Gnutella's Wall Of Shame? 264
Sleen pointed us to a ZD story about ZeroPaid.com's Wall of Shame.
Its pretty amusing actually: since gnutella is truly distributed, you know the IP of people who download things from you. ZeroPaid is posting the IPs of people who try to download their faked kiddie porn. This is an obvious side effect of using a totally distributed application to distribute information: the information can be distributed like wildfire, but the privacy concerns are significant.
Re:age of consent and pedo... (Score:1)
Actually, if you want this subject in some pretty serious depth, try Lolita [borders.com], by Vladimir Nabokov. It's a really good book, but not a happy one.
Public shaming (Score:1)
I am an advocate of privacy! I'm an advocate that the government does not have the right to strip me of that privacy.
And I also know that when I make a tcp connection to a server, that server KNOWS my IP address, and the time the connection was up for, and what was transferred over it, and I have no legal contract with that server stating what can and can't be done with that information. In other words, I have *NO* expectation of privacy.
Just like cellular phones. You have NO expectation of privacy on an analog cellular phone... oh.. unless you live in the US, where cellular scanners are illegal.
Up here, in Canada, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy when using the public airwaves. Period.
Re:they get what they deserve! (Score:1)
its safe to say there are exceptions to every rule and everyone has a little something to hide, insurance company's are looking out for themselves. The internet will do the same, its an evolving entity and will always find a way to survive, the least we can do is help it along and embrace things that make it a little more pleasant to interact with, and if publishing people's IP's accordingly (as to what they download) then so be it.
its nice to a see a coherent thought out post, unlike some that have responded, thanks for your time to respond with an intelligent post (sometimes they are hard to come by!)
Atticka
Re:But what if I'm twelve? (Score:1)
Re:Doh!!! Re:Some of the DNS names (Score:2)
Host Name: <hemos.slashdot.org> IP Address: <192.168.1.53>
Host Name: <cmdrtaco.slashdot.org> IP Address: <192.168.1.83>
Host Name: <cowboyneal.slashdot.org> IP Address: <192.168.1.82>
Host Name: <emmet.slashdot.org> IP Address: <192.168.1.24>
Host Name: <xyzzy.slashdot.org> IP Address: <192.168.1.153>
Host Name: <plugh.slashdot.org> IP Address: <192.168.1.29>
(before anyone goes ballistic, it's a joke. Really! Look it up!)
This is the greatest thing ever (Score:1)
Someone should set up a communist Wall of Shame with Mao jpgs so I can make sure he never gets a security clearance again.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
Re:they get what they deserve! (Score:2)
Monitoring the people who do this is no different from publishing a caller ID log to a sex chat number. You give up your privacy when you contact somebody's network.
Re:Fun fun fun (Score:1)
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
Re:Slippery Slope (Score:1)
This bait-and-switch tactic has been used by the government for years. Under-cover cop drug dealers spring to mind.. "Sting operations"...
The illusion of freedom offered by the internet is extremely deceptive. You should act on-line how you would act in public. If you would lift up 12 year old girls' skirts in public, then by all means get on with your kid porn trading!
wish
---
$ su
who are you?
$ whoami
whoami: no login associated with uid 1010.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
> done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be
> afraid of. Accountability is good, unless you're
> an anarchist
Well actually I am an anarchist and I am all for
acountability. However, I am certainly against
this type of tactics.
This reminds me of those right-to-lifers who
stand in front of Clinics that perform abortions
and take down the licence plate numbers of EVERY
person who enters the clinic....
then they take the licence plate numbers, find out
who ownes the vehicle and harass them...never
mind that they may have only gone to the clinic
for counseling, or some other procedure, they
get harassed just for parking in the parking lot
and entering. (by harassed I mean recieve packets
with pictures of stillborn babies that have been
mislabeled as fetuses for impact and called
"baby killers" etc)
As far as using this information...well its not
as hard as you might think. Require a valid
email adress to get a "password" or any number of
sinister methods. Call the ISP and demand the name
of the user who had that IP...claim that they were
distributing illegal copies of some IP you own,
need to know who to sue.
Never mind that ALL they did was download a file.
You have no idea whatsoever what their intentions
were. You have no idea what they thought the file
was.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Disclaimer: Just in case the following should confuse anyone with poor reading comprehension, I find pedophilia as repugnant as anyone else does, and firmly believe that people who sexually abuse children (or adults, for that matter) need to be removed from polite society.
That said, there is an important difference between pedophiles on the one hand and rapists and serial killers on the other. Pedophilia is a desire (a disgusting one, yes), where as rape and killing are actions. Not all pedophiles act on their desires.
While 99.9% of us may find their sexual fantasies abhorant, we cannot legitimately make desires crimes. And we should not make fictional portrayals of abhorant acts illegal.
It is a strange thing that if I had a videotape - real or faked - of two young teenagers who were having consensual sex (as consensual as immature people could have, anyway) and were discovered and grusomely murdered by some psychopath, the sex part of the tape would be contraband but the tape of the murders would be perfectly legal to own and view.
Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:But is ANIMATED child porn really child porn? (Score:2)
Is Child Porn a tough issue? Yea, it deals with
alot of issues. When is a person old enough to
consent to sex? When are they old enough to
consent to sexual photos?
When you turn 18 there is no fairy that flies by
and sprinkles dust on you and magically makes you
able to make decisions for yourself. Its NOT as
cut and dry an issue as legalists would have you
believe.
But anyway...drawings? Drawings! The very idea
that a person can set pencil to paper and somehow
comit a crime by merely moving its tip across
the page! The very idea of that offends me.
In fact...the very idea that someone could sit
alone in their room, involve no other people,
could possibly do anything, short of detonating
thermonuclear devices, and somehow break a law
is simply insane.
I supose it is things like that which have led to
the word SNAFU
-Steve
Re:Social Limits (Score:2)
Whoever said that kiddie porn is a wedge issue was very correct. People overlook a lot when it comes up in a discussion like this.
The problem - what is kiddie porn? Who defines it (I know it when I see it?)? In the US, anyway, laws need to be very clear about what is and what is not legal. (Remember the Montana non-speed limit?)
There are *hundreds of thousands* of people out there who have pictures of their kids taking a bath, naked at the beach, or whatever. Is that illegal? Just because the kid is under 18? Or do you have to _enjoy_ it for it to be kiddie porn? Maybe you have to be male? Or a "pedophile"?
The law is decidely unclear. We have, instead, delegated responsibility for defining the law to web site operators, photo-mart technicians, and small-town cops.
I completely and totally reject the idea that you and others who think like you do should be able to define what is wrong for me. That's why we have government - so that everyone can have a say in creating the law and so that everyone gets a fair trial and the presumption of innocence.
For you to suggest that seizing control and forcing your own laws on others is desirable puts you in league, 100%, with the abortion-clinic bombers.
What if I'm not breaking the law and I don't feel that I'm doing something wrong? Should I be fired because my employer disagrees? (Not because I surfed at work, but because he/she saw my IP listed there.) Should I need to worry about some "save the children" crusader firebombing my house?
I feel strongly that it's wrong for a 40-year-old to molest his 10-year-old daughter and I certainly don't want to watch. But I also don't want to get killed because some unnamed, undated jpeg on my hard drive happens to be of a 17-year-old or a 40-year-old masquerading as a 16-year-old. (Not illegal, but I would get 'caught' by these standards!)
