislation across.
But the two of you have given us a perspective that we do
not usually see, and that is from two young people, who know
more about using the Internet than most adults.
Let me just ask you a technical question, because parents
get these screening mechanisms to stop their kids from going on
certain Internet sites.
What is the difference between the Internet site and file
sharing? Will those filters not stop any transmission of
pornography to a young person on the Internet? Rob, do you want
to talk about that?
Master Rob. Well, the filters are designed to stop the
Internet sites. Since this problem on file sharing programs is
relatively new and they have not been around for too long, the
programs probably are not designed to handle these kind of
programs.
Mr. Waxman. So if a parent bought software to put in to
block their kids from getting any pornography off an Internet
site; for instance, our colleague, Mr. Janklow, went to a
number of Internet sites that might lead to pornography; so
parents could block those.
But if the kids were using file sharing to get music, they
get bombarded with pornography and that is not blocked. Is that
what you are telling us?
Master Rob. Yes, most programs do not block these file
sharing programs. I am sure some do, but not all of them.
Mr. Waxman. Shelley, most of us have never heard about this
problem. I did recently, but for most of us, it has been very,
very recent.
Do most of your friends, most of the kids in school, know
about all of this?
Mistress Shelley. Yes, I was one of the last actually, of
my friends, to know about this. All my friends have been doing
it for quite some time. [Laughter.]
Mr. Waxman. And did you tell your parents immediately?
[Laughter.]
Chairman Tom Davis. I think it was last night. I think I
can say that, because I was telling her about the hearing.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Waxman. Well, I think it is important for parents to
know. They think they know a lot, but kids know things that we
never even imagined, and that is why we have to, as parents,
and in my case, grandparent, talk to our youngsters about what
is going on; what is new; and try to search what they are being
exposed to that we never would have even imagined, such a short
time ago.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you both of you for
being here.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
I know they need to get back, but Mr. Shays, I know you
wanted to ask one quick question.
Mr. Shays. Yes, I have just a very quick question.
I voted against, and I probably made a mistake, the whole
issue of the V-chip, as it related to TV. This is designed so
that parents can make sure their kids do not watch certain TV
programs. But my logic was that the parent had to ask the child
how to set the TV, so that the kid could not watch it.
I want to ask you, Shelley, do you think that young people
know the Internet and know tech issues better than their
parents?
Mistress Shelley. Yes. [Laughter.]
Definitely; I am always helping my mom or dad with the
computer. So if there was a program that they had to set up for
their children, their children would be the ones setting it up,
in most cases.
Chairman Tom Davis. Chris, we are going somewhere I do not
think we need to go. [Laughter.]
Mr. Shays. Thank you; I have no more questions.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you; we are going to do a
demonstration now with Mr. Waxman, and I am going to ask the
witnesses to leave the room. But let me just say to both of
you, thank you very much. You have contributed a lot to our
understanding of this; thank you very much.
[Applause.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Waxman.
Mr. Waxman. Well, Mr. Chairman, as part of helping parents
learn more about these programs, we have arranged for a
demonstration of how these programs work.
Before we start this demonstration, I want to warn the
members and the audience that even the names of the files can
contain offensive and pornographic images.
We are going to show the unredacted names on the screens in
the room, because that is what our children are actually
seeing. But we also have posters up that display the results in
a redacted form, for those who find this less offensive.
So without viewing the sites themselves, let us just see
what kids see when they have this pornography pushed upon them.
Ms. Scola. Thank you, Chairman Davis and Congressman
Waxman. I am going to be showing you today how easy it is to
download these file sharing programs and to use them. The most
popular of these programs is KaZaA, and I will be downloading
that program.
You can just go to any Internet browser, as long as you
have an Internet connection set up. Go to a search engine and
type in KaZaA. The first site pops up. Click on it. That brings
you to the KaZaA Web site. Click on download now. This is free
software. It requires no personal information.
Since we are on a dial-up connection here today, I am going
to skip over the actual download part. It would take too long.
Once the software is installed on your desktop, you double
click. That brings up a search field. You type in, let us say,
Britney Spears, and it will search for images of Britney
Spears. Veryquickly, this is what you get.
I know it is difficult to see, so we did some searches
yesterday. I am going to zoom in on the results. These are the
first several results you get for searching for Britney Spears.
If you search for Olsen twins, teenage actresses, this is
what you get; and if you search for Pokemon, the cartoon
character, this is what you get.
Chairman Tom Davis. The graphics are far worse, I assume.
The graphics then that you get when you download are far worse,
the language.
Ms. Scola. Yes.
Mr. Waxman. Well, Mr. Chairman, what we see is a menu then
offered that, just looking at the titles of the menu, is pretty
disgusting, in and of itself. But if you then clicked on any of
these items, kids would immediately be led to a pornographic
site.
I want to thank Nancy Scola, who is a professional staff
member from the committee, who has worked on this investigation
and other investigations for her presentation to us. It
illustrates how simple it is, and how readily available it is
for kids who might admire Britney Spears to be led to be
confronted with a pretty raw kind of pornography.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.012
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Waxman, let me also say, my
understanding, in talking to some of the kids that use this is,
some of the things that appear innocuous, in terms of their
description when you download them are, in fact, way over the
line. There is no warning whatsoever. They think they are
downloading something that is decent and it is not; so thank
you very much.
Let me move to our second panel now. I would like to thank
our witnesses for appearing today. We have Linda Koontz from
the General Accounting Office; John Netherland, from the
Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement; Randy Saaf, of MediaDefender; Daniel Rung
from the file sharing company, Grokster; and Dr. Patricia
Greenfield from UCLA's Department of Psychology.
It is the policy of the committee that all witnesses be
sworn before they testify. If you will just stand with me and
raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you all for being here with us
today. In order to allow time for more questions and
discussion, if you could limit your testimony to 5 minutes.
Your written statements are going to be in the record.
I think, for the most part, we have read the statements,
and we already have some questions in mind. But it would be
helpful, I think, for everybody to take about 5 minutes and sum
up.
You have a light there in front that when the green is on,
you keep going; when it is orange, that means you have a minute
to sum up; and when it is red, your 5 minutes are up, if you
could try to sum up. That way, we can get through it quickly
and get to the questions.
Thank you very much, and let us start with Ms. Koontz.
Thank you very much for being here.
STATEMENTS OF LINDA KOONTZ, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; JOHN M. NETHERLAND,
ACTING DIRECTOR, CYBERSMUGGLING CENTER, BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION
AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; RANDY
SAAF, PRESIDENT, MEDIADEFENDER, INC.; DANIEL RUNG, CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, GROKSTER, LTD.; AND PATRICIA GREENFIELD,
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS
ANGELES
Ms. Koontz. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank
you very much for having us here to discuss the results of our
work on the availability of child pornography on peer-to-peer
networks. We have provided the results of our work to you today
in a report that is being released.
