Report: Net file-sharing exposes kids to porn

From Ted Barrett
CNN Capitol Hill Producer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Congressional investigators released a report Friday detailing Napster-like computer file-sharing programs that have become popular with teens who use it -- often unwittingly -- to trade pornography.

The origins of the pornography files are virtually untraceable for law enforcement and there is no technology that enables parents to filter it out before it arrives on their children's computer screens, the report said.

"This is not a victimless crime," U.S. Rep. Steve Largent, R-Oklahoma, said about the Internet programs that were originally designed to share music files. "This is a cancer eating away at the soul of this country."

While Napster usage has plummeted in the wake of a court order barring the service from swapping copyrighted songs, other file-sharing programs have seen their popularity significantly increase.

U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, who presented the report with Largent Friday at a news conference, said his investigators had searched for Britney Spears videos on one site called Aimster and that 70 percent of the files that were returned to them were, in fact, pornographic videos.

He also said that investigators found more than 500,000 users were logged onto Music City Morpheus, another site where porn files were mixed in with music files, when they did a spot check Thursday night. Another site containing a lot of pornography is called BearShare, according to the report.

The report was prepared for Waxman and Largent by the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee. Waxman is the ranking Democrat of the committee. Largent, who is not a member of the committee, has an interest in the issue of the proliferation of obscenity on the Internet. His interest stems from being a parents whose children could be explored to porn on the Web. This is the first issue on which he's worked closely with Waxman.

"This is so graphic and so accessible that it may be difficult for some parents to appreciate the magnitude of the current and potential problem," Waxman said. "But we must face it because it is facing our children."

'Benevolent neglect'

Waxman said that until this technology arrived, much of the pornography on the Web could only be viewed by people who paid for it with a credit card. In contrast, these programs are free, he said.

The members said they were sending a letter to the Attorney General John Ashcroft Friday alerting him to the problem and urging him to prosecute obscenity crimes.

"Most of this material is illegal. It violates the community standards that have been established for a long time by the Supreme Court," Largent said. "The porn industry itself has referred to the Department of Justice's handling of pornography for the last several years as 'benevolent neglect.' And I would agree with that."

In the absence of law enforcement solutions, and because existing Internet filters don't block these types of files, the report encouraged parents to inform themselves and their children about the new programs and how to avoid them.

Waxman said their investigators found that most of the people they surveyed under the age of 25 knew about the sites, but most of the people over 25 had never heard of them.

The report contained three Web sites where parents could find more information on the issue. They are: www.safekids.com, www.getnetwise.org, and www.netsmart.org.