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87–066 PDF 2003

STUMBLING ONTO SMUT: THE ALARMING EASE OF

ACCESS TO PORNOGRAPHY ON PEER-TO-PEER

NETWORKS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 13, 2003

Serial No. 108–8

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS BELL, Texas

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

PETER SIRH, Staff Director

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Deputy Staff Director

RANDY KAPLAN, Senior Counsel/Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHILIP M. SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 13, 2003 ............................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Koontz, Linda, Director, Information Management Issues, U.S. General

Accounting Office; John M. Netherland, Acting Director,

CyberSmuggling Center, Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security; Randy Saaf, president,

MediaDefender, Inc.; Daniel Rung, chief executive officer, Grokster,

Ltd.; and Patricia Greenfield, department of psychology, University

of California at Los Angeles ......................................................................... 25

Shelley, Mistress, ninth grade, and Master Rob, tenth grade ...................... 12

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Davis, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, prepared statement of ........................................................................ 3

Greenfield, Patricia, department of psychology, University of California

at Los Angeles, prepared statement of ........................................................ 70

Koontz, Linda, Director, Information Management Issues, U.S. General

Accounting Office, prepared statement of ................................................... 27

Netherland, John M., Acting Director, CyberSmuggling Center, Bureau

of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland

Security, prepared statement of .................................................................. 51

Rob, Master, tenth grade, prepared statement of .......................................... 18

Rung, Daniel, chief executive officer, Grokster, Ltd., prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 64

Saaf, Randy, president, MediaDefender, Inc., prepared statement of ......... 58

Shelley, Mistress, ninth grade, prepared statement of ................................. 14

Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California:

Charts from the Internet .......................................................................... 22

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 9

(1)

STUMBLING ONTO SMUT: THE ALARMING

EASE OF ACCESS TO PORNOGRAPHY ON

PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS

THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2003

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 2154,

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis (chairman of the

committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tom Davis, Waxman, Janklow, Miller,

McHugh, Putnam, Tierney, Shays, Turner, Ruppersberger, Duncan,

Kucinich, Cummings, Maloney, and Van Hollen.

Staff present: Peter Sirh, staff director; Melissa Wojciak, deputy

staff director; Keith Ausbrook, chief counsel; Randall Kaplan, counsel; David Marin, director of communications; Scott Kopple, deputy

director of communications; Drew Crockett, professional staff member; Teresa Austin, chief clerk; Joshua E. Gillespie, deputy clerk;

Nancy Scola and David McMillen, minority professional staff members; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Good morning, a quorum being present,

the Committee on Government Reform will come to order. We are

here today to examine a growing problem for parents across the

country: the ease with which children can access pornography, including child pornography, through file sharing programs on peerto-peer computer networks.

Peer-to-peer networks are Internet programs that allow users to

access each other’s computer files. Typically, people use these programs to share music, images, and video.

This technology is booming in popularity. At any given time, millions of people around the world are sharing their files. Napster,

one of the first file sharing programs, had 1.6 million people exchanging music files, before being shut down by court order because of copyright violations.

Newer file sharing programs have become even more popular.

KaZaA, one of the more popular networks, has been downloaded

more than 199 million times, with 4 million users searching and

sharing files at any given time.

Unlike Napster, these newer programs allow users to download

videos and pictures, in addition to music files, and they do not operate through central servers. Without a central on-line hub acting

as a filter, children can receive images and solicitations that norVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:04 May 22, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\87066.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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mally would be blocked. In addition, the programs are easy to install, and the electronic files can be downloaded free of charge.

This leads us to the problem we are here to examine today.

These networks have become an increasingly popular mechanism

for the trafficking of very graphic pornography, including child pornography. We will hear startling testimony today about this problem.

At the request of Congressman Waxman and myself, the General

Accounting Office conducted a study which found that child pornography is easily accessible on peer-to-peer networks.

Searches for child pornography by the GAO and the Customers

Services on file sharing programs produced hundreds of pornographic images, more than half of which was child pornography

and graphic adult pornography.

Also, research performed by MediaDefender, another of our witnesses, found that nearly 6 million pornography files were available for downloading on one popular peer-to-peer network in a recent 2-day period.

These findings are very disturbing, especially because file sharing programs are becoming increasingly popular with kids. Research has shown that more than 40 percent of the people who

download files from file sharing programs are under the age of 18;

and many of these pornographic images are appearing on our children’s computer screens—whether they ask for it or not.

Seemingly innocent searches for files using the names of popular

cartoon characters, singers, and actors produce thousands of graphic pornographic imagines, including child pornography.

I want to commend Congressman Waxman for bringing this important issue to our attention. We need to alert parents to this

problem and discuss what they and we can do about it. Research

performed by the committee staff has found that many of the tools

available to parents to prevent access to pornography on peer-topeer networks are ineffective. Many of the filtering devices within

file sharing programs have limitations, as well.

So what is a parent to do? The current dynamic leaves parents

in an untenable position; either watch over your child’s shoulder

every second while he or she is at the computer, or deny them use,

or run the risk of exposure to this disgraceful material.

The alarming ease of inadvertent, unsolicited access to pornography on these networks threatens our children, period. We are not

talking about bad language or simple bad taste. We are talking

about ugly, graphic imagines that have no place in our homes, and

that does not even include the child pornography that is just plain

illegal.

Today we will be releasing two reports: one by the General Accounting Office and another committee staff report. These reports

detail the problems of pornography on peer-to-peer networks and

evaluate the effectiveness of parental control devices. I would like

to thank all of our witnesses for appearing today, and I look forward to their testimony.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. I would now like to yield to Mr. Waxman

for an opening statement. I understand that, Mr. Waxman, at the

conclusion of our first set of witnesses, is going to walk us through

a demonstration of how a file sharing program works, and how

easy it is to access pornography using these programs. Mr. Waxman, thank you very much.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; I am pleased to join

with you in this hearing today to draw attention to Internet technology that gives kids easy access to incredibly graphic pornography.

I am on the dias because I am a Congressman, but I do not want

to speak as a public official. I want to speak as a parent and a

grandparent. I want to speak about how difficult it is to raise a

child today, and to raise some of these new issues that families

must begin to consider.

We have two reports that we are issuing today on Internet file

sharing programs: one from the General Accounting Office, and the

other was prepared by our investigative staff.

What is in these reports should concern every parent in America.

There is a new technology. It is widely available, and it allows

teenagers to download ‘‘x’’ rated videos directly into their home

computers. The most popular of these programs is KaZaA, which

has been downloaded nearly 200 million times.

Other popular programs include Morpheus, BearShare, and

Grokster. At any given time, there are millions of teenagers between the ages of 12 and 18 using these programs.

Now most adults I have talked to have never even heard of any

of these file sharing programs. I certainly had never heard about

it before it was brought to my attention by Robbie Barnett, whose

father is the counsel on the Democratic side of this committee. He

is our chief counsel of the Democratic side of the Government Reform Committee.

Robbie told his father about these Web sites, and I am pleased

that Robbie is here to testify about it, before all of us. I am also

pleased and want to welcome our chairman’s daughter, Shelley,

who is also going to be talking about this issue.

We are going to hear from both of them about how young people

are being exposed to pornography that is being foisted upon them,

as they go on to these file sharing sites.

I know that many people hear about these issues with regard to

the entertainment industry, because they threaten copyrights, and

I certainly care a lot about that issue, representing Hollywood.

But this hearing today is not about that issue. It is not about recording company profits or freedom on the Internet. It is about

something more basic: how to raise children safely in today’s digital

age.

We ask the company, MediaDefender, to assess how much pornography is available to teenagers when they log on the Internet

with KaZaA or other file sharing programs and what we learned

was astounding. At any given time, as the chairman also mentioned, there are 6 million pornographic files available to kids to

download. All of these files can be downloaded completely free of

charge, directly to any computer that is connected to the Internet.

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And if your child has access to a broadband connection, the most

hard care, triple-x videos imaginable can be downloaded in just a

few minutes.