To summarize, I would like to provide a little more
background on peer-to-peer networks, and also discuss the ease
of access to child pornography and peer-to-peer networks; the
risk of inadvertent exposure of juvenile users to pornography;
including child pornography on these networks; and the extent
of Federal law enforcement resources available for this effort.
To build a little bit on what we have discussed earlier,
our first chart shows the two main types of peer-to-peer
networks. On the left, it shows the centralized network, where
there is a central server or broker that maintains a directory
of all the shared files that the users have, and directs
traffic between those users.
The centralized model was employed by Napster, which was
the original peer-to-peer network. Because much of the material
traded on that network was copyrighted, Napster, as the broker
of these exchanges, was vulnerable to legal challenge, and this
eventually led to their demise late last year.
On the right side of the chart, we had the de-centralized
model, which is what the most popular peer-to-peer networks are
now using. In this model, the users are enabled to directly
locate each other and interact.
On our next slide, we found that child pornography, as well
as other types of pornography, are widely available and
accessible through peer-to-peer networks. We use KaZaA, a very
popular file sharing program to search for image files using 12
key words that are known to be associated with child
pornography on the Internet.
As shown in our chart of over 1,200 items we identified,
about 42 percent of the file names were associated with child
pornography, and about 34 percent were associated with adult
pornography.
On the next slide, we show another KaZaA search, where we
worked with the Customs CyberSmuggling Center, to use three key
words to search for and download child pornography images.
As you can see on this chart, this search identified 341
files, and about 44 percent of these were classified as child
pornography, and about 29 percent as adult pornography.
I think more disturbing, however, was that we found that
there is a significant risk that juvenile users of peer-to-peer
networks can be inadvertently exposed to pornography, including
child pornography in using these networks.
In searches, again, on KaZaA, using three innocuous search
terms, that would likely be used by juveniles, we found that of
the files that were returned, almost 50 percent of them were
pornography, including a small amount of child pornography.
In regard to resources, we were not able to specifically
quantify the amount of law enforcement resources that are
devoted to peer-to-peer networks, because largely Federal law
enforcement agencies do not track their resources by the
specific Internet technologies.
However, these agencies indicated that as the tips are
increasing in this area, they are increasing their efforts and
their resources that are allocated to it.
That concludes my statement. I would be happy to answer
questions at the end of the panel.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Koontz follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.028
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.034
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Netherland.
Mr. Netherland. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of
the committee, it is a privilege to appear before you today to
discuss the CyberSmuggling Center's efforts to investigate
child exploitation that is facilitated by the Internet.
The CyberSmuggling Center, led by the Bureau of Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, will continue to combat the sexual
exploitation of children and the unfettered accessibility and
illegal bartering of child pornography on the Internet via
peer-to-peer file sharing networks.
The peer-to-peer file sharing networks are but one more
means by which pedophile predators ply their trade and
victimize our children; and the CyberSmuggling Center is
expanding its investigative efforts to encompass this new
technology.
The CyberSmuggling Center, located in Fairfax, VA, is
recognized both nationally and internationally as a leader in
the area of child exploitation investigations. The
CyberSmuggling Center utilizes its resources and cutting edge
technology as a means to protect our Nation's children from
sexual abuse.
We have had a number of great successes in identifying and
apprehending pedophiles. Recent investigative successes
include: Operation HAMLET, a global investigation that resulted
in the complete dismantlement of a ring of pedophiles who were
molesting their own children and posting the images on the
Internet for worldwide consumption. Many of these pedophiles
were parents.
The CyberSmuggling Center, in its coordinating role,
identified and rescued more than 100 children who were
subjected to this torturous environment. The majority of these
children were American citizens.
Another example is Operation MANGO, which shut down an
American-owned beach-side resort for pedophiles located in
Acapulco, Mexico. The resort was a haven for pedophiles that
traveled to the facility for the sole purpose of engaging in
sex with minors.
As a result of this investigation and others, the
government of Mexico recently created a Federal task force to
address crimes against children in their country.
The CyberSmuggling Center's technological capabilities
include the National Child Victim Identification Program, a
dynamic one-of-kind information system that will eventually
contain all known and unique child pornographic images. The
primary goal of the program is to help law enforcement agencies
throughout the world locate and rescue children who have been
victimized for sexual purposes.
This committee has asked that I address two specific
concerns: one, the ease of access in transmission of child
pornography on peer-to-peer file sharing networks; and two, the
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's efforts in
tracking and investigating suspects that use this technology
for criminal purposes. It was our privilege to assist the GAO
in this study.
Considering the fact that there are now more than 20 peer-
to-peer software applications available on the Internet, and
that these applications are conducive to the unfettered
transmission of images, both legitimate and illegal, the
CyberSmuggling Center has taken the position that peer-to-peer
networks do increase the likelihood of both intended and
unintended exposure to child pornography.
The investigative effort of the CyberSmuggling Center,
while extensive and highly successful, have been geared to
attack the problem of child exploitation on a reactive basis.
This posture is dictated primarily as a result of the enormous
volume of child pornography-related tips received and processed
by the CyberSmuggling Center.
The CyberSmuggling Center handles more than 1,500 tips per
month. Each tip requires an initial review, resulting in a
determination as to whether further investigation is warranted.
If referred for investigation, then evidence must be
gathered and a perpetrator identified. This is a time
consuming, labor-intensive process. The majority of the
CyberSmuggling Center's resources are dedicated to tip response
activities.
In contrast, the investigation of peer-to-peer networks can
be classified as proactive in scope; that is, investigators
with no prior information can actively enter publicly
accessible file sharing networks, to detect illegal activity.
Recognizing the potential use of peer-to-peer file sharing
by pedophiles, the CyberSmuggling Center re-assigned an
intelligence analyst to begin examining these types of cases in
February 2002. Today, the CyberSmuggling Center has referred
more than 20 leads to the field, resulting in several
successful enforcement actions, including the arrest of a known
child abuser.
Although we have only scratched the surface, peer-to-peer
file sharing networks have received and will continue to
receive increased scrutiny by the CyberSmuggling Center.
Searches can be tailored to reveal imagines of child
pornography, prosecutorial venue can be claimed at either end
of the transaction, evidence is easily captured and preserved
on a real-time basis, and violators are readily identifiable by
investigators with the requisite training and experience. For
these reasons, peer-to-peer file sharing investigations are
likely to increase.
In conclusion, let me reiterate that while we must, by
necessity, continue to focus the majority of our attention and
resources on the voluminous tips generated by outside entities,
the CyberSmuggling Center will continue to expand its
investigative efforts in the area of peer-to-peer file sharing.
I would like to thank the distinguished members of this
committee for the opportunity to speak before you today, and I
welcome the opportunity to answer any questions that you may
have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Netherland follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.036
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.039
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Saaf, thank you for being with us.
Mr. Saaf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Waxman, and
the rest of the committee. MediaDefender was founded in the
summer of 2000, with the general business calling to fight
Internet crime.