Peer pressure works with clothing styles. It doesn't work so well with more serious issues.
(Salon had a good article about this in Mothers Who Think a few weeks ago.)
they should fix some of the file names.. (Score:5)
Re:Actually.. (Score:2)
"youngest teen ever" What in that suggests porn? The word youngest? The word teen? The word ever? None of those seem extremely pornographic either. Maybe someone accustomed to downloading porn might think it's porn, but I think they're gonnna "Catch" alot of innocents with this. Others that don't suggest porn that I see on their lists are "veryyoung" (very young what? asparagus?), "nohairteen" (so we have a bald-headed child, so what?), etc.
Then there's the problem of all these "teen" ones. 18 is a number, 19 is a number... Hmm, if those denoted ages, I don't see anything illegal here. I'm not a huge porn freak, but I have seen enough to know that "teen" attached to a website denotes >=18 but not too many years greater. It doesn't mean 13-17. I'm betting that very few of the people downloading most of these were truly looking for kiddieporn.
Next are the ones that say "preteen" so what? Anyone not net savvy and not understanding that if it's ambiguous like that, it's probably porn, might download that confused. Then bam, they're posted onto this site.
The should take all this stuff down immediately, it's poorly done. Most of the names look like they'll fool people. People looking for child-porn would download them, but so could someone not looking for that.
If they want to keep this up, they need to do two things. First, they need to delete all current content to protect those that they're falsely accused, and I'm sure there are many. (Mostly on the ones that just say "teen" probably). Second, they must change all filenames to include XXX (who's gonna get confused then?) and also give them such depraved names that no one would for one second consider the file to be porn of the more legal type.
(Should I go into their sharing of the iggy pop song as well?) Nah, I didn't think so, I'm assuming that's a copyrighted work....
Oh, btw, I'm perfectly aware that I sound like I must be on there list, lol. But I saw this, and it just screamed at me as wrong.
I'm not fan of pedophiles but ... (Score:5)
My point is, yes pedophiles are the scum of the earth and yes using technology as a vehicle of the exploitation of children is a horrendous crime, but what makes this person the ultimate authority on who is branded with the scarlet letter and who is not?
What if the tables were turned and someone from fbi.gov got a file listing of the supposed child porn this person is offering, what will they say when they are raided for intent to distribute?
People STILL do time for trying to pass oregano off as pot, and bank robbers STILL do time when they use their finger in their pocket to imitate a gun, why shouldn't these people do time for trying to pass off "gotcha" images as child porn?
Let the cops setup the sting operations and let the criminals go through the justice system and THEN label them pedophiles. All this is is a misguided attempt at vigilantism without cause.
Re:Acceptable behavior from a private citizen (Score:2)
The main difference is that the police are usually much more interested in being right in their accusations than this fellow. What happens to the guy who is looking for pictures of Sean Young, types in "young", clicks on the first name in the list, grabs the scroll bar and pulls it down to the bottom, shift-clicks on the last name in the list and hits download, all without ever reading each and every filename? "Golly Gee Batman! He just inadvertantly downloaded a whole slew of files called 'youngassfuck'." Without having any desire or tendancy towards pedophilia. Do you think this irresponsible fellow at ZeroPaid is going to do any checking to see? No, he's going to stick their name up there in some righteous fit of holy retribution.
Oh, he's not trying to get them to stop using his site. If he wanted to get them off his site he wouldn't have filenames that drew them in. Gnutella is not his personal property to dictate what is appropriate or not. And given that he seems to be completely behind the rampant copyright violations, he's not even working from a moral high ground. Apparrently he feels he's some kind of moral policeman. The only problem is that he doesn't have any of the checks and standards that a police force would have in place to protect people who may inadvertantly get involved in his little sting operation.
Re:age of consent and pedo... (Score:2)
> statetory rape if he did it to a pre-16 girl.
> Shouldn't that be what age of consent is about?
> First, what bennefits these teens, and second,
> what we as a society find accepable.
I have a problem with statutory rape. The thing
is, OK rape is bad. No IS no. But Statutory rape
says "Yes is no" if the other person is too young.
The real problem is simply this...it is not a
a charge brought by th esuposed victem, it is
brought by their parents. It is not a device for
protecting anyone, its a device for legitimising
parental dominion over the lives of their
offspring.
I tend to think that by the time a person is
physically capable of sexual activity, they
should be able to decide for themselves what
they wish to do. At that point the law needs to
leave it alone. If a person can't decide by then,
there is either something wrong with them, or
their parents didn't do a very good job of
teaching them.
> So we lock away people for something we don't
> have much knowledge about, or lock away someone
> who seriously needs mental help.
Its not too hard to understand...the public
doesn't get it, but the general public tends to
not get alot of things (esp when the media finds
it more profitable to use it as a scare tactic
to keep people afraid and watching the news)
I think its simply a fetish. Have you read the
Cryptonomicon portion where some guys were "van
eck phreaking"? there was a long letter about
fetishes where the writter said he was very
thankful that his was stockings and not little
children...afterall that type of sexual preference
is well laid into the brain by age 7.
These people are not "sick", they simply have a
sexual fetish that is not "socially acceptable".
There is no way to "cure" someone of this, any
more than you can "cure" someone of homosexuality.
Our society always seems to take the least healthy
and most problimatic aproach to social issues.
Make it illegal and hope it goes away. Shun them,
that will make them stop. Just drive everything
underground, make it a black market affair.
Why deal with a problem when you can just jail it
away and call all the people who have any interest
in it at all "sick"?
Just say no to .
-Steve
Re:This is good, but not very useful on its own (Score:3)
I'm probably mistaken, but isn't that 'entrapment'?
There's a difference between being active and being passive. When the feds worked hard to get John Delorian to run drugs for them, it was active. He had no history of such behavior, and they should have never did it. In the same way, ATF agents asked Randy Weaver to saw a couple shotguns off just a little bit shorter than the legal minimum length. Again, it's entrapment, we don't know if he was into that sort of thing before (or if he even knew it was illegal).
The basic idea is that in these cases and others like them, the crime is actually created by the law enforcement personnel who convince someone else to actually commit it. I don't know why they did that to Delorian. They did it to Weaver so they could subsequently blackmail him into helping to entrap someone else. Charges were pressed only after he refused to go along with them.
The irony of the Weaver situation is that we have one of the whiniest government agencies, the BATF, actually making up crimes for themselves to fight. It's like a fire department setting fires. The BATF whines about needing more money, yet they apparently have enough that they can make up crimes to fight. If I didn't know better, I'd have to guess that actual crime no longer exists and these guys are wandering around trying to look busy.
The situation here (gnutella & zeropaid) is one which I actually have no problem with. Rather than actively recruiting would-be criminals, they are passively providing some bait, and keeping track of those who bite. It seems likely that people who bite in this situation are actually looking for kiddie porn and probably already have some.
So, obviously they've broken no laws since they downloaded something legal. But the fbi now has a list of folks to start watching. I don't think that's so bad.
-Michael
Re:they get what they deserve! (Score:3)
> naked kids? ARE YOU?!?
DOwnloading naked kids? hmmm can I download a
hamburger and french fries too? hmmm No Make that
some prime rib, and some good red wine....now
where exactly do I go to download this stuff
again?
> if you go around DL'ing illegal material that
> has a negative affect on our society.
hmmmm the transfer of bits from some other
computer to my hard drive can have a negative
effect on our society? Please explain. Also please
quantify the actual harm done per kilobyte.
