[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 22]
[House]
[Page 29981]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           PEER-TO-PEER SOFTWARE IS A REAL DANGER TO OUR KIDS

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, the British newspaper The Guardian has found 
that demand for child pornography through the use of file-sharing 
programs, like Kazaa, is leading to more abuse of children. The sale of 
peer-to-peer traffic in illegal images of children now dwarfs any other 
pedophile network they have found.
  David Wilson, professor of criminology at Central England, said, 
``Peer-to-peer facilitates the most extreme, aggressive and 
reprehensible types of behavior that the Internet will allow.'' 
Programs that are used by kids to find songs or pictures of cartoons 
are delivering our children right into the clutches of these predators.
  And what are we doing about it? Nothing. Every day innocent kids are 
victimized on peer-to-peer file-trading software and our inaction 
allows them to walk right into the trap set by sexual predators. The 
time to act has come.
  I urge my colleagues to cosponsor my bill, H.R. 2885, so that we can 
move forward in protecting our kids online.

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