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Pornography Obsession on Both Sides of P2P Debate
Posted by Ernest Miller on Thursday, September 18 @ 20:32:14 EDT Free Expression
What is this obsession with P2P pornography? Prof. Edward Felten has written a brief piece regarding his recent experience testifying before a Senate Commerce Committee on DRM in digital television equipment on Freedom to Tinker (Senate Commerce Testimony: Post-Mortem). He notes that the infernal (ahem, eternal) head of the MPAA, Jack Valenti, "hit the P2P porn meme the hardest, even, in a surreal moment, inviting the Senators’ staffers to go download some porn from Kazaa and see for themselves how vile it is." Felten notes the irony of Hollywood's "concern."

Similarly, in a recent C|Net News article by Declan McCullagh (among other sources) Sen. Sam Brownback (R - KS) is quoted as saying, "But I cannot in good conscience support any tool such as the DMCA information subpoena that can be used by pornographers, and potentially even more distasteful actors, to collect the identifying information of Americans, especially our children" (In DMCA war, a fight over privacy).

So, in the first case, P2P is especially bad because it is used to transmit pornography, unlike print, or videotape, or cable TV. In the second case, a copyright law is especially bad because it might be used to enforce copyrights in pornography. At least Jack Valenti's logic is somewhat coherent (although bad policy and hypocritcal to boot): if you are concerned with pornography on P2P networks, then you want to make access to P2P networks more difficult.

I'm not quite sure what Sen. Brownback's logic is. Is he implying we should have different copyright laws for pornography? Heck, gay porn company Titan Media seems to be acting much nicer than the RIAA. Titan is only asking that file uploaders purchase legitmate copies of Titan's works. Seems pretty reasonable to me. In any case, Sen. Brownback's solution makes no sense whatsoever. If Brownback's DMCA subpoena reform passes, Titan Media will have to bring John Doe lawsuits, making public who has been sharing gay porn. This addresses Brownback's concern with pornographers, how?

I'm all for reforming the DMCA subpoena process. What has pornography got to do with it?

 
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Re: Pornography Obsession on Both Sides of P2P Debate (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, September 20 @ 06:33:51 EDT
Ernest,

I think that Sen. Brownback is referring to the point made by Parry Aftab of WiredSafety.org. She is saying that it is too easy to issue a subpoena and get people's private details. This can include sexual perverts looking for children's details.

See Parry's declaration in the Verizon case
http://www.wiredkids.org/documents/aftab-declaration.pdf



Richard Swetenham


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