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update A bill introduced Thursday in Congress would require file-swapping companies to get parental permission before allowing minors to use their services.
The bill, called the Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography (P4) Act and sponsored by Reps. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., and Chris John, D-La., would require the Federal Trade Commission to regulate peer-to-peer networks and take steps to ensure that children aren't accidentally coming across porn.
The bill's sponsors said as many as 40 percent of all files traded on the networks are porn.
"Our legislation gives parents the tools they need to protect their children from pornography and threats to privacy posed by peer-to-peer file-trading networks," Pitts said in a statement. "By working together to protect children, we are building a broad and bipartisan coalition."
The bill calls on the FTC to require peer-to-peer companies to get parental permission before minors use their services. It also would require peer-to-peer companies to honor the wishes of parents who have put a "do not install" beacon in their computers, indicating that they don't want file-swapping software on their children's machines. However, such technology has yet to be developed, and it's unclear how such a beacon would work.
Now....I have the RIAA telling me that P2P is mainly used for trading music, but congress says it's a flea market for p0rn. I SAY that it is merely a tool to facilitate the free flow of information. Like any other tool, it can be abused...but I don't see congress making lug wrenchs illegal because some poor slob bashed someones head in with one. If this crap continues they might as well just go ahead and scrap the internet (probably just what both groups want anyway) and let us all just build a big fire and use smoke signals to communicate.