Imagine if there was a library that held 6 million pornographic

videos and magazines. No parent would allow their children to

wander at will through its collections. But this is exactly what can

happen every day, in millions of homes across American. Whenever

a tech-savvy teenager logs on to programs like KaZaA, he or she

has access to millions of hardcore pornographic files.

But it is even worse than this. As GAO has pointed out in their

report, kids will be bombarded with pornography, even if they are

not looking for it. GAO did searches for popular entertainment figures, like Britney Spears and the Olsen twins; and for cartoon

characters like Pokemon.

What they found was that more than half of the files they retried

were pornographic. In fact, they even retried files that contained illegal child pornography.

Now parents may think they are doing something about this

problem, when they put in these parental control software programs, like Net Nanny or CyberPatrol. They think they can protect

their children from this pornography.

But our investigation also found that while these programs

might work to keep kids from pornography on the worldwide Web;

they do not work in the same way for file sharing programs. There

are some programs that can be configured, after some effort, to

block access to all file sharing programs.

But there is really nothing that works effectively in filtering out

pornographic files, once a child has access to these programs.

Now as legislators, we are always thinking about passing the

law. But I am not sure there is a legislative solution to this program.

In this case, parental awareness, parental involvement matter

more than legislation. Parents need to better understand these file

sharing programs, and know if their kids are using them. Parents

need to talk to their children about what to do when they come

across this pornography. In short, we have to close the on-line generation gap.

To help parents meet this challenge, Chairman Davis and I have

put together some straight-forward recommendations that we will

be distributing today. These recommendations will also be available

on our Web site.

I want to make clear that technical innovation on the Internet

is tremendously important. When we discuss problems and challenges with computers in the Internet, we need to keep in mind

that these technologies afford us many opportunities, and can be

a great research to our children.

We should be aware that in trying to help children deal with the

challenges of our times, we must not stifle the sort of innovations

that have made the Internet and computers such powerful tools.

But we also must make sure that the experiences on the Internet

are safe ones.

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I thank Chairman Davis for holding this hearing. It is an important one to get this issue out to people who otherwise might not

know about it, which is probably the case for 90 percent of the parents in this country.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Waxman, thank you very much; and

thank you very much for your leadership on this.

Are there any other opening statements? Mr. Janklow.

Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Chairman, thank you very, very much for convening this particular hearing. Mr. Chairman, in my previous capacity as Governor of South Dakota, we convened the first Statewide conference in the Nation, back in 2001, to deal with this

issue.

Let me, if I can, give you some additional statistics to add to

what it is; and material that you and Mr. Waxman so graciously

have provided.

We all know that if you go to whitehouse.com, you are going to

get the wrong thing. You are going to get a pornography site. Parents cannot deal with this. Parents cannot fix this. These are accidental things.

If you go to playstation.com, you are going to get a kids’ station.

If you make a mistake and hit an ‘‘m’’ instead of an ‘‘n’’. You are

going to go a pornographic site.

So if you to crazyhorse.org, you are going to get the Crazy Horse

memorial. If you go to crazyhorse.com, you are going to get a pornographic site.

These pornographic sites have cookies in them, which then make

it so that you cannot get them off your screen. The more you try

and delete them, they more they are added to the scenery.

As a matter of fact, back in 2001, the Federal Trade Commission,

in 2 weeks, shut down 5,500 sites that were called copycat sites,

where people were able to mistakenly get onto these things.

You talk about the cartoon network. If you hit

cartoonnetwork.com and make a mistake in the spelling, there are

15 different derivatives of that, that will give you a pornographic

site for children that they cannot get off of their computers.

There are 41 variations of Britney Spears’ spelling. Only the accurate spelling of Britney Spears will get you into a good site. All

the rest of them will get you into a pornographic site, that children

will get their hands on.

If you talk about how many sites there are, in 2001, according

to google.com, there were 1.4 billion registered domains; 168 million, approximately 12 percent were pornographic sites; 12 percent

of 1.4 billionsites. That is about 168 million pornographic sites in

the world for children.

According to a study done by the University of New Hampshire

of students age 10 to 17, 20 percent of these students that were

surveyed by the University of New Hampshire, these students had

received unwanted sexual solicitations during the previous year.

Three percent had been actually asked to meet off line, had been

called on the telephone, or sent money or gifts by a male, which

are called aggressive solicitations.

Also, according to that survey, 97 percent of the solicitors were

strangers; but something more important, only 10 percent of the

students indicated that they had ever told their parents or teachers

about having been contacted on these sites.

In addition to that, the sexual solicitations, one of the things we

have to recognize, we all argue about the first amendment. Seventy

percent of these solicitations of these students, according to the

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University of New Hampshire’s survey, were done at home. They

were not done in school and they were not done in libraries.

But I also submit, Mr. Chairman, the first amendment was never

written to take care of predators. It was never written to allow

anybody to prey on our children.

Also, if you look at what we need to do, we need to do something,

in a legislative sense, to get these people away from computers, to

scoop them off the street. Where we have mountain lions that attack people, where we have grizzly bears that attack people, we

deal with them.

These predators are worse than an animal. An animal will just

kill you. These predators will prey on people and destroy them as

human beings.

So Mr. Chairman, I thank you for convening this meeting. This

is something that is incredibly important, and it is a far bigger

problem than any of us can imagine. You stumble onto these sites.

You cannot get off of them.

Once children start being subjected to these kinds of things, it

is a very, very quick maneuver to get them to the point where they

continue moving forward with it. Thank you very much.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much; well, if there are

no other statements, will move to our first panel of witnesses. We

have Shelley, a 9th grader, and Robert, a 10th grader, who will discuss their experiences with these file sharing programs.

It is the committee’s policy, the ladies go first, Robert; so Shelley?

STATEMENT OF MISTRESS SHELLEY, NINTH GRADE, AND

MASTER ROB, TENTH GRADE

Mistress SHELLEY. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Waxman,

and members of the committee, thank you for allowing me to be

here today to discuss problems related with Internet file sharing

programs.

I am a 15 year old ninth grader from Falls Church, VA. Kids my

age across the country are using file sharing programs to retrieve

a variety of items. I, personally, have many friends who use programs like KaZaA and Grokster.

These programs are easily accessible and not complicated. All

you do is log onto the Internet, go to the program Web site, and

download the program, which does not take very long.

Once you have the program on your computer, it is very simple

to search and share files; and the file sharing is free of charge and

downloads in a matter of seconds.

Many of my friends use programs like KaZaA. When they search

for materials by specific singers or actors, they are often surprised

with their results. For example, when you type in Britney Spears,

some files with her name come up. However, some of the file names

that come up contain pornographic language; language that I

would rather not repeat before the committee.

The vast majority of files that appear have pornographic language and, if downloaded, become visuals. Most of the descriptions

suggest that the file is not related to the search, Britney Spears,

at all.

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My friends are very uncomfortable and apprehensive about using

these programs. They can be very scary. Minimal effort is required

to find this kind of pornography. Among teenagers and kids, this

is a widespread situation.

Although this is a big problem for kids my age, my main concern

is for the younger children. You have to work very, very hard not

to get pornography when you use these programs. Without proper

parental supervision, young kids can be exposed to this harmful

material at a very young age.

I thank you for allowing me to give my views on this very important topic, and hope you take my words into consideration, thank

you.

[The prepared statement of Mistress Shelley follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Rob, thanks for being with us.

Master ROB. Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Waxman, and the rest of the Members here today. I am

here to share with you a kids’ perspective on file sharing programs.

In the past few years, the popularity of file sharing programs has

increased dramatically. A major group of users consists of high

school students, such as myself, and it is not hard to see why. Rather than spending $16, $18, or even $20 on a CD, any teenager with access to the Internet can type in a few words and

download any song, free of charge. This simple action saves both

time and money. Unfortunately, there are many problems with

these file sharing programs.

I know that record companies worry about copyright issues, but

most kids are not too concerned about that. A real problem, though,

is the fact that file sharing programs provide easy access to illegal

pornography.

Even worse, much of this pornography is deceptively shared

under the names of popular singers or actors. A child searching for

a song or a movie is likely to stumble upon imagines or videos of

a pornographic nature. Most people using file sharing programs

have probably stumbled upon pornographic files at one time or another.