The biggest area of Internet crime in the summer of 2000
was obviously music piracy. That was because the peer-to-peer
software program Napster only allowed the trading of music. You
could not trade videos or images on that network. At the same
time, there was a network that was created called the Gnutella
Network, which was much smaller than Napster, but allowed the
trading of all sorts of rich media files.
We observed a lot of pornography going across that network.
It was pretty much the only peer-to-peer network where you
could get pornography at the time. We also saw an alarming
quantity of child pornography being shared on that network.
MediaDefender immediately called the FBI and the Department
of Justice, and tried to alert the agencies to that fact. They
received little attention.
Today, KaZaA is the 800 pound gorilla of peer-to-peer
networking with, as you have mentioned, over 200 million
downloads to date. Most of the video files and pictures on
KaZaA are adult in nature.
There is the same child pornography problem that we
observed in the summer of 2000, except it is 100,000 times
larger now. There is 100,000 times the quantity of pornography
and child pornography.
Porn spreads like music on a peer-to-peer network. The
files are large. There is a high demand for it, and the
copyright law is easily avoided on the networks.
MediaDefender took data from March 6th to March 10th of
this month, to present some findings on child pornography on
these networks. MediaDefender found 328,349 unique Internet
addresses with files that appeared to be child pornography on
them.
We also found 321,153 unique files that appeared to be
child pornography by their name and file type. There are 4
million simultaneous users on the peer-to-peer networks at any
one time approximately. The point is basically that there are a
lot of users, and that all of them can get child pornography
whenever they want.
Peer-to-peer users tend to feel a guiltless sense of
anonymity. I want to say here that they should not feel
anonymity at all in these networks. These are open, public
networks, and it is easy for a company like MediaDefender to
find these perpetrators and introduce them to law enforcement
officials.
This is not like music, where law enforcement officials
have been able to say, we cannot enforce the law against every
single individual; there are too many. Child pornography is too
dangerous for that.
Already, as we have heard, law enforcement officials around
the Nation have started to actually prosecute cases on the
peer-to-peer network. It is a relatively straight-forward
procedure. A company like MediaDefender can gather the evidence
and hand it over to a law enforcement official, where they
conduct a normal child investigation Internet pornography case.
Just because it was easy and free to get the child
pornography, that does not mean it gets to skirt the child
pornography laws.
We also took some statistics on businesses, schools, and
Government institutions that have potential child pornography
on their networks, and I would like to go over those now.
This alarming trend of not caring about pornography on the
networks can be seen in schools. We found over 800 universities
in the Nation that had files on their networks that appear to
be child pornography in nature.
I do not know how many schools there are in the United
States, but I can assure you that most of the big schools are
on that list.
I do not want to start naming names right now, but I will
say that seven out of eight of the Ivy League schools had a
combined total of over 190 computers that had files that
appeared to be child pornography on their computers, sharing to
the peer-to-peer network.
Hundreds of large companies are in this list, as well. It
could be very embarrassing. I suggest that colleges and
businesses start taking a proactive approach to get the child
pornography off their networks, or block the peer-to-peer
networks altogether.
The worst thing that MediaDefender found in its study was
the government institutions that had child pornography on their
networks; thousands of government computers with files that
appear to be child pornography on them. It is ridiculous that
Government resources could be used for something so unworthy as
this.
The three most notable and largest on the list that we
found were NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the
Department of Defense.
What is very alarming about these is that they are secret
or defense in nature; and what is really scary is, if
pornography is accidently being shared on these networks, who
knows what else is accidently being shared? Obviously, this is
an information technology oversight.
There are no magic technology solutions for fixing the
problem of pornography or child pornography on the peer-to-peer
networks. Filtering only mildly helps the problem. This stuff
changes so fast, everybody gets around the filters. It is just
too easy.
There are 1 billion files in a constant state of flux on
the peer-to-peer networks. You cannot identify what every file
is.
Porn and child pornography will be an ever present problem
on the peer-to-peer network, just like music piracy is. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Saaf follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.043
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Rung.
Mr. Rung. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee, my name is Daniel Rung. I am the founder of
Grokster, one of the more popular file sharing programs on the
Internet today.
I would like to thank you for inviting me to testify today
on file sharing and pornography, and in particular, child
pornography.
The Internet is a communications tool that allows for the
easy storage and virtually instantaneous transfer of all types
of information, including pornographic material. The Internet
pornographic industry is generally considered to be one of the
most successful and widespread on the Internet. One could argue
that pornography is ubiquitous on the Internet.
One of the side effects of this ready availability of
pornographic material is children's easy access to it, either
intentionally or accidently.
Before the development of peer-to-peer file sharing
programs, pornography could be easily found on free and pay Web
sites, news groups, FTP sites, and so on. Many fairly effective
tools were then developed to allow users to filter out certain
types of Internet content, including pornography. Then peer-to-
peer file sharing programs were developed and launched on the
Internet.
Although these file sharing programs were not designed with
pornography in mind, today's file sharing programs provide a
new avenue of access to this type of material. Since today file
sharing programs have no control over the contents that users
share with other users, it is easy for a child user to
encounter such pornographic material.
It has been estimated that as much as 50 percent of the
files created through file sharing programs consist of
pornographic material; and unfortunately, just like the rest of
the Internet, some unknown amount of that is child pornography.
In an attempt to allow users to filter out objectional
material, many file sharing programs now have what we call bad
word filters. These filters can be set to screen out much
objectional material from the search results.
Additionally, the providers of third party content
filtering programs such as Net Nanny and Cybersitter have been
successfully developing techniques to allow users to filter or
block objectional material from file sharing programs.
What, specifically, can parents do to keep this material
from their children? First, educate your children, as
appropriate for their age, to be aware that this type of
material exists and what to do if they should encounter it.
Second, supervise your children while they are using the
Internet. Observe what Web sites they visit and what programs
they are using.
Third, consider restricting your children's level of user
access on the computer. Using settings in the Windows operating
system, parents can create a special account for each child
called a restricted user account.
This restricted user account has default settings that will
block the child from installing any software on the computer,
including peer-to-peer file sharing programs. I understand
these restricted user accounts may also be customized to allow
varying amounts of access to all the functions in the Windows
operating system.
Fourth, install and properly configure one of the numerous
content filtering programs. Some can be said to filter or even
block access to file sharing programs. Periodically, review the
programs installed on the computer to ensure that they meet
with your approval.
Last, when installing any file sharing software, go through
all of its settings, to ensure that they are set to block any
objectionable material. Set up the password protection if it is
available in that program. To summarize, educate, supervise,
restrict, filter, and configure.
As a parent and grandparent, I share this committee's
concern with child pornographers and their customers. We at
Grokster maintain a very clear and open policy in relation to
child porn. We do not want child pornography on Grokster.
We encourage users to report this type of material to the
appropriate authorities. We have previously cooperated with law
enforcement officers, and would gladly do so again to combat
child pornography.