> your whole view on the subject is narrow, and
> you seem to be too engrossed with yourself to
> have a truly valid argument.
A complete moron said something to me once, it was
the only thing he ever said that was correct...
"When you point your finger at someone, you point
3 back at yourself"
> (and yes, the internet IS public property)
Yes but....people are allowed to have private
conversations in public places. Personally, I
think laws saying people can't have sex, or
walk around without cloths are pretty draconian...
course...I only see 3 functions to clothing,
1) protection from the elements
2) pockets
3) naugahide (ever sat on it not wearing long
pants?)
Given those being the only 3 functions of
clothing that I recognize (special clothing
designed for extra suport aside), I don't see
any real problem with walking around naked (esp
on a hot day)
If you are offended by something, then its your
own fault for choosing to be offended. Can't
blame others for your choices.
Re:Stupid idea, lame implementation. (Score:2)
Re:Actually.. (Score:2)
Re:Actually.. (Score:2)
It is downloaded by the mother of a college student who, upon seeing Gnutella, sets it up at his home. Either for his mom, or for himself. She starts messing with it (once it is set up, it's a snap to use, configuring throws people off). And she's a soccer mom type and wants to get pleasure off looking at someone else's proud moment for their child.
You missed the point completely as well. In something such as this, all it takes is a tiny chance for error and the people running this become extremely irresponsible for doing so.
Who says these files are pornographic in nature? (Score:2)
Think about it. Some of these filenames indicate that they're about pornography only to a dirty-minded observer. What if I was a graphic designer looking for an image of a few young boys playing out in the back yard, to illustrate my article about the benefits of large back yards? I might download young-boys.jpg, thinking that it was just an image of a couple of (dressed) young boys!
Unlikely you say? Maybe, but almost all of the so-called 'child pornographers' on the wall of shame might claim to be that graphic designer, and sue these guys for slandering. It's lawsuit paradise!
Also, now that Zeropaid.com has made public their activities, won't there be people who'll try to download these files just for the hell of it? Or maybe they just want to see their names up on the wall, so they can sue Zeropaid.com and get thousands of dollars!
Re:I think I posted about this before ... (Score:2)
1) A person is distributing someone else's copyrighted work
2) They are distributing the work in a way that fair use doesn't apply
3) The creator of the work doesn't want their work distributed in the way the person is distributing it
4) The person continues to distribute the work
5) The person is considered to be breaking the law
If statements 1-4 necessarily imply #5 , then it seems to me the copyright holders have control over how their work is being distributed.
I would consider a hypothetical country to have control over a person's religion if a citizen was punished for practicing another religion. Would you consider this country to have control over religion?
The distribution of copyrighted work is analogous to my hypothetical country's control over religion. The people of the United States are punished if they distribute a person's copyrighted work against the wishes of the copyright holder (fair use issues aside). So, I would argue that the copyright holders do have control over the way in which their work is distributed
Perhaps your definition of control is different then mine, but I think the threat of getting sued for punitive damages is a very effective means of controlling distribution, just as the fear of being punished in a country for practicing the wrong religion is an effective means of controlling the religion of its people.
Re:they get what they deserve! (Score:2)
The whole point of disagreement here is about how dumb this is being handled. Other than a few obvious trolls nobody is saying that child porn is good or even protected. The problem is that there is no regard for correctness of the information he is putting out. Even the filenames he uses as bait are ambiguous and clearly not indicative of the conclusion he wishes that everyone will arrive at. His approach is inept and clumsy.
(And you are wrong about the law prohibiting the possesion of nude pictures of underage girls.)
I'm sorry, I don't trust you that much (Score:5)
>done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid
>of.
If you believe that for a second, I have a bridge to sell you. America is currently whipped up into such a 'protect our children' frenzy that it's practically a fetish; one of the few that regularly disturbs me.
I'll state the following for the record: I'm not a pedophile, consumer of kiddie porn, or any number of related horrible things. I don't want to see exploitation or torture of children any more than any sane adult would. I'm planning on having my own kids in the not too distant future (although perhaps slightly more distant than my wife
I am a consumer of net Porn. Not a particualrly rabid consumer, but a reasonably regular one. I see nothing shameful about pornography in general, and I don't care if *you* do. Over the past ten years or so (yes, porn predates the web), I've even had paying memberships at a few of my favorite sites.
Perhaps I'm sharing too much, but I happen to go for the really 'soft' stuff; hardcore action is just... kinda strange... Closeups of genitals and any number of other things that the mainstream porn industry thinks is oh-so-hot is a major turnoff. I like neutral, not particularly sexual poses of healthy, happy women. Pretty, happy women are a turn on... as they should be for practically any healthy het male! For this reason, I also like nudist photos (and generally am a believer in nudism myself). So far, I don't think anyone is particularly surprised or shocked. Feynman himself had more interesting tastes
For some reason though, alot of naturist and nudist sites also advertise themselves (often hidden in meta tags) as 'kiddie' 'illegal underage' or 'lolita' porn. Why? Heck if I know.
I think the whole net-porn industry needs a major dose of truth in advertising, but whatever. So it's the case that naturist sites often run hand in hand with fake (or real) kiddie sites. You can't tell until you visit.
Is someone logging the sites I go to? Am I gonna get a knock on my door at 7am because some asshole Yahoo who thought he was doing us all a major service saw I went to a site with 'kiddie porn' in a META tag and handed it to my local Police department? You might even find a pic or two in my Netscape cache from a site where I only hit the front page, (or more likely a banner ad). It almost makes me want to pull this stunt as a hoax ('turn in' a co-conspirator) in order to discredit the whole idea before it gets started.
When Megan's Law first started being enforced here in CA, several men were *PLACED ON THE SEX OFFENDER LIST ERRONEOUSLY*. One poor guy's neighbors noticed before he did, tried to burn down his house and in general sent alot of nasty death threats. Of course no one believed him when he claimed to be innocent! Who would trust someone on a Police list as a pedophile?
I don't know what it is about groups of people and mob mentality. Admit it: all we're looking for here, rather than a legitimate way of protecting children, is a new excuse for a witch hunt. Don't you just *love* that rush of righteous indignation? That justified feeling of hate for another human? That burning desire to wipe out the evil and ask questions later? The number of times folks in this comment lists have referred to the third-person, evil 'them' is disturbing.
If *I* got on a list by accident, could I trust all of you to stop and think for a second before tearing me to shreds?
I think I could not.
Monty
http://www.xiph.org/
Sheesh, people (Score:2)
Okay, raise your hands if you download kiddie pr0n. Now, keep them raised if you're outraged about this "violation of privacy on the net". Okay, now everybody who has no clue what the concept of personal responsibility, please keep'em raised. Thought so.
The Most Clueless Award of the Year goes to the poster who wrote, "...this is so lame! What if I were doing a search on such an innocuous term such as 'young-titties' or 'teen-sex'..." I dare you to find seven people on a libel jury who wouldn't label that as intent... Folks, there is no viable reason at all to be downloading files named "underage-titties.jpg" and "15yrold-lesbos.jpg". Merely downloading and possessing these files are a crime. If you want to be a tattletale and tell a sysop or the authorities about a kiddie pr0n server, notify them of your suspicions, and let them get the proof. And bulk downloading of pr0n won't hold up in court either. What they'll point out is that you took inadequate precautions to avoid getting illegal goods, anyways. If I were at an airport, and didn't have time to look through all six black similar-looking cases, so I decided to take them all and return those that weren't mine later when I had the time, I would still be liable.