Even if your computer has a parental control program installed,

it probably will not work. For the most part, file sharing programs

go unnoticed, both by parental control programs and by parents

themselves.

Most kids are aware of these problems, and have learned to deal

with them by filtering their searches or skipping over pornographic

material. However, many parents do not realize the prevalence of

pornography on file sharing programs, and are understandably surprised when they learn that their teenager may have been exposed

to inappropriate material.

It is important that we bring this issue into the public conscience, so that parents can discuss these issues with their teenagers. In order to protect teens from viewing illicit material, the

ease of access to pornography on file sharing networks must be addressed; thank you.

[The prepared statement of Master Rob follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Well, thank you very much. I know you

are both eager to get back to school. [Laughter.]

Let me just ask each of you, do you think more parental supervision is needed when kids are using these services?

Mistress SHELLEY. Yes, I do. Parents need to be aware and more

involved with their child’s use of the Internet, especially file sharing software.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Rob.

Master ROB. I do. It is important that parents are aware of this

problem, and that they watch their kids, to make sure that their

kids are not looking at anything they should not be looking at.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Well, let me just say for the record, I just

only became aware of the nature of the seriousness of this as we

were preparing for this hearing. I would just say, as a concerned

parent, I want to do everything I can to remove the file sharing

from computers that our kids use.

This is really very alarming to me, as a parent who thought he

was tech-savvy on this kind of thing, to see how far this has gone.

Mr. Waxman, do you have some questions?

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you

both for your testimony. We often hear from witnesses who have

represented different organizations or trade associations or economic interests. They come in with their prepared testimony,

screened by their lawyers and very carefully calculated, and they

get some legislation across.

But the two of you have given us a perspective that we do not

usually see, and that is from two young people, who know more

about using the Internet than most adults.

Let me just ask you a technical question, because parents get

these screening mechanisms to stop their kids from going on certain Internet sites.

What is the difference between the Internet site and file sharing?

Will those filters not stop any transmission of pornography to a

young person on the Internet? Rob, do you want to talk about that?

Master ROB. Well, the filters are designed to stop the Internet

sites. Since this problem on file sharing programs is relatively new

and they have not been around for too long, the programs probably

are not designed to handle these kind of programs.

Mr. WAXMAN. So if a parent bought software to put in to block

their kids from getting any pornography off an Internet site; for instance, our colleague, Mr. Janklow, went to a number of Internet

sites that might lead to pornography; so parents could block those.

But if the kids were using file sharing to get music, they get

bombarded with pornography and that is not blocked. Is that what

you are telling us?

Master ROB. Yes, most programs do not block these file sharing

programs. I am sure some do, but not all of them.

Mr. WAXMAN. Shelley, most of us have never heard about this

problem. I did recently, but for most of us, it has been very, very

recent.

Do most of your friends, most of the kids in school, know about

all of this?

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Mistress SHELLEY. Yes, I was one of the last actually, of my

friends, to know about this. All my friends have been doing it for

quite some time. [Laughter.]

Mr. WAXMAN. And did you tell your parents immediately?

[Laughter.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. I think it was last night. I think I can say

that, because I was telling her about the hearing. [Laughter.]

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, I think it is important for parents to know.

They think they know a lot, but kids know things that we never

even imagined, and that is why we have to, as parents, and in my

case, grandparent, talk to our youngsters about what is going on;

what is new; and try to search what they are being exposed to that

we never would have even imagined, such a short time ago.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you both of you for being

here.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

I know they need to get back, but Mr. Shays, I know you wanted

to ask one quick question.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes, I have just a very quick question.

I voted against, and I probably made a mistake, the whole issue

of the V-chip, as it related to TV. This is designed so that parents

can make sure their kids do not watch certain TV programs. But

my logic was that the parent had to ask the child how to set the

TV, so that the kid could not watch it.

I want to ask you, Shelley, do you think that young people know

the Internet and know tech issues better than their parents?

Mistress SHELLEY. Yes. [Laughter.]

Definitely; I am always helping my mom or dad with the computer. So if there was a program that they had to set up for their

children, their children would be the ones setting it up, in most

cases.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Chris, we are going somewhere I do not

think we need to go. [Laughter.]

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you; I have no more questions.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you; we are going to do a demonstration now with Mr. Waxman, and I am going to ask the witnesses to leave the room. But let me just say to both of you, thank

you very much. You have contributed a lot to our understanding of

this; thank you very much.

[Applause.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Waxman.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, Mr. Chairman, as part of helping parents

learn more about these programs, we have arranged for a demonstration of how these programs work.

Before we start this demonstration, I want to warn the members

and the audience that even the names of the files can contain offensive and pornographic images.

We are going to show the unredacted names on the screens in

the room, because that is what our children are actually seeing.

But we also have posters up that display the results in a redacted

form, for those who find this less offensive.

So without viewing the sites themselves, let us just see what kids

see when they have this pornography pushed upon them.

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Ms. SCOLA. Thank you, Chairman Davis and Congressman Waxman. I am going to be showing you today how easy it is to

download these file sharing programs and to use them. The most

popular of these programs is KaZaA, and I will be downloading

that program.

You can just go to any Internet browser, as long as you have an

Internet connection set up. Go to a search engine and type in

KaZaA. The first site pops up. Click on it. That brings you to the

KaZaA Web site. Click on download now. This is free software. It

requires no personal information.

Since we are on a dial-up connection here today, I am going to

skip over the actual download part. It would take too long.

Once the software is installed on your desktop, you double click.

That brings up a search field. You type in, let us say, Britney

Spears, and it will search for images of Britney Spears.

Veryquickly, this is what you get.

I know it is difficult to see, so we did some searches yesterday.

I am going to zoom in on the results. These are the first several

results you get for searching for Britney Spears.

If you search for Olsen twins, teenage actresses, this is what you

get; and if you search for Pokemon, the cartoon character, this is

what you get.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. The graphics are far worse, I assume. The

graphics then that you get when you download are far worse, the

language.

Ms. SCOLA. Yes.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, Mr. Chairman, what we see is a menu then

offered that, just looking at the titles of the menu, is pretty disgusting, in and of itself. But if you then clicked on any of these

items, kids would immediately be led to a pornographic site.

I want to thank Nancy Scola, who is a professional staff member

from the committee, who has worked on this investigation and

other investigations for her presentation to us. It illustrates how

simple it is, and how readily available it is for kids who might admire Britney Spears to be led to be confronted with a pretty raw

kind of pornography.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Waxman, let me also say, my understanding, in talking to some of the kids that use this is, some of

the things that appear innocuous, in terms of their description

when you download them are, in fact, way over the line. There is

no warning whatsoever. They think they are downloading something that is decent and it is not; so thank you very much.

Let me move to our second panel now. I would like to thank our

witnesses for appearing today. We have Linda Koontz from the

General Accounting Office; John Netherland, from the Department

of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Randy Saaf, of MediaDefender; Daniel Rung from the

file sharing company, Grokster; and Dr. Patricia Greenfield from

UCLA’s Department of Psychology.

It is the policy of the committee that all witnesses be sworn before they testify. If you will just stand with me and raise your right

hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you all for being here with us

today. In order to allow time for more questions and discussion, if

you could limit your testimony to 5 minutes. Your written statements are going to be in the record.

I think, for the most part, we have read the statements, and we

already have some questions in mind. But it would be helpful, I

think, for everybody to take about 5 minutes and sum up.

You have a light there in front that when the green is on, you

keep going; when it is orange, that means you have a minute to

sum up; and when it is red, your 5 minutes are up, if you could

try to sum up. That way, we can get through it quickly and get to

the questions.

Thank you very much, and let us start with Ms. Koontz. Thank

you very much for being here.