Sadly, child pornography continues to be available through
the Internet. There are already many existing laws that deal
with child pornography. Using these laws, child pornographers
and their customers can be brought to justice to stop their
abuse of defenseless children.
The law enforcement resources brought to bear on this
problem to date seem to be too little. I urge the members of
this committee to bring more law enforcement resources to bear
on this continuing problem.
Thank you for holding this important hearing, and I look
forward to working with the committee on these issues in the
future.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rung follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.046
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Rung, thank you, and thank you for
being with us today.
Mr. Rung. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Dr. Greenfield.
Ms. Greenfield. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Waxman,
distinguished members of the committee, thank you very much for
inviting me to speak to you today.
My name is Dr. Patricia Greenfield. I am a developmental
psychologist and professor in the Department of Psychology at
UCLA. I currently direct the UCLA Children's Digital Media
Center, under a grant from the National Science Foundation.
I am a member of the National Academy of Science's Board on
Children, Youth, and Families; and I participated in their
workshop on non-technical strategies to reduce children's
exposure to inappropriate material on the Internet.
It is an honor to talk with you today about pornography on
peer-to-peer file sharing networks, as it relates to child
development and families. But before I speak on that subject, I
want to add one technical word to the presentation so far.
In our lab, in preparation for this, we did some tests of
the internal filters that KaZaA provides. No. 1, they are
password protected, so presumably a parent could keep a child
from interfering, once they set them; and second, we found two
of the three filters proved very successful. One filter, for
example, allows you to filter out all images, and I think that
works very, very well.
So I want you to keep that in mind, because you could
perhaps require these types of filter systems or strongly
suggest them to be in all of these file sharing programs.
Now I want to move to my prepared remarks that relate to
child development, families, and pornography. I want to focus
on three questions, and I will begin with these questions and a
summary of my answers. Fuller answers can be found in my
written testimony, as well as references to the relevant
research that I am drawing on.
First question, what effect does pornography in peer-to-
peer file sharing programs have on children's development? Let
me give an example of such effects.
One study found that 13-year-olds and 14-year olds became
more accepting of pre-marital and extra-marital sex, after
seeing sexual relations between unmarried, but not married,
partners on video. This example shows one route by which
pornography can affect the moral values of young teenagers.
Equally important, use of pornography can be an important
additional risk factor for sexual violence, when used heavily
by boys already at risk for anti-social behavior.
A study of long-term memories of impactful experiences with
sexual media in college students indicates that inadvertent or
unintentional exposure can be both frightening and disgusting
to children and teens, especially girls.
In sum, the evidence indicates that pornography and other
sexualized media can influence sexual violence, sexual
attitudes, moral values, and sexual activity of children and
youth.
Second question, what are the challenges parents face in
reducing their children's access to pornography on peer-to-peer
networks and elsewhere? We have already heard a lot about this.
One important challenge that has been mentioned is the fact
that these programs, originally developed for music, have
recently become the most popular use of the Internet for pre-
teens and teens; occupying an average of 32 minutes a day, and
that is an unselected, kind of middle class sample.
These are the same peer-to-peer networks that can, of
course, as we have heard, contain pornography and other
materials. Such networks, however, are part of an all-pervasive
sexualized media environment.
This total environment leads to a tremendous amount of
inadvertent and unintentional exposure of children and young
people to pornography and other adults sexual media.
For example, on peer-to-peer file sharing programs, banner
ads provide a source of inadvertent exposure to what, for
children and teens, could be precocious sexuality.
You saw some screens up there, and they had kind of an
innocuous banner as in the lower left hand corner, for example,
for Nokia phones. But when I did my test, I found adds floating
through for female condoms, male condoms, and introduction to
potential sexual partners through personal ads.
These banner adds, as you saw today, are viewed as soon as
one enters the program. They cannot be controlled by the user.
This inadvertent and unintentional exposure to sexualized media
is a major challenge to parents.
Third question; what are the non-technical means that
parents can use to deal with these challenges? We have already
heard some ideas from Mr. Rung.
Let me add, a warm and communicative parent/child
relationship is the most important weapon that parents have.
Such a relationship, research has shown, reduces the sexual
risktaking that can be stimulated by pornography.
An open family communications style is another powerful
weapon. For example, one study indicated that such a style
mitigated the effects of video portrayals of non-marital sex on
the moral judgments of 13 and 14 year-olds.
Therefore, in today's media environment, an open
communication style within the family is critical. In addition,
open parent/child channels for communicating specifically about
sexual and media experiences, that is very useful; second, sex
education at home or school; and third, parental participation
with children on the Internet; all of these are constructive
influences that can mitigate negative effects of pornography.
Finally, for boys already at risk for anti-social behavior,
parent should carefully monitor and severely limit access to
pornography on file sharing networks and elsewhere.
Let me close by talking a little bit about some important
issues in need of future research. Pornography on peer-to-peer
file sharing networks is not unique, but it is part of a highly
sexualized media environment. By analogy to television and
violence research, one likely developmental outcome of over-
exposure to sexual media is desensitization. Another outcome is
the culture of the body, especially for females.
But how does desensitization affect the emerging sexuality
of young people? What are the psychological costs and benefits
of this body culture? What is the role of other media in these
processes? All these are areas where we need further research,
and there are many other questions.
What type of experiences are children and young people
having with sexual material on peer-to-peer file sharing
networks? What are the long-term effects of these experiences?
How do parents view the challenges of the sexually saturated
media environment for child rearing and child development?
What are the effects on children and families of different
parental strategies vis-a-vis sexual and pornographic material
on the Internet? These are important questions greatly in need
of more research and more research funding; thank you very
much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Greenfield follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.050
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.053
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.054
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.055
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.056
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.057
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.058
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.059
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.060
Chairman Tom Davis. Dr. Greenfield, thank you very much. I
am going to just ask one question, and then yield to Mr. Waxman
and let other Members have a chance.
Mr. Rung, thanks a lot for being here today. I think you
can add a lot to this, just from your experience. But what is
Grokster's business model? How do you end up making money in
this?
Mr. Rung. Basically, it is through advertising revenues. As
a matter of fact, I was making a note, when Dr. Greenfield was
speaking, about the fact that we do, in fact, have these banner
ads flashing across the face of it, whether you like it or not
as a user. I do intend to go back and review the subject
matter.
Chairman Tom Davis. So advertising is basically how you
make your money?
Mr. Rung. Yes, basically advertising, yes.
Chairman Tom Davis. And you do not have any control over
the content. People can then put anything in they want and
trade back and forth.
Mr. Rung. That is correct.
Chairman Tom Davis. It is like a telephone company, almost.
Mr. Rung. That would be a good analogy.
Chairman Tom Davis. That is my first question.