You know, if you want to do something, at least have the balls to stand up for what you're doing. Doing something and being so ashamed of it that you try to hide it from everybody else is lame. Either stop doing it, or stop being such a loser about it.
Well, that's my two rants for today.
telnet://bbs.ufies.org
Trade Wars Lives
Isn't that illegal? (Score:4)
Slippery Slope (Score:2)
Does RIAA/MPAA already have these servers out? If so I bet they are PISSED that someone publiclly brought out the possibility of this. Before this, how many people gave a second thought to this possibility?
What next? Government monitoring?
Shut up fascist. (Score:3)
Try the amazing new game Nuke-A-Ped! (Score:2)
go to http://www.zeropaid.com/busted/ where
zeropaid
will post the "Pedophile of the moment"i.p. address.If we can get
them to.
Then using your favorite nuke,blast away!
Sure,it may be illegal but whats the ped gonna do?
call the cops?
A modified version of this game may be played via
IRC on efnet #gnutella (or a room you make) make up
some bullshit "pedo-files"with all
the obvious names e.g. teen-orgy.mpg
13yr_blows_donkey.jpg
When unsuspecting ped does his download
just post his i.p. to the channel and everyone
ping his ass real hard.WHOOOPEEEEEEE!!!!
Granted,this is a fine way for a Libertarian and
Subgenius to be talking but I'm also a megalomaniac in my spare time and I believe kids
have a hard enough time in the world without
these abherations to be allowed to breathe or take
up valuable space.
Re:Stupid idea, lame implementation. (Score:2)
Pedophiles/Statutory rape and the internet (Score:5)
But pedophilia is a wholly different issue. They use the internet to network, to trade both pornography and victims. They use it to stalk. They use it to lure out new victims.
There is a real issue involved for any of us who administer any service online... public backlash against any community that makes itself pedophile friendly will cause no end of headaches. Moreover, it will cause some of us to attack you by means other than legal.
I am both a geek and, in one state, a licenced therapist for victims of sex crimes. I know pedophilia. I've dealt with it, run up against it time after time. It is not a sexual fetish that is simply not socially acceptable. It is the worst form of mental illness I know, and one of only two things that tends to make me physically ill. The other is extremely bad shellfish. I have never met a pedophile that was even remotely well in the head. Why deal with a problem when you can just jail it away? Well, the problem is, we can't. Too many pedophiles get away with it. There are virtually no exhibitors of the disease who do not practice its manifestation... this is something I've become sickeningly aware of. The least harmful still cop feels from victims too young or too terrified or ashamed to speak up. If we could just jail it away, it wouldn't be a problem.
The issue with age of consent isn't (or shouldn't be, in any case) the choice of minors to be sexually active. It is the choice of adults to exploit minors. The best law, from a therapist's point of view, would be a sliding scale... five years for seventeen, four for sixteen, three for fifteen, two for fourteen and down... I've seen it go to one at twelve, with prosecution shifted to parents, but I'm not sure that's well thought out...
The reason for an age of consent is simple. Sex should not be something a person with power extracts from someone without. Rape can be committed without physical force: blackmail, threat of firing, threats of any other kind... or exploitation of authority status. In short, adults having sex with children are committing rape, in the same sense that that rev. Moon character was...
We geeks are people with power... but often, we are people with neither ethics nor conscience. We consider ourselves a breed apart, above those petty issues. Unfortunately, some of those issues are far from petty.
No shame! (Score:2)
Urrm. So does that mean that the kiddies should download their p0rn brazenly? :-) It might be good that - teach them not to be hypocrites!
I've seen this before (Score:2)
"Dirty Pixxx"
"Hard Wood" and,
"Filthy Pixxx"
When you clicked on them you would get pictures of:
Dirt
A Tree
Dirty Laundry
He then logged your IP address and ISP name and put it up on his web-page with the headliner "People with dirty minds"... it was pretty funny.
It was a good link to feed the "anybody got some pRon" trolls.
hehe - I'm going to do the same (Score:4)
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
Shocking. (Score:2)
Obviously downloading this is a crime, but surely the bigger crime is people using covert means to find out that I am doing it. I can't believe these people invading my god given right to be above the law at all times......
Irony or allegory, make your minds up.....
Doh!!! Re:Some of the DNS names (Score:3)
Host Name: <lsanca1-ar8-048-168.dsl.gtei.net> IP Address: <4.35.48.168>
Host Name: <ci697303-a.lusvil1.ky.home.com> IP Address: <24.2.227.10>
Host Name: <PPPa86-ResalePhoenix6-2R7219.saturn.bbn.com> IP Address: <4.54.182.211>
Host Name: <cachef1-v105.kolumbus.fi> IP Address: <193.229.159.211>
Host Name: <tayhou-229-217.ev1.net> IP Address: <207.218.229.217>
Host Name: <du13055.blo.ptd.net> IP Address: <204.186.13.55>
Host Name: <CHCGB511-10.splitrock.net> IP Address: <209.254.67.10>
Host Name: <annex32.su.ic.ac.uk> IP Address: <155.198.152.42>
Host Name: <proxy2-external.snvl1.sfba.home.com> IP Address: <24.4.254.99>
Host Name: <w098.z208177014.dfw-tx.dsl.cnc.net> IP Address: <208.177.14.98>
Host Name: <host001083.arnet.com.ar> IP Address: <200.43.1.83>
Host Name: <dhcp93101233.columbus.rr.com> IP Address: <24.93.101.233>
Host Name: <c05-148.012.popsite.net> IP Address: <64.24.48.148>
Host Name: <52.atlanta-48-49rs.ga.dial-access.att.net> IP Address: <12.77.19.52>
Host Name: <5-168.casl.du.edu> IP Address: <130.253.5.168>
Host Name: <a24b31n93client144.hawaii.rr.com> IP Address: <24.31.93.144>
Host Name: <b12.med.pcpros.net> IP Address: <208.198.6.12>
Host Name: <p3E9B96E2.dip0.t-ipconnect.de> IP Address: <62.155.150.226>
Host Name: <slkc6400gw1poolC60.slkc.uswest.net> IP Address: <63.226.102.60>
Host Name: <adsl-77-226-243.atl.bellsouth.net> IP Address: <216.77.226.243>
Host Name: <ip229.dayton11.oh.pub-ip.psi.net> IP Address: <38.31.203.229>
Host Name: <dhcp-letts-158-219.american.edu> IP Address: <147.9.158.219>
George
Not just Gnutella.. (Score:2)
I think I posted about this before ... (Score:4)
I think condemned.org has it right on actually doing something besides complain about kiddie porn. They not only take a stand they do something about it. I am very proud of this group .
There needs to be a to moderate distributed file systems. If theres not then we will have a problem. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Justice: Who screams the loudest? (Score:2)
Or we can talk about what really happened, and reasonable consequences if this becomes common.
Discussing abstract principles is something I love to do, especially after a beer or two. However it seldom leads anywhere. I think (as a matter of principle) that speech should be free, anonymous access to information should be possible (or rather, not necesary) and that children (and adults) never should be forced to pose for porn pics.
*I* have no trouble combining those views. Neither (I guess) have you. Unfortunately there are those who like to act out those liberties to the full extent, and they become uncompatible. 'tis called "real life"
Regarding the *actual* event, though, I have a serious problem with the wall of shame method.