STATEMENTS OF LINDA KOONTZ, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION

MANAGEMENT ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE;

JOHN M. NETHERLAND, ACTING DIRECTOR,

CYBERSMUGGLING CENTER, BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION AND

CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; RANDY SAAF, PRESIDENT, MEDIADEFENDER, INC.;

DANIEL RUNG, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, GROKSTER,

LTD.; AND PATRICIA GREENFIELD, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES

Ms. KOONTZ. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank

you very much for having us here to discuss the results of our work

on the availability of child pornography on peer-to-peer networks.

We have provided the results of our work to you today in a report

that is being released.

To summarize, I would like to provide a little more background

on peer-to-peer networks, and also discuss the ease of access to

child pornography and peer-to-peer networks; the risk of inadvertent exposure of juvenile users to pornography; including child pornography on these networks; and the extent of Federal law enforcement resources available for this effort.

To build a little bit on what we have discussed earlier, our first

chart shows the two main types of peer-to-peer networks. On the

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left, it shows the centralized network, where there is a central

server or broker that maintains a directory of all the shared files

that the users have, and directs traffic between those users.

The centralized model was employed by Napster, which was the

original peer-to-peer network. Because much of the material traded

on that network was copyrighted, Napster, as the broker of these

exchanges, was vulnerable to legal challenge, and this eventually

led to their demise late last year.

On the right side of the chart, we had the de-centralized model,

which is what the most popular peer-to-peer networks are now

using. In this model, the users are enabled to directly locate each

other and interact.

On our next slide, we found that child pornography, as well as

other types of pornography, are widely available and accessible

through peer-to-peer networks. We use KaZaA, a very popular file

sharing program to search for image files using 12 key words that

are known to be associated with child pornography on the Internet.

As shown in our chart of over 1,200 items we identified, about

42 percent of the file names were associated with child pornography, and about 34 percent were associated with adult pornography.

On the next slide, we show another KaZaA search, where we

worked with the Customs CyberSmuggling Center, to use three key

words to search for and download child pornography images.

As you can see on this chart, this search identified 341 files, and

about 44 percent of these were classified as child pornography, and

about 29 percent as adult pornography.

I think more disturbing, however, was that we found that there

is a significant risk that juvenile users of peer-to-peer networks can

be inadvertently exposed to pornography, including child pornography in using these networks.

In searches, again, on KaZaA, using three innocuous search

terms, that would likely be used by juveniles, we found that of the

files that were returned, almost 50 percent of them were pornography, including a small amount of child pornography.

In regard to resources, we were not able to specifically quantify

the amount of law enforcement resources that are devoted to peerto-peer networks, because largely Federal law enforcement agencies

do not track their resources by the specific Internet technologies.

However, these agencies indicated that as the tips are increasing

in this area, they are increasing their efforts and their resources

that are allocated to it.

That concludes my statement. I would be happy to answer questions at the end of the panel.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Koontz follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Netherland.

Mr. NETHERLAND. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of

the committee, it is a privilege to appear before you today to discuss the CyberSmuggling Center’s efforts to investigate child exploitation that is facilitated by the Internet.

The CyberSmuggling Center, led by the Bureau of Immigration

and Customs Enforcement, will continue to combat the sexual exploitation of children and the unfettered accessibility and illegal

bartering of child pornography on the Internet via peer-to-peer file

sharing networks.

The peer-to-peer file sharing networks are but one more means

by which pedophile predators ply their trade and victimize our children; and the CyberSmuggling Center is expanding its investigative efforts to encompass this new technology.

The CyberSmuggling Center, located in Fairfax, VA, is recognized both nationally and internationally as a leader in the area

of child exploitation investigations. The CyberSmuggling Center

utilizes its resources and cutting edge technology as a means to

protect our Nation’s children from sexual abuse.

We have had a number of great successes in identifying and apprehending pedophiles. Recent investigative successes include: Operation HAMLET, a global investigation that resulted in the complete dismantlement of a ring of pedophiles who were molesting

their own children and posting the images on the Internet for

worldwide consumption. Many of these pedophiles were parents.

The CyberSmuggling Center, in its coordinating role, identified

and rescued more than 100 children who were subjected to this torturous environment. The majority of these children were American

citizens.

Another example is Operation MANGO, which shut down an

American-owned beach-side resort for pedophiles located in Acapulco, Mexico. The resort was a haven for pedophiles that traveled

to the facility for the sole purpose of engaging in sex with minors.

As a result of this investigation and others, the government of

Mexico recently created a Federal task force to address crimes

against children in their country.

The CyberSmuggling Center’s technological capabilities include

the National Child Victim Identification Program, a dynamic oneof-kind information system that will eventually contain all known

and unique child pornographic images. The primary goal of the program is to help law enforcement agencies throughout the world locate and rescue children who have been victimized for sexual purposes.

This committee has asked that I address two specific concerns:

one, the ease of access in transmission of child pornography on

peer-to-peer file sharing networks; and two, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s efforts in tracking and investigating suspects that use this technology for criminal purposes. It

was our privilege to assist the GAO in this study.

Considering the fact that there are now more than 20 peer-topeer software applications available on the Internet, and that these

applications are conducive to the unfettered transmission of images, both legitimate and illegal, the CyberSmuggling Center has

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taken the position that peer-to-peer networks do increase the likelihood of both intended and unintended exposure to child pornography.

The investigative effort of the CyberSmuggling Center, while extensive and highly successful, have been geared to attack the problem of child exploitation on a reactive basis. This posture is dictated primarily as a result of the enormous volume of child pornography-related tips received and processed by the CyberSmuggling

Center.

The CyberSmuggling Center handles more than 1,500 tips per

month. Each tip requires an initial review, resulting in a determination as to whether further investigation is warranted.

If referred for investigation, then evidence must be gathered and

a perpetrator identified. This is a time consuming, labor-intensive

process. The majority of the CyberSmuggling Center’s resources are

dedicated to tip response activities.

In contrast, the investigation of peer-to-peer networks can be

classified as proactive in scope; that is, investigators with no prior

information can actively enter publicly accessible file sharing networks, to detect illegal activity.

Recognizing the potential use of peer-to-peer file sharing by

pedophiles, the CyberSmuggling Center re-assigned an intelligence

analyst to begin examining these types of cases in February 2002.

Today, the CyberSmuggling Center has referred more than 20

leads to the field, resulting in several successful enforcement actions, including the arrest of a known child abuser.

Although we have only scratched the surface, peer-to-peer file

sharing networks have received and will continue to receive increased scrutiny by the CyberSmuggling Center. Searches can be

tailored to reveal imagines of child pornography, prosecutorial

venue can be claimed at either end of the transaction, evidence is

easily captured and preserved on a real-time basis, and violators

are readily identifiable by investigators with the requisite training

and experience. For these reasons, peer-to-peer file sharing investigations are likely to increase.

In conclusion, let me reiterate that while we must, by necessity,

continue to focus the majority of our attention and resources on the

voluminous tips generated by outside entities, the CyberSmuggling

Center will continue to expand its investigative efforts in the area

of peer-to-peer file sharing.

I would like to thank the distinguished members of this committee for the opportunity to speak before you today, and I welcome

the opportunity to answer any questions that you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Netherland follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Saaf, thank you for being with us.

Mr. SAAF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Waxman,

and the rest of the committee. MediaDefender was founded in the

summer of 2000, with the general business calling to fight Internet

crime.

The biggest area of Internet crime in the summer of 2000 was

obviously music piracy. That was because the peer-to-peer software

program Napster only allowed the trading of music. You could not

trade videos or images on that network. At the same time, there

was a network that was created called the Gnutella Network,

which was much smaller than Napster, but allowed the trading of

all sorts of rich media files.

We observed a lot of pornography going across that network. It

was pretty much the only peer-to-peer network where you could get

pornography at the time. We also saw an alarming quantity of

child pornography being shared on that network.

MediaDefender immediately called the FBI and the Department

of Justice, and tried to alert the agencies to that fact. They received

little attention.

Today, KaZaA is the 800 pound gorilla of peer-to-peer networking with, as you have mentioned, over 200 million downloads

to date. Most of the video files and pictures on KaZaA are adult

in nature.

There is the same child pornography problem that we observed

in the summer of 2000, except it is 100,000 times larger now. There

is 100,000 times the quantity of pornography and child pornography.