Mr. Waxman.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; well, to followup on
that, Mr. Rung, when people go on to Grokster or some of these
other file sharing sites, and they want to download something
about Britney Spears or the Olsen twins or Pokemon, why is it
that they get this pornography?
Mr. Rung. Because you are searching for basically a word;
in other words, they are putting in, say, Britney Spears, and
it searches not just the title, but also there are some tags
attached to the files. The users can set those tags in a
particular file, plus, they can mis-name files.
Mr. Waxman. Well, is anybody making money out of this?
Mr. Rung. Between the users themselves, not that I am aware
of, unless the pornography industry perhaps is.
Mr. Waxman. Well, is the pornography industry making any
money?
Mr. Rung. Well, overall, I believe yes, from what I read on
the Internet; but as specifically related to file sharing, I
really am not sure.
Mr. Waxman. Well, can anybody on the panel tell us if the
pornographers are making money by putting these pornographic
files on the file sharing programs?
Mr. Saaf. They are not directly making money, but a lot of
pornography companies do put their files on the peer-to-peer
network and mis-name it to try to gain exposure for the same
purpose of advertising.
Mr. Waxman. Mr. Rung, I have heard that there is almost
like a frequent flyer program; if you use a file sharing more
often, you get access to more files and speedier access. Is
that accurate?
Mr. Rung. Not that I am aware of; what you might be
referring to is a new feature that KaZaA came out with, a few
months back, where the more you share, in theory, the higher
rank you are for downloading from other people. We do not have
a feature like that on our program.
Mr. Waxman. And why would they have a feature like that?
Who benefits; does the file sharing operation benefit?
Mr. Rung. I would assume that they would benefit, from the
standpoint of the more the users used the program, the more ads
that can be shown.
Mr. Waxman. Ms. Koontz, the GAO did a report for us, and we
very much appreciate it. A lot of what is going on in these
file sharing programs is illegal pornography. What is the
problem? Why can law enforcement not find out who is putting
the pornography on the files and getting them to the kids, and
crack down on it?
Ms. Koontz. Well, I think, to a large extent, law
enforcement has many, many efforts, and I am sure Mr.
Netherland could add to this significantly.
But law enforcement has many efforts to identify individual
users, determine their identity, to prosecute them in courts;
and I am sure that he could probably add to this quite a bit in
terms of the some of the difficulties in doing this and some of
the barriers that they face.
Mr. Waxman. Well, maybe we ought to have him respond and
give us some information on this point.
Mr. Netherland. With respect to that, there are hundreds of
thousands of images that exist on the Internet presently. As
far as file sharing itself, it is just simply another vehicle
by which these people can trade the material. With our Child
Victim Identification Program, we are trying to quantify what
the universe of images is out there, in hopes that we can
locate these children that are being victimized; and also, when
we run across a new image, we are going to hopefully be able to
localize the source of that image, and back-track and locate
the people that are, in fact, putting the stuff on the
Internet.
Of course, with today's technology, digital cameras and so
on, it is very easy simply to snap a photo and have it on the
Internet within a matter of moments.
Mr. Waxman. What do the pornographers get out of doing
this? How do they make money out of it?
Mr. Netherland. The pedophiles, themselves, are gratified
by the images. It arouses them sexually, and sometimes it
ultimately leads to their actual molestation of a child. With
respect to the people that are looking to make money on it,
generally, they are, in fact, pedophiles, as well.
As far as peer-to-peer is concerned, it is exposure to the
images. They, in turn, can point these people back to Web sites
and so on that, in fact, do make money from this trade.
Mr. Waxman. Is it a failure of resources, insufficient
resources; what is the barrier; or is it technological that
keeps you from finding the people that are responsible?
Mr. Netherland. Well, with respect to the CyberSmuggling
Center, I have 13 people that are dedicated to the child
exploitation effort at the CyberSmuggling Center.
Now our agents out in the field are also trained to conduct
these types of investigations. However, simply because of the
enormous number of tips that we receive on a daily basis, our
posture is primarily reactive in nature.
Working peer-to-peer type cases is a proactive approach. I
would like nothing more than to expand our efforts in that
area, but we cannot ignore the massive number of tips that we
are receiving already.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays [presiding]. I thank the gentleman. This is an
amazing issue. Mrs. Miller.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I will tell you, my daughter is 27 years old, so we did not
really have the Internet in our home with some of these things.
You know, the Internet really is quite a relatively new
phenomenon.
I sit on a board in my county called Care House, which is
for sexually abused children. It is unbelievable what people
will do to their children.
As we are talking today about child pornography, as well,
my husband has been the presiding Circuit Court Judge in our
county for the family law and, again, you see it all.
When you do psychological profiles of these individuals, so
often, pornography and access to pornography is a critical
component to all of those kinds of things.
So I am just wondering, we talked a little bit about the
marketing. The unfortunate reality is, quite frankly, there is
a market for these kinds of things.
With teenagers today, how we can actually protect them from
that? It seems to me as you see many of the law enforcement
agencies who are having new Internet crime units, and I know we
see that in my region and I am sure throughout the Nation as
well, they are having some success with these things.
But I think it is difficult for us sometimes to legislate,
because it seems as though the moment you pass a piece of
legislation, the techies have out-thought you, again. So I
guess I am looking a little bit more for specific
recommendations on what you might think the Federal Government
could actually do to assist in this regard.
Mr. Saaf. I think that local city government officials
should take a more active stance on this approach. I am not
sure that there is a broad sweeping Federal solution to this.
But there are a lot of existing child pornography laws that are
not being enforced by District Attorneys across the Nation.
I think that is really the first step, that it has to start
at that level, and then we will see where it goes from there.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you; Ms. Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First thing, you wonder if we will be able to stay ahead of
the technology to provide filters or for parental-type of
controls.
But the issue is, whose obligation is it, in your opinion,
to prevent the children from seeing this porn? Is it the
software developers; is it the parent? Do you have an opinion
on the obligation?
Because we have really allowed the industry to police
itself for a long time, and there have been some positives and
negatives. This is a time, I think, when the industry has not
really stepped up. Does anybody want to take that question? Mr.
Rung.
Mr. Rung. As it was pointed out, the technology can change
so quickly, that I think just outlawing this, or trying to
regulate this, that, or the other thing, the technology would
outgrow it almost immediately.
I really believe honestly that it is the parents that are
the primary ones that are in the hot seat and have to, again,
monitor their children's usage and monitor what goes on the
computer.
Mr. Ruppersberger. But do you not think the industry is
better suited to come up with the evolving technology? I mean,
there are a lot of parents that just cannot stay there at all
times with their children.
There have to be some safeguards. There has to be, I think,
an emphasis from the industry itself to help address this
problem. I mean, law enforcement has to be involved. A lot of
people have to be involved. Because if the industry does not
step up, eventually Government will have to step up, and we
will have to mandate.
Let me ask you this. Do you feel that the Government should
mandate filters for the peer-to-peer networks? I know Dr.
Greenfield does. Do you?