It goes against fundamental priniples of justice, like "innocent until proven guilty" and "right do defend yourself"
Yes if you trace down the IP number you might find a child molester, who gets scared off once he's out in the open. You might also find an average innocent Joe. Wether because (s)he downloaded the file "by accident" or was wrongfully pointed out by a forged IP adress, someone will never be able to clear his name. (to a large group of people, accused==guilty)
I could go on talking about how you could log anything, not just that dreaded kiddie porn, the same way, but it's too obvious and allready done.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
> There are sometimes valid reasons for abortions.
> There are never valid reasons for the
> exploitation of children. -
This is not where the analogy breaks down, it is
where you misunderstand it. I am not saying
anything about the validity of an abortion
or exploitation of children...
I am talking about the harassment of innocent
individuals, simply for their association with
the issue. A person who walks into a clinic that
performs abortions, for some other medical
procedure (contrary to what some may think,
most clicnics do not base their entire practice
on any 1 procedure) are harassed.
Even if you believe that abortion is NEVER
justified, this has nothing to do with it anyway.
I am talking about the harassment of innocent
people.
How would you react to find a group that had a
nude woman walk down the street...then took
the picture of every man who turned their head
twice to gawk at her, and pasted their pictures
up on a board with the title "Possible sex
Offenders"?
Whats worst...this banning of the porn itself
is silly. I can see banning the production of
child porn. Banning the mere free downloading
or posessuion of it, is ludicris. Banning
sex with children, or creation of "kiddie porn"
is an attempt to ban the exploitation of children.
Banning the simple (esp free) download or
possession does NOTHING to stop actual
explotation....it serves to PUNISH people for
their sexual orientation. It serves to drive them
further under ground. It serves only to take away
what may be their only outlet to releaiving their
sexual frustration.
Banning production is banning exploitation.
Banning mere posession or download is attacking
individuals, not for their actions, but for their
desires.
Can disgruntled sysops .... (Score:3)
publicised surveillance => public spoofs
Freenet (Score:2)
I don't, however, think that what these guys are doing is wrong - but anyone who gets caught-out by it only has themselves to blame.
--
A stunt, and not a very good one. (Score:3)
However, looking over the pages with the file names, few of them seem to be any different from the usual dross you find on the net or here about in spam or see in newsgroups. The names are rarely distinctive.
I wonder if this is a new trend - trying to find ways to look good so you don't get caught up in the recent controversies over the net and technology.
Social Limits (Score:2)
not a consequence of a distributed system (Score:2)
The ATT Crowds [att.com] system shows how to build these kinds of distributed systems without traceability.
Of course, ZeroPaid's approach is also socially questionable and rather naive from a social point of view. The assumption that most people who download their files are "guilty" is a bad one. Many of them may be other people on the same mission as they are. Others may be automated programs or just promiscuous downloaders. Concretely, wouldn't you assume that the FBI is searching for and downloading just those files?
Re:Stupid idea, lame implementation. (Score:2)
This is good, but not very useful on its own (Score:5)
Without matching the time and port to a specific user login at an ISP, this is mostly useless. But matching can be done quite easily, as most ISPs keep login records and will willingly give them over to law enforcement when asked or marketing research firms when paid.
This is good because it will make people a little nervous about using gnutella and similar distributed file systems to spread around questionable material. If it helps keep the worst pr0n and blatantly ripped copyrighted material off, then gnutella will be more acceptable in areas such as universities. PR stunts such as this will also raise the knowledge level of how anonymity on the internet is a rather dodgy concept. It is so very easy to track you through your IP address, but most of the clueless people believe the hype you are completely out of reach of repercussions when connected to the internet.
We'll have to see if other services like this one pop up, especially those who have an evil political agenda. Marketers who harvest IP info and match it up to other records in doubleclick to spam you more effectively. Imagine a company putting out files named "christs_love.txt", and seeing who DLs it, and then targeting them with religious ads. Or "suicide_help.doc", and then selling the results to insurance companies.
Expect to see more of this in the near future.
the AC
Re:Pedophiles/Statutory rape and the internet (Score:2)
I don't think I'm understanding you. Are you saying that people who assault
Acceptable behavior from a private citizen (Score:4)
Entrapment (Score:2)
It is too easy for people who aren't really pedophiles, but are just drawn into downloading these files just out of curiosity to get smeared and labeled by things like this.
My question is this: Is this medium really experiencing problems with people using it for transferring kiddie porn? If so, why aren't they targeting the people who upload it? Those are the people who are really the source of the problem.
While I don't have a problem busting people who really intentionally do something wrong, I think it is important to make sure we are getting the right people, not people who just get sucked into things due to stupidity or curiosity.
STUPID STUPID (Score:3)
> I'm all for freedom of data sharing but not when it comes to exploiting children.
Quick vote who here thinks he is really concerned about children and who thinks this guy just wants some attention.
Moreover while we all know molesting children should be illegal why to we legislate against child porn? Does not for profit child porn increase the number of children abused or decrease it?
Who gets busted in regards to free child porn? middle aged men sitting in their basements harming no one. While the commercial rings encourage the abuse of children the man next door just needs some conseling not jail time. Moreover does the availibility encourage more molestation of children or discourage it because their impulses are satisfied other ways?
Does the laws against non-commercial distribution make it easier to catch the actual molesters or harder by encouraging everyone else involved not to squeal so they themselves are not prosecuted.
We don't know the answers to any of the above questions. But we do know making non-commercial consumtion illegal seriously infringes on our rights.
How often have you heard someone say they support freedom of expresion except for child porn. What other crime can you commit in the privacy of your own home with GIMP and artistic skills (yes in order to make child porn laws enforceable they also made images which only appear to be child porn illegal).
The child porn issue is a wonderful wedge which convinces otherwise stalwart defenders of free expresion and privacy to cave and make allowances. It is the first step on a slippery slope which will eventually make illegal bondage photos.
First womens groups campaign and get images of women getting raped made illegal (sounds reasonable just like child porn). But then we need to make images which only appear to show women getting raped illegal as otherwise everyone may just claim they thought it was fake. Eventually all bondage porn is illegal. Then eventually all porn.
This is the issue where we finally see the true color of internet libertarians. The truth is they do nothave a great respect for the first ammendment and the willingness to tolerate that which offends them but rahter they just like porn so they don't want to see it banned.
Torches and Big Sticks (Score:2)
Zeropaid.com's behavior is extremely dishonorable. The fact that they are apparently making such accusations behind peoples back makes their actions increasingly disgraceful. There is no excuse to harass innocent individuals in the hope of catching a few criminals. I will, admit, however, that they would have every right to kick such persons off their service, if such a policy were evenly enforced.
The fact is that in the U.S.A. a person has the right to look at people of the opposite sex without being called straight; listen to Rush L. without being called a conservative; go into a Baptist church without being called a Christian; and, yes, even look at an ad of a scantily clad little boy resting on his fathers chest outside in a hammock (potentially scanned in as cute little boy and his hot dad in bed), without being called a pedophile.
Pedophilia is a crime that does untold amounts of damage. However, I think most people have enough trouble just trying to pay bills and getting their kids home safely. We don't need vigilantes making our lives even more difficult.
Re:they get what they deserve! (Score:2)
You are joking, aren't you, Atticka?