Porn spreads like music on a peer-to-peer network. The files are

large. There is a high demand for it, and the copyright law is easily

avoided on the networks.

MediaDefender took data from March 6th to March 10th of this

month, to present some findings on child pornography on these networks. MediaDefender found 328,349 unique Internet addresses

with files that appeared to be child pornography on them.

We also found 321,153 unique files that appeared to be child pornography by their name and file type. There are 4 million simultaneous users on the peer-to-peer networks at any one time approximately. The point is basically that there are a lot of users, and that

all of them can get child pornography whenever they want.

Peer-to-peer users tend to feel a guiltless sense of anonymity. I

want to say here that they should not feel anonymity at all in these

networks. These are open, public networks, and it is easy for a

company like MediaDefender to find these perpetrators and introduce them to law enforcement officials.

This is not like music, where law enforcement officials have been

able to say, we cannot enforce the law against every single individual; there are too many. Child pornography is too dangerous for

that.

Already, as we have heard, law enforcement officials around the

Nation have started to actually prosecute cases on the peer-to-peer

network. It is a relatively straight-forward procedure. A company

like MediaDefender can gather the evidence and hand it over to a

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law enforcement official, where they conduct a normal child investigation Internet pornography case.

Just because it was easy and free to get the child pornography,

that does not mean it gets to skirt the child pornography laws.

We also took some statistics on businesses, schools, and Government institutions that have potential child pornography on their

networks, and I would like to go over those now.

This alarming trend of not caring about pornography on the networks can be seen in schools. We found over 800 universities in the

Nation that had files on their networks that appear to be child pornography in nature.

I do not know how many schools there are in the United States,

but I can assure you that most of the big schools are on that list.

I do not want to start naming names right now, but I will say

that seven out of eight of the Ivy League schools had a combined

total of over 190 computers that had files that appeared to be child

pornography on their computers, sharing to the peer-to-peer network.

Hundreds of large companies are in this list, as well. It could be

very embarrassing. I suggest that colleges and businesses start

taking a proactive approach to get the child pornography off their

networks, or block the peer-to-peer networks altogether.

The worst thing that MediaDefender found in its study was the

government institutions that had child pornography on their networks; thousands of government computers with files that appear

to be child pornography on them. It is ridiculous that Government

resources could be used for something so unworthy as this.

The three most notable and largest on the list that we found

were NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Department

of Defense.

What is very alarming about these is that they are secret or defense in nature; and what is really scary is, if pornography is

accidently being shared on these networks, who knows what else

is accidently being shared? Obviously, this is an information technology oversight.

There are no magic technology solutions for fixing the problem

of pornography or child pornography on the peer-to-peer networks.

Filtering only mildly helps the problem. This stuff changes so fast,

everybody gets around the filters. It is just too easy.

There are 1 billion files in a constant state of flux on the peerto-peer networks. You cannot identify what every file is.

Porn and child pornography will be an ever present problem on

the peer-to-peer network, just like music piracy is. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Saaf follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Rung.

Mr. RUNG. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the

committee, my name is Daniel Rung. I am the founder of Grokster,

one of the more popular file sharing programs on the Internet

today.

I would like to thank you for inviting me to testify today on file

sharing and pornography, and in particular, child pornography.

The Internet is a communications tool that allows for the easy

storage and virtually instantaneous transfer of all types of information, including pornographic material. The Internet pornographic

industry is generally considered to be one of the most successful

and widespread on the Internet. One could argue that pornography

is ubiquitous on the Internet.

One of the side effects of this ready availability of pornographic

material is children’s easy access to it, either intentionally or

accidently.

Before the development of peer-to-peer file sharing programs,

pornography could be easily found on free and pay Web sites, news

groups, FTP sites, and so on. Many fairly effective tools were then

developed to allow users to filter out certain types of Internet content, including pornography. Then peer-to-peer file sharing programs were developed and launched on the Internet.

Although these file sharing programs were not designed with

pornography in mind, today’s file sharing programs provide a new

avenue of access to this type of material. Since today file sharing

programs have no control over the contents that users share with

other users, it is easy for a child user to encounter such pornographic material.

It has been estimated that as much as 50 percent of the files created through file sharing programs consist of pornographic material; and unfortunately, just like the rest of the Internet, some unknown amount of that is child pornography.

In an attempt to allow users to filter out objectional material,

many file sharing programs now have what we call bad word filters. These filters can be set to screen out much objectional material from the search results.

Additionally, the providers of third party content filtering programs such as Net Nanny and Cybersitter have been successfully

developing techniques to allow users to filter or block objectional

material from file sharing programs.

What, specifically, can parents do to keep this material from

their children? First, educate your children, as appropriate for their

age, to be aware that this type of material exists and what to do

if they should encounter it.

Second, supervise your children while they are using the Internet. Observe what Web sites they visit and what programs they are

using.

Third, consider restricting your children’s level of user access on

the computer. Using settings in the Windows operating system,

parents can create a special account for each child called a restricted user account.

This restricted user account has default settings that will block

the child from installing any software on the computer, including

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peer-to-peer file sharing programs. I understand these restricted

user accounts may also be customized to allow varying amounts of

access to all the functions in the Windows operating system.

Fourth, install and properly configure one of the numerous content filtering programs. Some can be said to filter or even block access to file sharing programs. Periodically, review the programs installed on the computer to ensure that they meet with your approval.

Last, when installing any file sharing software, go through all of

its settings, to ensure that they are set to block any objectionable

material. Set up the password protection if it is available in that

program. To summarize, educate, supervise, restrict, filter, and

configure.

As a parent and grandparent, I share this committee’s concern

with child pornographers and their customers. We at Grokster

maintain a very clear and open policy in relation to child porn. We

do not want child pornography on Grokster.

We encourage users to report this type of material to the appropriate authorities. We have previously cooperated with law enforcement officers, and would gladly do so again to combat child pornography.

Sadly, child pornography continues to be available through the

Internet. There are already many existing laws that deal with child

pornography. Using these laws, child pornographers and their customers can be brought to justice to stop their abuse of defenseless

children.

The law enforcement resources brought to bear on this problem

to date seem to be too little. I urge the members of this committee

to bring more law enforcement resources to bear on this continuing

problem.

Thank you for holding this important hearing, and I look forward

to working with the committee on these issues in the future.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rung follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Rung, thank you, and thank you for

being with us today.

Mr. RUNG. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Dr. Greenfield.

Ms. GREENFIELD. Mr. Chairman, Congressman Waxman, distinguished members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today.

My name is Dr. Patricia Greenfield. I am a developmental psychologist and professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA.

I currently direct the UCLA Children’s Digital Media Center, under

a grant from the National Science Foundation.

I am a member of the National Academy of Science’s Board on

Children, Youth, and Families; and I participated in their workshop on non-technical strategies to reduce children’s exposure to inappropriate material on the Internet.

It is an honor to talk with you today about pornography on peerto-peer file sharing networks, as it relates to child development and

families. But before I speak on that subject, I want to add one technical word to the presentation so far.

In our lab, in preparation for this, we did some tests of the internal filters that KaZaA provides. No. 1, they are password protected,

so presumably a parent could keep a child from interfering, once

they set them; and second, we found two of the three filters proved

very successful. One filter, for example, allows you to filter out all

images, and I think that works very, very well.

So I want you to keep that in mind, because you could perhaps

require these types of filter systems or strongly suggest them to be

in all of these file sharing programs.

Now I want to move to my prepared remarks that relate to child

development, families, and pornography. I want to focus on three

questions, and I will begin with these questions and a summary of

my answers. Fuller answers can be found in my written testimony,

as well as references to the relevant research that I am drawing

on.

First question, what effect does pornography in peer-to-peer file

sharing programs have on children’s development? Let me give an

example of such effects.

One study found that 13-year-olds and 14-year olds became more

accepting of pre-marital and extra-marital sex, after seeing sexual

relations between unmarried, but not married, partners on video.

This example shows one route by which pornography can affect the

moral values of young teenagers.