Mr. Rung. To be quite honest, personally, I am against a
lot of Government regulation in any case. But that would seem
like, if you were going to do some regulation, that might be a
worthwhile way to go about it.
Mr. Ruppersberger. And if we do this and the technology
keeps changing, there it gets back to the obligation end of the
industry.
Another issue, too, as far as law enforcement is concerned,
you mentioned the issue of local law enforcement. Whenever
there is a problem with crime and there is a magnitude, I think
it is very important for the Federal, State, and local
governments to work closely together.
It seems that a lot of information leads come from local
government, because that is where the every day operations is,
that is what is happening in the street, in the communities.
What type of effort is evolving now to deal with this issue
with respect to Federal, State, and local government? The
prosecutor is the end. It needs to really be developed to
obtain the information, get the intelligence, make the arrest,
and then go to court and prosecute.
Mr. Netherland. With respect to cooperative efforts, this
particular area of crime is one area where we, law enforcement,
work very, very well together. Both Federal, State, local law
enforcement, as well as our international partners, are
dedicated to this effort. We put aside our differences when we
work these type cases.
The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces that exist
out there, I think there are 36, I believe, now. They are
comprised of Federal, State, and local law enforcement
officers, and are one step in the right direction.
On the international level, we work very well with Interpol
in France, as far as educating other countries on how to
conduct these types of investigations. But right now, about 99
percent of this type of work is facilitated, quite frankly, by
the Internet.
And if I could make one comment about the peer-to-peer file
sharing filters and so on, that is certainly very important. I
am a father, as well, and it is very important. It is a very
important thing and we, as parents, have an obligation to take
care of our children, and filter what they look at.
But keep in mind that this is still a vehicle by which
these pedophiles can trade between themselves which, in turn,
satisfies or arouses them, which ultimately and directly leads
them to finding these children that are on the Internet and
other areas, such as chatrooms and so on.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I have one last question for Mr. Rung,
again. I do not mean to keep picking on you, but you are the
industry, I guess.
Have you or anyone that you are aware of in the industry
contacted law enforcement agencies to try to work with them to
try to identify where these problems exist?
Mr. Rung. All I can speak to is what Grokster's experience
is. We have corroborated in the past on some cases with law
enforcement, and anticipate doing so in the future.
Mr. Ruppersberger. But I am talking about taking the
initiative. I am not talking about just cooperating when they
come to you. Are you aware of the industry taking the
initiative, when you have identified these problems, to help
law enforcement?
Mr. Rung. I do not believe there is any industry-wide. That
is certainly a good idea.
Mr. Ruppersberger. It is something that I think the
industry needs to look at; because, if not, then Government
will probably have to come in and mandate to deal with this
serious problem. Thank you.
Mr. Netherland. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis [presiding]. Thank you very much.
Mr. Janklow.
Mr. Janklow. Thank you very much.
Mr. Rung, if I could just continue for a moment, you
corroborate, and I do not mean to say this in an accusatory
way. I sound that way sometimes, but it is just the way I talk.
I do not mean it that way.
You corroborate, but in your testimony, you say it is
estimated that 50 percent of the files on files traded on
sharing programs are pornographic, and you operate a file
sharing program.
Now do you really feel your only responsibility is just to
cooperate when you are contacted? For all practical purposes,
you are the pornographer, when it comes to these types of
things. You are the vehicle by which people are doing these
things, and you cannot have Government shutting down everything
and regulating everything all the time.
Do you feel there is a greater responsibility on the
industry to step forward with something that is this obvious in
preying against children?
Mr. Rung. Let me address that two ways, if I could. The
first is that the extent of the pornography on file sharing is
just a sub-set of what is available on the Internet, as a
whole, just as you pointed out.
Mr. Janklow. And I am going to get to that in just a
second.
Mr. Rung. Oh, OK, and so accordingly, it is there and it
exists.
Mr. Janklow. Right.
Mr. Rung. But the one thing that has occurred, this has
been a learning experience for me, also, to be invited here and
to listen to everybody here.
It is quite clear to me that it would make a lot of sense
for me to go back to my fellow entrepreneurs in our industry,
and see what we can, in fact, do on a pro-active basis.
Mr. Janklow. Does it take a congressional hearing to let
you know there is problem of this magnitude?
Mr. Rung. Of this magnitude, yes, particularly with the
child pornography.
Mr. Janklow. Sir, you brought up another point. The mis-
spelling of words is not a file sharing issue. But everybody
wants to say ``parental involvement.'' This is one where it
cannot be just the parents, primarily. Kids go to school. We
all bust our tails to make sure our schools have more computers
all the time for the kids.
We have community libraries that have computers. Kids go to
their neighbors' houses, where there are computers. They go to
church, where there are computers, and boys and girls centers,
where there are computers. So it is not just a matter of
dealing with their parents.
If the University of New Hampshire's study is accurate,
only 10 percent of the students that are hit on, on the
Internet, tell their parents about it.
Even though you have a warm, fuzzy relationship with your
parents, you may be bashful or embarrassed with this bestiality
that you see, the sodomy that you see.
You know exactly what I am talking about. You can misspell
words and get it. You can innocently stumble into, like, we all
say, whitehouse.com is a good example of that.
But my question is, sir, what do you think it is going to
take to better protect the children of the world, recognizing
that we cannot just pass laws in America? A lot of these sites
come from outside the United States. They are just as easy to
come from Bulgaria or Romania, as they are South Dakota or
Timbuctoo, AR.
Mr. Rung. I honestly have no solution to that.
Mr. Janklow. Mr. Netherland, how about you? Do you agree
there is not enough money in the world, just to prosecute,
after these children are exposed to this type of thing; that we
have to really do something at the front end, and your
organization is just dealing with our failure as a society to
deal with it on the front end?
Mr. Netherland. As far as law enforcement is concerned, I
welcome any strengthening of the laws that help us do our job
better, and that would remove these people from doing what they
do.
Mr. Janklow. Sir, is your agency involved in the Justice
Department funding of those Internet Crimes Against Children
Programs?
Mr. Netherland. We have an advisory role with respect to
the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces.
Mr. Janklow. Do you know of any reason; is it a shortage of
money; what is it that has prevented all 50 States and the
territories from getting funding to get these things launched?
My State happened to have been the first Statewide program.
We were lucky to get in on the funding. But what does it take?
Is it a funding issue, to make sure that every Government has
the opportunity to get together to do this?
Mr. Netherland. I believe that it would certainly help, in
terms of making sure that every single State has an Internet
Crimes Against Children Task Force, and organizes one. Because
this is across the Nation; it is across the globe.
Mr. Janklow. And sir, I will say that this is one of those
issues where the Federal Government, the Federal prosecutors
have truly stepped up to the plate, and have really dealt with
it, when the evidence is turned over to them with respect to
these predators.
I have one other question for Ms. Koontz. What is it that
you think that Congress can do, if anything, to really try and
assist in shutting this off?