Re:Aww poo! (Score:2)
A question for you... (Score:2)
Now, a question. Suppose that someone drew child-porn pictures, using no live models. In other words, not a single child was exploited to create the image. Or perhaps they were created using other means which, again, do not involve actual children in any way, shape, or form. What would you say then?
See also baiting.org (Score:2)
At baiting.org" [baiting.org] there's some (semi)amusing logs of people trolling for pedos.
---
this law was overturned... (Score:5)
Seth
no presumption of privacy for logs? (Score:3)
As far as I know, there is no presumption that logs of your accesses will remain private on a particular service. People already post aggregate statistics (so many .edu hits, so many from Japan, etc.) that although posting information about individual IP addresses is quite a large step, it is probably legal.
That being said, the real issue is security through legal means versus security through mathematical means. Even if it a law made it illegal to publish non-aggregate server logs with specific access information, you still really aren't safe. Anybody could be sniffing your packets between dialup042.aol.com and pr0nserver.net, whether they publish logs or not.
The situation is analogous to the whole DeCSS issue. Sure, you could just use weak encryption and depend on the law to prevent people from doing something, but there's always going to be someone out there with the tools and the desire to get around that. You can make it illegal to keep or publish access logs, but the tools exist and someone will be able to monitor your access whether you like it or not.
Not that I'm interested in helping out child pornographers here, but if, for example, you're reading this in China and searching the 'net while planning your revolution, don't depend on any laws to prevent your identity from being known. Your only real protection on the Internet is strong cryptography, in this case probably augmented with anonymous proxies in several different countries with - shall we say - recalcitrant attitudes towards cooperation with global law enforcement.
Bottom line: you are ultimately responsible for your own safety and/or anonymity, not the government.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
It seems they think they're fighting some sort of actual crusade this way.
In a sense they are. Pedophiles are so hated and hunted that just logging the IPs should be enough to scare the vast majority of them off the main net. Of course someone will try to use those IP nums to hunt these people down (ye old FBI) and chances are, they will actually find these people. I happen to like the benefits of this approach.
It does disturb me a little that it is possible to keep tabs on people this way, but in the end, accountability for one's actions is a good thing. It's been said many times by others: if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of. Accountability is good, unless you're an anarchist :)
We have the possibility of losing a little privacy this way, but face it: no big corporation is going to be able to make much use of this information. Only law-enforcement types can. The main reason is because it is too much bother to do so ... most of us have dynamic IPs (even my DSL link) and the only way to get the information on the person at that IP at that moment is with the cooperation of the ISP. Can you imagine your local ISP bending over backwards to help out double-click on this? I don't think so.
Hmmm ... then again, AOL could do something, if they aren't already ...
Re:Hunny pots (a la Winnie the Pooh) (Score:2)
Meaning, if they start keeping track of patterns of a large number of users who visit their sites, they may be tipped off on specific persons' activities and investigate further. Of course, this is likely to be illegal as well, as it will violate some kind privacy law. They would need to show a reason to track the usage in the first place, rather than using the tracked usage pattern data as the reason to start investigating.
So definitely, I agree that while the government could not create and opportunity and induce people to commit crimes, I think they may (though I don't necessarily say they should) use the honeypot tactic just to get some lists of people to watch, perhaps.
Fun fun fun (Score:5)
Protocol (Score:2)
Actually, no, it isn't. (Score:2)
FYI
It was tested and thrown out in court, last year I beleive.
The chief litigant??? None other than Larry Flynt, of Hustler fame. Not too supprising there, eh?
Anyway, the crux of that case was a publication of his entitled "Barely Legal". "Barely Legal" seeks out eighteen and nineteen year old girls who look younger than they are, say fourteen to sixteen, and is every bit explicit as Hustler.
And it's all perfectly legal, and Mr. Flynt is making a good deal of money off of "Barely Legal"
john
Actually.. (Score:2)
Its the same with Warez, MP3z or Movies.
Though I doubt any country has the man power to nap every single person on the planet. But if they got a few of them, it'd be just enough to scare people away from using it.
Course then we'd have tons of "Free " banners everywhere...
:)
Not without precedent (Score:5)
The Wall-of-Shame fellow ought to be careful about slapping names like "pedophile" on random people. He's just begging for a libel suit.
What this should do (Score:2)
It should scare enough kiddie porn searchers because "Today kiddie porn."
Eventually, both camps will move toward freenet or another way to stay anonymous. I believe that anoynimity is a good thing in certain circumstances. It doesn't matter that this time the kiddie porn people are looking for it, because next time it could be someone else. Hell, next time it could even be you!
Here's an "Ask Slashdot": How can we remain as anonymous as possible on the internet while we're downloading porn^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmaking politicol statements?
I don't know what to say about this... (Score:2)
But no one has the right to force these things to disappear, least of all the governments. I don't think Gnutella will affect production of either of these much; the spread in popularity that might occur due to increased availability is more or less negated by the fact that no one makes any money off of it. But at least un the U.S., "free speech" is supposed to mean all speech, and that's simply the way it has to be; it's the only totally fair way. And yeah, it means we have to put up like crap like kiddie porn, but it's better than the alternative: a world where we have to watch very carefully what we say or totally innocent speech will land us in front of government and/or private death squads or worse.
My point in all this? It's one thing to protest the availability of kiddie porn on the Net. Protest all you want; you have as much of a right to free speech as the sickos do to download their pr0n. But this crosses the line. This is simple, outright invasion of privacy.
However, I do think it's time for a new feature to be added into Gnutella programs, one which could help cancel out these attacks on Gnutella users without changing the protocol. Simply put: an Ignore list. You put an IP in this list, and your machine will ignore any messages that come from it and reject any actual attempts it makes to connect. If enough Gnutella users do this, you do have an effective ban, but the fact that it's distributed means that the user has to be doing something particularly heinous (such as, say, a Wall of Shame) for everyone else to agree, and it would have to be more or less everyone else to care enough to make it work out.
And even if you didn't get a full ban (probably more like a Usenet Death Penalty, actually), it would still allow individuals to filter out servers they didn't like. A useful feature even if it never actually gets someone effectively kicked off of Gnutella.
Legal Nightmare (Score:4)
Want an even scarier scenario? Look at abortion doctors who get murdered. Look at the gay man who was murdered after the Jenny Jones show. Wasn't her show held responsible for liability? I can't really remember if they were. What if one of these whacko's, willing to kill abortion doctors manages to trace an IP back to the user, and decides to play vigilante. Some guy downloads youngtits.jpg and gets shot for it? You bet zeropaid will be hauled into court. Very extreme scenario, but not impposible.
Who gives these guys the right to play thought police? I am personally biased against public displays like this anyway. I feel that police blotters in newspapers are a violation of consitutional rights. This is no different. Public humiliation is unfair punishment. Not to forget the fact that you are being publically humiliated before even being convicted of anything. This is exactly like putting someone in the stockade to allow people to walk by and spit on them. I had a freind who came home one day to find a party being thrown at his house with the police handcuffing people. He was arrested as well. Some of the people were underage. His name was in the police blotter with the notation "endangering the welfare of a minor". Judge found him innocent of anywrong doing, but he still had the pleasure of explaining to his boss that he didn't have sex with a 15 year old. This is wrong, wrong wrong. Let me make this clearer. It is wrong, wrong, wrong.
The Wall Must Come Down (Score:3)
GeekPress comments (Score:2)
He said:
This is an interesting way for the internet community to police itself with respect to behaviour that people find objectionable. As anonymous digital transactions become more commonplace, one's reputation may be one's most valuable asset, just as it is in the world of on-line auctions. Systems which tie one's actions back to one's online identity help maintain the strength of these sorts of reputation effects.