Equally important, use of pornography can be an important additional risk factor for sexual violence, when used heavily by boys already at risk for anti-social behavior.

A study of long-term memories of impactful experiences with sexual media in college students indicates that inadvertent or unintentional exposure can be both frightening and disgusting to children

and teens, especially girls.

In sum, the evidence indicates that pornography and other

sexualized media can influence sexual violence, sexual attitudes,

moral values, and sexual activity of children and youth.

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Second question, what are the challenges parents face in reducing their children’s access to pornography on peer-to-peer networks

and elsewhere? We have already heard a lot about this.

One important challenge that has been mentioned is the fact

that these programs, originally developed for music, have recently

become the most popular use of the Internet for pre-teens and

teens; occupying an average of 32 minutes a day, and that is an

unselected, kind of middle class sample.

These are the same peer-to-peer networks that can, of course, as

we have heard, contain pornography and other materials. Such networks, however, are part of an all-pervasive sexualized media environment.

This total environment leads to a tremendous amount of inadvertent and unintentional exposure of children and young people to

pornography and other adults sexual media.

For example, on peer-to-peer file sharing programs, banner ads

provide a source of inadvertent exposure to what, for children and

teens, could be precocious sexuality.

You saw some screens up there, and they had kind of an innocuous banner as in the lower left hand corner, for example, for

Nokia phones. But when I did my test, I found adds floating

through for female condoms, male condoms, and introduction to potential sexual partners through personal ads.

These banner adds, as you saw today, are viewed as soon as one

enters the program. They cannot be controlled by the user. This inadvertent and unintentional exposure to sexualized media is a

major challenge to parents.

Third question; what are the non-technical means that parents

can use to deal with these challenges? We have already heard some

ideas from Mr. Rung.

Let me add, a warm and communicative parent/child relationship

is the most important weapon that parents have. Such a relationship, research has shown, reduces the sexual risktaking that can

be stimulated by pornography.

An open family communications style is another powerful weapon. For example, one study indicated that such a style mitigated

the effects of video portrayals of non-marital sex on the moral judgments of 13 and 14 year-olds.

Therefore, in today’s media environment, an open communication

style within the family is critical. In addition, open parent/child

channels for communicating specifically about sexual and media experiences, that is very useful; second, sex education at home or

school; and third, parental participation with children on the Internet; all of these are constructive influences that can mitigate negative effects of pornography.

Finally, for boys already at risk for anti-social behavior, parent

should carefully monitor and severely limit access to pornography

on file sharing networks and elsewhere.

Let me close by talking a little bit about some important issues

in need of future research. Pornography on peer-to-peer file sharing

networks is not unique, but it is part of a highly sexualized media

environment. By analogy to television and violence research, one

likely developmental outcome of over-exposure to sexual media is

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desensitization. Another outcome is the culture of the body, especially for females.

But how does desensitization affect the emerging sexuality of

young people? What are the psychological costs and benefits of this

body culture? What is the role of other media in these processes?

All these are areas where we need further research, and there are

many other questions.

What type of experiences are children and young people having

with sexual material on peer-to-peer file sharing networks? What

are the long-term effects of these experiences? How do parents view

the challenges of the sexually saturated media environment for

child rearing and child development?

What are the effects on children and families of different parental strategies vis-a-vis sexual and pornographic material on the

Internet? These are important questions greatly in need of more research and more research funding; thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Greenfield follows:]

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Chairman TOM DAVIS. Dr. Greenfield, thank you very much. I

am going to just ask one question, and then yield to Mr. Waxman

and let other Members have a chance.

Mr. Rung, thanks a lot for being here today. I think you can add

a lot to this, just from your experience. But what is Grokster’s business model? How do you end up making money in this?

Mr. RUNG. Basically, it is through advertising revenues. As a

matter of fact, I was making a note, when Dr. Greenfield was

speaking, about the fact that we do, in fact, have these banner ads

flashing across the face of it, whether you like it or not as a user.

I do intend to go back and review the subject matter.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. So advertising is basically how you make

your money?

Mr. RUNG. Yes, basically advertising, yes.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. And you do not have any control over the

content. People can then put anything in they want and trade back

and forth.

Mr. RUNG. That is correct.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. It is like a telephone company, almost.

Mr. RUNG. That would be a good analogy.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. That is my first question.

Mr. Waxman.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; well, to followup on

that, Mr. Rung, when people go on to Grokster or some of these

other file sharing sites, and they want to download something

about Britney Spears or the Olsen twins or Pokemon, why is it that

they get this pornography?

Mr. RUNG. Because you are searching for basically a word; in

other words, they are putting in, say, Britney Spears, and it

searches not just the title, but also there are some tags attached

to the files. The users can set those tags in a particular file, plus,

they can mis-name files.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, is anybody making money out of this?

Mr. RUNG. Between the users themselves, not that I am aware

of, unless the pornography industry perhaps is.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, is the pornography industry making any

money?

Mr. RUNG. Well, overall, I believe yes, from what I read on the

Internet; but as specifically related to file sharing, I really am not

sure.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, can anybody on the panel tell us if the pornographers are making money by putting these pornographic files

on the file sharing programs?

Mr. SAAF. They are not directly making money, but a lot of pornography companies do put their files on the peer-to-peer network

and mis-name it to try to gain exposure for the same purpose of

advertising.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Rung, I have heard that there is almost like

a frequent flyer program; if you use a file sharing more often, you

get access to more files and speedier access. Is that accurate?

Mr. RUNG. Not that I am aware of; what you might be referring

to is a new feature that KaZaA came out with, a few months back,

where the more you share, in theory, the higher rank you are for

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downloading from other people. We do not have a feature like that

on our program.

Mr. WAXMAN. And why would they have a feature like that? Who

benefits; does the file sharing operation benefit?

Mr. RUNG. I would assume that they would benefit, from the

standpoint of the more the users used the program, the more ads

that can be shown.

Mr. WAXMAN. Ms. Koontz, the GAO did a report for us, and we

very much appreciate it. A lot of what is going on in these file sharing programs is illegal pornography. What is the problem? Why can

law enforcement not find out who is putting the pornography on

the files and getting them to the kids, and crack down on it?

Ms. KOONTZ. Well, I think, to a large extent, law enforcement

has many, many efforts, and I am sure Mr. Netherland could add

to this significantly.

But law enforcement has many efforts to identify individual

users, determine their identity, to prosecute them in courts; and I

am sure that he could probably add to this quite a bit in terms of

the some of the difficulties in doing this and some of the barriers

that they face.

Mr. WAXMAN. Well, maybe we ought to have him respond and

give us some information on this point.

Mr. NETHERLAND. With respect to that, there are hundreds of

thousands of images that exist on the Internet presently. As far as

file sharing itself, it is just simply another vehicle by which these

people can trade the material. With our Child Victim Identification

Program, we are trying to quantify what the universe of images is

out there, in hopes that we can locate these children that are being

victimized; and also, when we run across a new image, we are

going to hopefully be able to localize the source of that image, and

back-track and locate the people that are, in fact, putting the stuff

on the Internet.

Of course, with today’s technology, digital cameras and so on, it

is very easy simply to snap a photo and have it on the Internet

within a matter of moments.

Mr. WAXMAN. What do the pornographers get out of doing this?

How do they make money out of it?

Mr. NETHERLAND. The pedophiles, themselves, are gratified by

the images. It arouses them sexually, and sometimes it ultimately

leads to their actual molestation of a child. With respect to the people that are looking to make money on it, generally, they are, in

fact, pedophiles, as well.

As far as peer-to-peer is concerned, it is exposure to the images.

They, in turn, can point these people back to Web sites and so on

that, in fact, do make money from this trade.

Mr. WAXMAN. Is it a failure of resources, insufficient resources;

what is the barrier; or is it technological that keeps you from finding the people that are responsible?

Mr. NETHERLAND. Well, with respect to the CyberSmuggling

Center, I have 13 people that are dedicated to the child exploitation

effort at the CyberSmuggling Center.