When I was a kid, it was National Geographic. But that is a
lot different than what is going on out there today. These
sites have a huge impression on 8, 9, 10, and 11 year olds; a
huge impression.
Unfortunately, we did not put that kind of thing up today,
and I guess my time is up. But could you tell me, do you know
of anything that we could do?
Ms. Koontz. This is not the kind of problem, I think, that
lends itself to sort of a single legislative solution. I think,
though, it needs to be a combination of efforts.
First and foremost, law enforcement needs to continue to
followup on the tips that they receive in this area, and they
need to have the resources in order to further investigate
those.
This is a very growing area. The tips in the peer-to-peer
networking area increased fourfold in 1 year. So you can tell
this is very much on the rise.
But the reality of it is, I think in addition to what law
enforcement and public policy could do, is some of the things
that other people on the panel have mentioned.
Those are educational strategies for our kids. It is
parental involvement and supervision, and although they are
generally imperfect, technology-based tools, such as the ones
Dr. Greenfield mentioned that are actually on KaZaA, can be a
legitimate part of an overall strategy for dealing with this.
Mr. Janklow. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Putnam.
Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I share Governor Janklow's frustration about this, and
particularly, really, the inability for anybody to get their
arms around a solution.
I had a constituent of mine, who was a young woman, who
experienced the same thing. She wandered off onto the Internet.
She met someone and was lured away to Greece. She was severely
molested for a period of several months, before anyone could
track her down.
The local law enforcement received almost no help from the
Federal Government. The FBI was not interested. No one was
interested until they finally managed to find a postcard that
he had mailed her, and a Postal Inspector was the only Federal
law enforcement help they got.
We have a rating system for video games. We have a rating
system for movies. We have a rating system for music, and the
panels consensus is that people who deliberately set up Web
sites to prey on spelling errors of third graders looking at
Pokemon is not something that we can have the collective wisdom
or will to solve. I have a problem with that. I think that
there is a way that we can get around that.
But I want to know a couple of things. First of all,
because of what was mentioned about the resort in Acapulco, how
much of this is generated domestically versus internationally?
Is there a list maintained by the State Department, or someone
of nations who continue to prey on children, and whose legal
system does not allow us to get the information or the help
that we need to prosecute these folks?
The chairman and Mr. Waxman put out a helpful handout for
parents. But the question I would ask the panel is, for the
``do-good parent'' whose child brings some of these things to
their attention, and they scan down, and you see all of these
terms: co-ed, teen, young girl, cheerleader, all things that
clearly indicate a minor, at what point does it go from smut to
being illegal smut?
How does the average parent know what they can report, and
what things are just in bad taste but do not cross the line of
illegality? So those are a handful of questions. I will leave
it to the panel to decide who is most appropriate to answer.
Mr. Netherland. With respect to the case in Acapulco, and
also the case with Operation Hamlet, the Bureau of Immigration
Customs Enforcement approaches things on an international
level. We look at material that is crossing the borders into
the United States. Unfortunately, the United States is the
largest consumer of this type of material. I think that is a
well known fact.
Mr. Putnam. Who is the largest producer? Is that the United
States, also?
Mr. Netherland. In my opinion, there is a lot of material
that is produced in the United States. But I believe there are
many countries out there who, because of their laws, do not
outlaw the possession of child pornography, or large producers;
Russia, for instance.
I know that they are taking steps to address that issue,
and we work closely with the Russian authorities on
investigations. But it is a function of their laws, trying to
deal with the problem, themselves. In South America, some of
the countries here also have some issues.
Mr. Putnam. Help me understand this. Let us stop right
there, because I guess I gave everybody too much to chew on.
Help me understand what is against the law. At what point is
changing the ``e'' to an ``a'' in Britney, and putting up
pictures of children engaged in sexual acts against the law?
At what point is changing Pokemon or Schwinn bicycles or
whatever for the specific purpose of bringing in young children
to this realm against the law; MediaDefender?
Mr. Saaf. Well, that is kind of big opinion question
because, you know, if something gets thrown up on the peer-to-
peer network and it is given a name, the person in the image
might look 16. They might be 19.
It is impossible to know, because these are just digital
replications that have occurred millions of times over on the
network, and you do not know where it started from. So who is
to say if it is against the law or not? That is the real
difficulty of peer-to-peer networking.
Mr. Putnam. Mr. Rung.
Mr. Rung. I am not sure. I was interested to hear the
actual answer to that myself. Because I am not sure of what the
legal definition of what is considered child pornography or not
is. I mean, obviously, if you have a 6-year-old girl in an
image, then that is a potential problem. So I am actually quite
interested in the answer, myself.
Mr. Putnam. So advertising hot high school cheerleader
coeds, currently there is no law against that, if the image is
actually someone over the age of 18?
Mr. Netherland. That is correct.
Mr. Putnam. And there is no trademark or copyright
protection because of the fact that it is misspelled. But there
is also no intent; there are no conspiracy laws that would
apply to that.
I mean, Mr. Waxman has made a career out of the intent or
the conspiracy of advertising of certain products in this
country. I find it hard to believe that you could not
extrapolate that type of a legal argument to include changing
the spelling of Pokemon to lure children into child
pornography. Is there no remedy there, either; Ms. Koontz?
Ms. Koontz. I guess what I would add here is that it is not
necessary for the user to misspell Pokemon or Britney, or any
of the rest of them to have pornography and child pornography
return to your computer.
It is not so much of an issue of, shall we say, the mis-
labeling of files. It is much more a function of the types of
files being kept by individual users, who now have the
capacity, through the file sharing applications to locate and
interact with each other directly. These are individuals who
are doing this, and they are just sharing what they possess on
their hard drives.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Ms. Greenfield. Could I say something about that? Just to
add to that, a lot of it, therefore, is what young people
themselves have downloaded. It is not just outsiders preying on
kids. It is also what kids are creating for themselves. So that
is a very, very important part of the problem, which needs to
be also addressed.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you; Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; Mr. Chairman, I would
like to yield to Congressman Waxman, who has a question.
Mr. Waxman. I thank you for yielding, because I want to
followup on the points that have just been raised. It is
difficult to find out what criminal laws are broken. But one
key thing would be to find the end user.
And if MediaDefender can identify the IP address of people
offering child porn, why has anyone not asked the ISP to turn
over the names of the end users? Is that impossible to do, for
any reason?
Mr. Saaf. Well, MediaDefenders tried to encourage law
enforcement officials, and we have had very low success. There
have been a few District Attorneys around the country that have
taken interest in this.
I have a list right here that I collected over 2 days, of
300,000 IPs that I believe have something to do with child
pornography, at least by their facial terminology, and I would
be happy to turn that over, but who do I turn it over to? I
really do not know.
Mr. Netherland. I can say that with respect to tracking
these individuals back to the person opposed to damages, the
files, and I will not discuss exactly what our techniques are,
but we have a means by which we can backtrack and locate those
individuals.