And in a separate comment:
As Tim May once pointed out [oberlin.edu], it's always easier to shed a bad online reputation than to build a good reputation. Someone with a bad rep can just change his or her online handle and start with a clean slate. This is one of the major weaknesses of using reputation effects to punish bad behaviour (as opposed to reward good behaviour.)
-- Diana Hsieh
Re:Hunny pots (a la Winnie the Pooh) (Score:2)
The amount of information collected is surprisingly easy to manage, and quite often turns up the same small group of wannabe crackers. It doesn't take much to rattle an upstream provider and get their connection yanked. When we get scans from schools, the administrators are usually very happy to help nail the idiot. We fight over who gets to be "detective chief inspector Gerry Fitzgerald of Scotland Yard" (a UK joke) when calling American uni's. The internet polices itself.
Many in the security world are building similar systems. Rumours have it the FBI's new cyber centre is building a large scale probe monitoring system. They have been quietly approaching a number of schools and large ISPs asking for names and addresses of certain users connected to cyber-crimes, exactly as we do. From my understanding of American law, this is perfectly legal for them to do during investigations, as long as they do not try to use this as evidence in a court case. They can collect any type of incriminating evidence and keep it forever, and will use it later to deny security clearances for stupid script kiddies who graduate and go looking for government jobs, or anonymously refer some to local authorities.
Honeypots and baiting services like ZeroPaid will increase in number. I don't expect one of them to become the next amazon or ebay, but there is a market out there for identifying crackers/script kiddies/pr0n addicts/alcoholics/junkies to law enforcement, employers and insurance societies.
the AC
Re:Protocol (Score:2)
Re:they get what they deserve! (Score:2)
I'm not ashamed I fucked my (29 year old) girlfriend last night, should I do it in the streets now?
Actually, doing it in the streets is probably illegal in most states :)
Seriously though, no one ever said that the Internet is a private, anonymous place. If you're going to use it, use it the same way you would behave in public. If you have to scratch your crotch, do it discreetly. :) If you want to get stuff that you would rather not have other people know, wear shades or something (i.e. get an anonymizer) and go to places where you're sure you won't be tracked. Otherwise, it's your own fault, just like if you were buying a naughty magazine and your local Parish priest/Rabbi walked by and caught you paying for it.
The presumption of innocence still holds, because for anything to happen, the authorities would still have to build a solid case, haul that person into court and prove to the judge/jury (who are presuming the person is innocent) that said person is a pedophile.
Re:This is good, but not very useful on its own (Score:3)
Of course, maybe they have. Oops, here come the men in black...
Bottom line, if you're (l)using anything that involves direct connection over IP between your box and the other guy's box, you have to trust the server on the other end of the connection.
Meanwhile, why hasn't anyone posted that the logs mentioned in today's article are available as screenshots, not text, and are consequently unlikely to be indexed by search engines? I'd say the loggers went as far out of their way as they could to preserve the loggees privacy while still making it very clear that Everything You Download From Someone Else's Computer Can Be Logged.
Meanwhile, for sheer laughs, dig The Misanthropic Bitch [shutdown.com]'s list of referrers [shutdown.com].
And no discussion of stupid people on the 'net would be complete without a link to Baiting [baiting.org].
Re:I've seen this before (Score:2)
Don't worry, I won't post your IP address if you're curious enough to take a look. It's a great way to piss off perverts on IRC, too.
Re:Those sick minds... (Score:2)
Hunny pots (a la Winnie the Pooh) (Score:3)
I know there have been FBI sting operations for piracy and stuff like that, but being that the Internet is so uncontrollable, and we know the proliferation of illegal activities such as MP3 swapping, software piracy and porn is so rampant, I'd think that a large part of law enforcement's plans are to setup such honeypots to just keep track of demographic information on individuals who are prone to participate in certain kinds of illicit activities. I could imagine that the government could run some of the most successful porn sites, etc. to keep tabs on would be offenders.
In fact, Napster can be one such honeypot, and by the look of the thing with Metallica, has been used as such to some degree.
Isn't this something we need to be concerned with?
This is *sort* of good, yes. But there is a danger (Score:3)
"This anti-pedo web site brought to you by Nike, because only we know how to properly abuse children in factory conditions!"
Re:The good turning bad (Score:4)
In fact, your example of someone running the loser's underwear up the flagpole is actually better suited to the anti-porn argument. What if you stripped the loser naked and took pictures of him, and then ran that up the flagpole? Do the people who did that get to remain anonymous?
The reason child porn is illegal is because children can't be reasonably expected to consent to having pictures of them taken--never mind being raped while having their pictures taken.
Civil liberties cut both ways. And, by the way, so does free speech. If the KKK marched in my town, it is their right to do so. However, it is MY right to stand beside them and yell anti-racist slogans. Free speech does not guarantee anonymity. If you bother with U.S. legal precedent, you'll remember that the KKK tried to march in NYC with masks, and were told that they had to march maskless.
Furthermore, some kinds of speech are illegal (fire in a crowded theater, etc.), because they have social harms. Child porn certainly meets that test.
I do care about free speech, and have been a member of the ACLU for 10 years. But "free speech for me" arguments don't just come from people who want to censor--they come from people who don't want to be criticized. This is, in fact, what makes free speech work--people
allowed to say whatever they want, INCLUDING that what someone else said is wrong. That is, the benefit of free speech is that BOTH sides can express themselves. You seem to think that free speech means that someone else can't respond.
Besides that, let's not forget that what we're talking about here is the exploitation of children. It's not just producers who should be punished (and, again, judicial precedent agrees with me). I think people who produce it AND
consume it should be locked away in a deep dark cell, if not subjected to the same kind of torture they either (a) put kids through or (b) enjoyed watching. Every picture tells a story. These things were created out of real human suffering. DB
P.S. I'm only anonymous because Slashdot took forever to send me my password. My username is/will be wdball. And you can post that wherever the hell you want.
Your name on the Wall of Shame (Score:3)
Re:they get what they deserve! (Score:2)
OK, "Atticka" why aren't you using your real name? Got something to hide? And is your real, main e-mail address really at hotmail? Hmmm? Why don't we see your full name, address, and phone number on each post? Ashamed of something?
Of course not. Privacy isn't only about hiding criminal misdeeds or things you're ashamed of. It's about not having everyone knowing things they have no reason to know.
Sure, it's hard to argue that people who seek kiddie porn are nothing but scum. But, let's say that a site was out there logging attempted access to more "gray areas." Files like:
All of them are pretty shady, but unlike kiddie porn, they are all protected free speech. By tracking this, people could determine political, religious, and other "innocuous" affiliations. Information, generally, that they wouldn't normally have. Do you think potential employers should know if you're straight or gay? Have certain religious affiliations? Do you think your life insurance company has a right to know that you're interested in sky-diving, or perhaps you like rich french food with plenty of artery clogging cholesterol? You don't need to be ashamed of information for you to want it not made public. The second you have to start thinking about what they would think about the information you are looking for, you've already gone past the point of losing your rights.
The problem here is that people and institutions feel secure in jumping to conclusions based on vanishly small amounts of evidence. Download a file on bomb making, and you must be a terrorist. Download a file on bungee jumping, and you must be a bad insurance risk. Do we really want a world where you have to staop and think, now and again, while you're excercising your first amendment rights?