Now our agents out in the field are also trained to conduct these

types of investigations. However, simply because of the enormous

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number of tips that we receive on a daily basis, our posture is primarily reactive in nature.

Working peer-to-peer type cases is a proactive approach. I would

like nothing more than to expand our efforts in that area, but we

cannot ignore the massive number of tips that we are receiving already.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS [presiding]. I thank the gentleman. This is an amazing issue. Mrs. Miller.

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will tell you, my daughter is 27 years old, so we did not really

have the Internet in our home with some of these things. You

know, the Internet really is quite a relatively new phenomenon.

I sit on a board in my county called Care House, which is for sexually abused children. It is unbelievable what people will do to

their children.

As we are talking today about child pornography, as well, my

husband has been the presiding Circuit Court Judge in our county

for the family law and, again, you see it all.

When you do psychological profiles of these individuals, so often,

pornography and access to pornography is a critical component to

all of those kinds of things.

So I am just wondering, we talked a little bit about the marketing. The unfortunate reality is, quite frankly, there is a market for

these kinds of things.

With teenagers today, how we can actually protect them from

that? It seems to me as you see many of the law enforcement agencies who are having new Internet crime units, and I know we see

that in my region and I am sure throughout the Nation as well,

they are having some success with these things.

But I think it is difficult for us sometimes to legislate, because

it seems as though the moment you pass a piece of legislation, the

techies have out-thought you, again. So I guess I am looking a little

bit more for specific recommendations on what you might think the

Federal Government could actually do to assist in this regard.

Mr. SAAF. I think that local city government officials should take

a more active stance on this approach. I am not sure that there is

a broad sweeping Federal solution to this. But there are a lot of

existing child pornography laws that are not being enforced by District Attorneys across the Nation.

I think that is really the first step, that it has to start at that

level, and then we will see where it goes from there.

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you; Ms. Ruppersberger.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First thing, you wonder if we will be able to stay ahead of the

technology to provide filters or for parental-type of controls.

But the issue is, whose obligation is it, in your opinion, to prevent the children from seeing this porn? Is it the software developers; is it the parent? Do you have an opinion on the obligation?

Because we have really allowed the industry to police itself for

a long time, and there have been some positives and negatives.

This is a time, I think, when the industry has not really stepped

up. Does anybody want to take that question? Mr. Rung.

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Mr. RUNG. As it was pointed out, the technology can change so

quickly, that I think just outlawing this, or trying to regulate this,

that, or the other thing, the technology would outgrow it almost

immediately.

I really believe honestly that it is the parents that are the primary ones that are in the hot seat and have to, again, monitor

their children’s usage and monitor what goes on the computer.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. But do you not think the industry is better

suited to come up with the evolving technology? I mean, there are

a lot of parents that just cannot stay there at all times with their

children.

There have to be some safeguards. There has to be, I think, an

emphasis from the industry itself to help address this problem. I

mean, law enforcement has to be involved. A lot of people have to

be involved. Because if the industry does not step up, eventually

Government will have to step up, and we will have to mandate.

Let me ask you this. Do you feel that the Government should

mandate filters for the peer-to-peer networks? I know Dr. Greenfield does. Do you?

Mr. RUNG. To be quite honest, personally, I am against a lot of

Government regulation in any case. But that would seem like, if

you were going to do some regulation, that might be a worthwhile

way to go about it.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. And if we do this and the technology keeps

changing, there it gets back to the obligation end of the industry.

Another issue, too, as far as law enforcement is concerned, you

mentioned the issue of local law enforcement. Whenever there is a

problem with crime and there is a magnitude, I think it is very important for the Federal, State, and local governments to work closely together.

It seems that a lot of information leads come from local government, because that is where the every day operations is, that is

what is happening in the street, in the communities.

What type of effort is evolving now to deal with this issue with

respect to Federal, State, and local government? The prosecutor is

the end. It needs to really be developed to obtain the information,

get the intelligence, make the arrest, and then go to court and

prosecute.

Mr. NETHERLAND. With respect to cooperative efforts, this particular area of crime is one area where we, law enforcement, work

very, very well together. Both Federal, State, local law enforcement, as well as our international partners, are dedicated to this

effort. We put aside our differences when we work these type cases.

The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces that exist out

there, I think there are 36, I believe, now. They are comprised of

Federal, State, and local law enforcement officers, and are one step

in the right direction.

On the international level, we work very well with Interpol in

France, as far as educating other countries on how to conduct these

types of investigations. But right now, about 99 percent of this type

of work is facilitated, quite frankly, by the Internet.

And if I could make one comment about the peer-to-peer file

sharing filters and so on, that is certainly very important. I am a

father, as well, and it is very important. It is a very important

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thing and we, as parents, have an obligation to take care of our

children, and filter what they look at.

But keep in mind that this is still a vehicle by which these

pedophiles can trade between themselves which, in turn, satisfies

or arouses them, which ultimately and directly leads them to finding these children that are on the Internet and other areas, such

as chatrooms and so on.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I have one last question for Mr. Rung,

again. I do not mean to keep picking on you, but you are the industry, I guess.

Have you or anyone that you are aware of in the industry contacted law enforcement agencies to try to work with them to try to

identify where these problems exist?

Mr. RUNG. All I can speak to is what Grokster’s experience is.

We have corroborated in the past on some cases with law enforcement, and anticipate doing so in the future.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. But I am talking about taking the initiative. I am not talking about just cooperating when they come to

you. Are you aware of the industry taking the initiative, when you

have identified these problems, to help law enforcement?

Mr. RUNG. I do not believe there is any industry-wide. That is

certainly a good idea.

Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. It is something that I think the industry

needs to look at; because, if not, then Government will probably

have to come in and mandate to deal with this serious problem.

Thank you.

Mr. NETHERLAND. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS [presiding]. Thank you very much.

Mr. Janklow.

Mr. JANKLOW. Thank you very much.

Mr. Rung, if I could just continue for a moment, you corroborate,

and I do not mean to say this in an accusatory way. I sound that

way sometimes, but it is just the way I talk. I do not mean it that

way.

You corroborate, but in your testimony, you say it is estimated

that 50 percent of the files on files traded on sharing programs are

pornographic, and you operate a file sharing program.

Now do you really feel your only responsibility is just to cooperate when you are contacted? For all practical purposes, you are the

pornographer, when it comes to these types of things. You are the

vehicle by which people are doing these things, and you cannot

have Government shutting down everything and regulating everything all the time.

Do you feel there is a greater responsibility on the industry to

step forward with something that is this obvious in preying against

children?

Mr. RUNG. Let me address that two ways, if I could. The first is

that the extent of the pornography on file sharing is just a sub-set

of what is available on the Internet, as a whole, just as you pointed

out.

Mr. JANKLOW. And I am going to get to that in just a second.

Mr. RUNG. Oh, OK, and so accordingly, it is there and it exists.

Mr. JANKLOW. Right.

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Mr. RUNG. But the one thing that has occurred, this has been a

learning experience for me, also, to be invited here and to listen to

everybody here.

It is quite clear to me that it would make a lot of sense for me

to go back to my fellow entrepreneurs in our industry, and see

what we can, in fact, do on a pro-active basis.

Mr. JANKLOW. Does it take a congressional hearing to let you

know there is problem of this magnitude?

Mr. RUNG. Of this magnitude, yes, particularly with the child

pornography.

Mr. JANKLOW. Sir, you brought up another point. The mis-spelling of words is not a file sharing issue. But everybody wants to say

‘‘parental involvement.’’ This is one where it cannot be just the parents, primarily. Kids go to school. We all bust our tails to make

sure our schools have more computers all the time for the kids.

We have community libraries that have computers. Kids go to

their neighbors’ houses, where there are computers. They go to

church, where there are computers, and boys and girls centers,

where there are computers. So it is not just a matter of dealing

with their parents.

If the University of New Hampshire’s study is accurate, only 10

percent of the students that are hit on, on the Internet, tell their

parents about it.

Even though you have a warm, fuzzy relationship with your parents, you may be bashful or embarrassed with this bestiality that

you see, the sodomy that you see.