We do, in fact, do that. We look for persons who are
posting multiple files, hundreds of images. So we do have a
means to do that.
Mr. Waxman. Do you get the cooperation of the ISP, Internet
Service Provider, to do that?
Mr. Netherland. Yes, sir, we do.
Mr. Waxman. And there is a problem in getting their
cooperation?
Mr. Netherland. Correct; the point here is that in these
type applications, there is no centralized location; there is
no centralized ISP that can report this.
This particular network is simply, each desktop computer,
in and of itself, is a server. So you have to locate the end
user or the poster, in order to shut it down.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you; I thank the gentleman for yielding,
because that was a point I thought we would need to clarify.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you; I yield back the balance of my
time.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much; Mr. Shays.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; Mr. Chairman, thank you
for having these hearings. Mr. Waxman, thank you for the good
work you and your staff have done on this, as well.
This may sound a little crazy, but bear with me a second. I
want quick answers, and I want to go all the way down the line.
Ms. Koontz, I want to know who are the bad guys.
Ms. Koontz. The pornographers.
Mr. Shays. I want you to be a little bit more specific;
just the pornographers?
Ms. Koontz. Yes.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Netherland.
Mr. Netherland. I believe the pedophile drives the market.
They drive the market. They are the ones preying on our
children, and they use whatever vehicle they have by which to
do so.
Mr. Shays. Well, I think there are two kinds of bad guys
with regard to peer-to-peer networks. There is the original
pedophile, who creates the information and originally posts it
to the network. That guy is the bad guy.
But let us face it, there is a huge demand; 300,000 people
is a huge group of people. That means there is a lot of mid-
level, borderline pedophiles, who have a fleeting interest in
this stuff enough to download it and maybe even accidently re-
share it.
So I do not know if you want to necessarily put that in the
same moral evil as the guy who originally creates this stuff,
but it is definitely a lot of people. Probably you would be
surprised. I mean, clearly, there is a bunch of people in the
Government who are the bad guys, to some degree.
Mr. Shays. And in the sense of the Government, quickly, who
would that be?
Mr. Netherland. Well, like I said, NASA, Department of
Defense, Los Alamos National Laboratory. I could give you
another couple hundred computers that are all tracked down. You
could identify every one of those computers to an owner of that
computer, someone that works at the Government, who has a file
that appears to be child pornography.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Rung.
Mr. Rung. I would say the creators of the child porn and
the consumers of the child porn.
Mr. Shays. A little louder, please; the creators of child
porn and who else?
Mr. Rung. The creators of the child porn and the people
that consumer it. That would be the people that download it.
Mr. Shays. Would you consider yourself one of the bad guys?
Mr. Rung. No, I do not believe so.
Mr. Shays. Dr. Greenfield.
Ms. Greenfield. That is a very hard question. But I think I
would probably go with Mr. Rung's answer.
Mr. Shays. Would any of you consider Mr. Rung one of the
bad guys?
Ms. Greenfield. Well, I feel like we should not pick out
peer file sharing; that this is a problem throughout society.
It is a problem on television. It is a problem throughout the
Internet. It is a problem when you go now to checkout at the
supermarket, with what used to be very innocent women's
magazines. The banner headlines all over the covers now are all
about sex.
So I think that throughout society, and I could even get
closer to home, there has been a highly sexualized environment,
and that is a problem. But I do not really see one bad guy.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Rung, I am starting from the bottom here,
just to try to understand something. In your terms of
agreement, you prohibit the use of your service in transmitting
any content that is ``unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive,
vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable.'' But is that not
kind of a joke?
Mr. Rung. If you mean from the standpoint, is it
enforceable by anything that we can do? That is correct, we
cannot enforce that.
Mr. Shays. So what do those words mean to us? I mean, are
they to protect yourself from legal action? What is the purpose
of your terms of agreement?
Mr. Rung. I think it is two-fold. One is to provide
protection; let us be honest. But the second is to put our
users on notice that this not the type of activity that you
should engage in, with the product that we provide.
Mr. Shays. How much of your income would you say is
attributed to the very topic that we are discussing now? By the
way, I appreciate your honesty. You are helping me understand
this issue better than most people have. So it is good you are
here and thank you. I am just trying to understand it. But how
much of your income would it be?
Mr. Rung. No, that is fine and I appreciate that. I have
learned a lot coming here too and, as a matter of fact, I would
like to spend a little time with Mr. Netherlands after the
meeting.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Rung. But again, I really do not know the percentage of
child porn that goes through by the users. But I believe it is
relatively small, compared to the universe of files that are
shared.
Mr. Shays. Would you come back to the committee and give us
a more specific answer to the question of how much of your
income you believe is the result of stuff like what we are
talking about?
Mr. Rung. Yes.
Ms. Greenfield. One thing I think could be done by the
companies themselves would be not to sell banner ads for things
like condoms. Because those are under their control, and they
are something that children or anybody else cannot avoid when
they come onto the site.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Are there any other questions; Mr. Van
Hollen.
Mr. Van Hollen. No, and Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you
for holding this hearing. I am still trying to master the art
of being in two places at one time. I was at another committee
hearing.
I want to thank Congressman Waxman and his staff for what
they have done. As the father of three children 12 and under,
this is something that I have a great interest in.
I have been looking through some of the recommendations.
One of the big frustrations, of course, is trying to come up
with concrete measures we can take. Obviously, education, and
public education, and making sure parents are alert is a
critical part of this.
But I am going to look through this to see if you have any
other specific recommendation. Law enforcement is a key part.
But are there other tools we can use, and I realize how
difficult it is in the Internet age, to keep these kind of
things from popping up when you put in ``Pokemon.'' It is
incredible, and as much as we monitor our kids, it is
impossible to be there 24 hours a day, standing in front of the
computer.
But I look forward to reviewing some of the recommendations
and hearing more about this. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much; and Mr. Waxman,
let me thank your staff, too, for helping in calling this to
our attention and doing the work on this. I think this was a
very useful hearing.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for attending. I think
for Members, we have learned a lot today, and we will go back
and probably re-visit the issue. If any other thoughts occur to
you, please feel free to let the committee know, and we will be
happy to put it in the public record.
We will be posting on our Web site a list of the top 10
things a parent can do to limit their children's exposure to
pornography on peer-to-peer file sharing networks, compiled by
Mr. Waxman's staff and mine, and we will also be following-up
on this issue.
In addition to the pornography problems, file sharing
programs raise serious security and privacy issues, as users
may unknowingly share personal files, or may accidently
download files computer viruses.
Thank you very much. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the committee was adjourned, to
reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
[Additional information submitted for the hearing record
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.061
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.062
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.063
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.064
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.065
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.066
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.067
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.068
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.069
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.070
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.071
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.072
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.073
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.074
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.075
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.076
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.077
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.078
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.079
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.080
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.081
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.082
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87066.083
-