Re:The good turning bad (Score:2)
So, kiddie porn is "perfectly ok if you want to corrupt your mind", but posting IP addresses is not?! Oh, is it because you are afraid posting IP addresses may hurt somebody? What do you think kiddie porn does? It is not some innocent, victimless crime - kiddie porn is evidence of child abuse. The very existence of kiddie porn means some child was abused - but that is "perfectly ok" huh, since it is somehow "free speach" [sic]. Yeah.
I find it amazing that someone can defend kiddie porn as "free speach" [sic], and then complain about somebody using free speech to post IP addresses of people searching their hard drives. Amazing, and very pathetic.
Re:This is good, but not very useful on its own (Score:2)
I'm probably mistaken, but isn't that 'entrapment'?
Re:I think I posted about this before ... (Score:5)
If I saw my IP address on their Wall of Shame after searching for a innocuous term like the ones above clearly labeling me as someone who is looking for child pornography, I would sue them for defamation of character because they would have no proof that I actually desired child pornography, yet still went ahead and labeled my search as shameful and me a pedophile.
Also, they really should not consider themselves holier then thou when they clearly advocate Internet users to break the law by distributing copyrighted music. Remember, outside of the Fair Use portion of our copyright law, an author of a copyrighted work has the sole desecration of how their work is distributed. They can't pick and choose the laws that they wish to uphold.
On the contrary (Score:4)
Right, so they'll start using anonymous remailers and the like, spoiling THOSE for everyone else also.
There is only one way to make someone not do something: Make it against the person's interest to do it. This takes many forms:
1) Money (charge more for products you want to discourage, like cigarettes)
2) Shame (make fun of the person who broke the rule, like the Wall o' Shame in this article)
3) Punishment (typical method of law enforcement, tickets, fines, prison, etc).
#1 works very well because it applies to every instance. #2 is pretty rare because not everyone has any shame and other people want to be "polite" and "nice" (in quotes because real etiquette has no problem with punishing miscreants). #3, if spottily applied, loses its effectiveness. To me, this is the best argument in the world against creation of new laws (and removal of many existing laws). Having unenforced or unenforcable laws weakens the power of ALL laws. With the Internet's current technology, there is no reliable way to link an act to an individual. Making laws that assume there is only makes things worse.
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Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
I would think this would be a case where intent mattered, It is illegal anywhere to download kiddieporn, but is it illegal just to TRY to download it? I mean, this wasn't real porn, maybe some of the people who downloaded it were perverts, but all of them? maybe they were local law agency's planning on investigating, maybe they were people who were curious, maybe they were just idiots, but I seriously doubt they were all cold blooded pedophiles.
And if it was real porn, wouldn't the server be just a liable for posting it as anybody would be for downloading it? if not more so... Not to mention, if this were a 'real' police operation, it'd be entrapment and never hold up in court. I dunno, maybe our sex laws (in the world, not just the USA) have become so insane that just somebody downloading a text file that's entitled 'kiddieporn.txt' is reason enough to convict em or it's ok to entrap somebody if it's for something like this.
Re:This is good, but not very useful on its own (Score:2)
I don't think so. It's only entrapment if you weren't going to do something illegal, but the undercover agents talked you into it. If you did something of your own free will but actually you were talking to a cop, you have only yourself to blame. That's what generally happens when undercover cops pose as streetwalkers, for example.
Re:Child Pr0n is g00d (Score:2)
We as a free people should have the right to view pipctures of young girls in the nude, if this makes me horny then why should you care? What you do in the bedroom is nobody elses busiess right? And if my computer is in my bedroom and I don't have any little girls in there either am I doing anything wrong? If what I like is illegal to do, should I be prevented from thinking about it too?
Troll? He's obviously taken the unpopular side of the debate. I'm not a fan of child porn, but I agree with the AC. Don't forget that American laws don't apply to the rest of the world, either. Is the FBI going to go after the people with European IP addresses? If so, I don't imagine they'll be too successful.
For kicks, I'll mention that under Canadian law, possession of child porn is legal. There was a big uproar when the courts decided this, but the law hasn't been changed. (For reference, both distributing and producing it is still considered illegal here. Downloading it would be legal... The person hosting it for download is liable.)
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Re:Child Pr0n is g00d (Score:5)
Id. at 759-64 (footnotes and citations omitted).
Stupid idea, lame implementation. (Score:5)
The idea is stupid: there are plenty of legitimate reasons to want to look at suspicious looking files. If I found *real* pedophilia, I would probably report it to the police. But you would have to know what it is before doing this: hence you'd have to download it. Then just plain curiosity. With all that fuss about pedophilia on the internet, I'd be interested to actually find some to begin with, as opposed to just believing the media gossip on it. So merely downloading what looks like pedophilia does'nt mean that one is a pedophile.
Then the implementation sucks BIG TIME. Come on, youngass.jpg? Is a 21 yo ass OLD? I don't think so! It does'nt have anything to do with pedophilia. What about teenxxx.jpg? Last time I checked 18yo were both teens AND adults. Hardly qualifies for pedophilia! And then, there's plenty of teensomething.com sites out there that just carry playboy style pr0n.
So it's lame. The guy is just looking for attention. He got it!
Re: (Score:2)
Y2k (Score:2)
Freenet-ish caching in Gnut (Score:3)
-----------------------------------------------
This message is informational, not a flame:
I recently added Freenet-style automatic caching to gnut, one of the
gnutella clients. The way the caching algorithm works is that as well
as functioning as a normal gnutella node, gnut also watches the
query_response stream as it routes it to other clients. Every once in
a while, it chooses a random file offered for download in response to
someone else's search request, and downloads it into a local cache,
making it available to gnutellanet from a new location.
The idea is to propagate popular files to make it easier to find them
and to spread out bandwidth usage between servers. Popular files
would, presumedly, be requested more often and thefore occur in query
responses more often as well.
Since the system chooses random responses, it's quite possible that
some queries will occur from the cleaner without the user actually
requesting the file. In testing, my caching gnut client seems to
download random porn about 5% of the time.
I'm not saying that the cleaner is a bad idea, but I wanted you to be
aware that this new feature might lead you to put someone's IP address
up for the world to see even though they haven't tried to download
files from you. Since this feature is fairly new, it's unlikely to
have occurred yet, but if caching becomes widespread, it's likely that
you'll see download requests that have no real user behind them.
One way to prevent misinterpreting a download request is to keep a
list of GUIDs of searches that you've responded to, and use that list
to corroborate download requests. If a client downloads a file
without having searched for it, it's likely to be due to caching.
Just so you're aware,
Ray Jones
-----------------------------------------------
BTW, Gnut is available here:
http://www.umr.edu/~jjp
Re:Child Pr0n is g00d (Score:2)
An A.C. wrote:
To which the law's response (as quoted herein) is:
In other words, the whole reason possession of child pornography is illegal, is because a child had to be harmed to create it.
But what if child pornography is created without children? Or indeed, without any human beings at all? Would computer-generated child pornography -- artificial children rendered entirely by CPU farms, with no human actors at all, or with only adult actors -- be illegal?
If so, why?
Re:Acceptable behavior from a private citizen (Score:2)
Which prompts the question, in my mind anway, if the alleged victim doesn't really exist has a crime been committed?
Or in this case, if there are no illegal pictures to download, how can someone be accused of downloading illegal pictures?