You know exactly what I am talking about. You can misspell

words and get it. You can innocently stumble into, like, we all say,

whitehouse.com is a good example of that.

But my question is, sir, what do you think it is going to take to

better protect the children of the world, recognizing that we cannot

just pass laws in America? A lot of these sites come from outside

the United States. They are just as easy to come from Bulgaria or

Romania, as they are South Dakota or Timbuctoo, AR.

Mr. RUNG. I honestly have no solution to that.

Mr. JANKLOW. Mr. Netherland, how about you? Do you agree

there is not enough money in the world, just to prosecute, after

these children are exposed to this type of thing; that we have to

really do something at the front end, and your organization is just

dealing with our failure as a society to deal with it on the front

end?

Mr. NETHERLAND. As far as law enforcement is concerned, I welcome any strengthening of the laws that help us do our job better,

and that would remove these people from doing what they do.

Mr. JANKLOW. Sir, is your agency involved in the Justice Department funding of those Internet Crimes Against Children Programs?

Mr. NETHERLAND. We have an advisory role with respect to the

Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces.

Mr. JANKLOW. Do you know of any reason; is it a shortage of

money; what is it that has prevented all 50 States and the territories from getting funding to get these things launched?

My State happened to have been the first Statewide program. We

were lucky to get in on the funding. But what does it take? Is it

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a funding issue, to make sure that every Government has the opportunity to get together to do this?

Mr. NETHERLAND. I believe that it would certainly help, in terms

of making sure that every single State has an Internet Crimes

Against Children Task Force, and organizes one. Because this is

across the Nation; it is across the globe.

Mr. JANKLOW. And sir, I will say that this is one of those issues

where the Federal Government, the Federal prosecutors have truly

stepped up to the plate, and have really dealt with it, when the evidence is turned over to them with respect to these predators.

I have one other question for Ms. Koontz. What is it that you

think that Congress can do, if anything, to really try and assist in

shutting this off?

When I was a kid, it was National Geographic. But that is a lot

different than what is going on out there today. These sites have

a huge impression on 8, 9, 10, and 11 year olds; a huge impression.

Unfortunately, we did not put that kind of thing up today, and

I guess my time is up. But could you tell me, do you know of anything that we could do?

Ms. KOONTZ. This is not the kind of problem, I think, that lends

itself to sort of a single legislative solution. I think, though, it

needs to be a combination of efforts.

First and foremost, law enforcement needs to continue to followup on the tips that they receive in this area, and they need to have

the resources in order to further investigate those.

This is a very growing area. The tips in the peer-to-peer networking area increased fourfold in 1 year. So you can tell this is

very much on the rise.

But the reality of it is, I think in addition to what law enforcement and public policy could do, is some of the things that other

people on the panel have mentioned.

Those are educational strategies for our kids. It is parental involvement and supervision, and although they are generally imperfect, technology-based tools, such as the ones Dr. Greenfield mentioned that are actually on KaZaA, can be a legitimate part of an

overall strategy for dealing with this.

Mr. JANKLOW. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Putnam.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I share Governor Janklow’s frustration about this, and particularly, really, the inability for anybody to get their arms around a

solution.

I had a constituent of mine, who was a young woman, who experienced the same thing. She wandered off onto the Internet. She

met someone and was lured away to Greece. She was severely molested for a period of several months, before anyone could track her

down.

The local law enforcement received almost no help from the Federal Government. The FBI was not interested. No one was interested until they finally managed to find a postcard that he had

mailed her, and a Postal Inspector was the only Federal law enforcement help they got.

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We have a rating system for video games. We have a rating system for movies. We have a rating system for music, and the panels

consensus is that people who deliberately set up Web sites to prey

on spelling errors of third graders looking at Pokemon is not something that we can have the collective wisdom or will to solve. I

have a problem with that. I think that there is a way that we can

get around that.

But I want to know a couple of things. First of all, because of

what was mentioned about the resort in Acapulco, how much of

this is generated domestically versus internationally? Is there a list

maintained by the State Department, or someone of nations who

continue to prey on children, and whose legal system does not

allow us to get the information or the help that we need to prosecute these folks?

The chairman and Mr. Waxman put out a helpful handout for

parents. But the question I would ask the panel is, for the ‘‘do-good

parent’’ whose child brings some of these things to their attention,

and they scan down, and you see all of these terms: co-ed, teen,

young girl, cheerleader, all things that clearly indicate a minor, at

what point does it go from smut to being illegal smut?

How does the average parent know what they can report, and

what things are just in bad taste but do not cross the line of illegality? So those are a handful of questions. I will leave it to the panel

to decide who is most appropriate to answer.

Mr. NETHERLAND. With respect to the case in Acapulco, and also

the case with Operation Hamlet, the Bureau of Immigration Customs Enforcement approaches things on an international level. We

look at material that is crossing the borders into the United States.

Unfortunately, the United States is the largest consumer of this

type of material. I think that is a well known fact.

Mr. PUTNAM. Who is the largest producer? Is that the United

States, also?

Mr. NETHERLAND. In my opinion, there is a lot of material that

is produced in the United States. But I believe there are many

countries out there who, because of their laws, do not outlaw the

possession of child pornography, or large producers; Russia, for instance.

I know that they are taking steps to address that issue, and we

work closely with the Russian authorities on investigations. But it

is a function of their laws, trying to deal with the problem, themselves. In South America, some of the countries here also have

some issues.

Mr. PUTNAM. Help me understand this. Let us stop right there,

because I guess I gave everybody too much to chew on. Help me

understand what is against the law. At what point is changing the

‘‘e’’ to an ‘‘a’’ in Britney, and putting up pictures of children engaged in sexual acts against the law?

At what point is changing Pokemon or Schwinn bicycles or whatever for the specific purpose of bringing in young children to this

realm against the law; MediaDefender?

Mr. SAAF. Well, that is kind of big opinion question because, you

know, if something gets thrown up on the peer-to-peer network and

it is given a name, the person in the image might look 16. They

might be 19.

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It is impossible to know, because these are just digital replications that have occurred millions of times over on the network, and

you do not know where it started from. So who is to say if it is

against the law or not? That is the real difficulty of peer-to-peer

networking.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Rung.

Mr. RUNG. I am not sure. I was interested to hear the actual answer to that myself. Because I am not sure of what the legal definition of what is considered child pornography or not is. I mean, obviously, if you have a 6-year-old girl in an image, then that is a potential problem. So I am actually quite interested in the answer,

myself.

Mr. PUTNAM. So advertising hot high school cheerleader coeds,

currently there is no law against that, if the image is actually

someone over the age of 18?

Mr. NETHERLAND. That is correct.

Mr. PUTNAM. And there is no trademark or copyright protection

because of the fact that it is misspelled. But there is also no intent;

there are no conspiracy laws that would apply to that.

I mean, Mr. Waxman has made a career out of the intent or the

conspiracy of advertising of certain products in this country. I find

it hard to believe that you could not extrapolate that type of a legal

argument to include changing the spelling of Pokemon to lure children into child pornography. Is there no remedy there, either; Ms.

Koontz?

Ms. KOONTZ. I guess what I would add here is that it is not necessary for the user to misspell Pokemon or Britney, or any of the

rest of them to have pornography and child pornography return to

your computer.

It is not so much of an issue of, shall we say, the mis-labeling

of files. It is much more a function of the types of files being kept

by individual users, who now have the capacity, through the file

sharing applications to locate and interact with each other directly.

These are individuals who are doing this, and they are just sharing

what they possess on their hard drives.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Ms. GREENFIELD. Could I say something about that? Just to add

to that, a lot of it, therefore, is what young people themselves have

downloaded. It is not just outsiders preying on kids. It is also what

kids are creating for themselves. So that is a very, very important

part of the problem, which needs to be also addressed.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you; Mr. Tierney.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; Mr. Chairman, I would

like to yield to Congressman Waxman, who has a question.

Mr. WAXMAN. I thank you for yielding, because I want to followup on the points that have just been raised. It is difficult to find

out what criminal laws are broken. But one key thing would be to

find the end user.

And if MediaDefender can identify the IP address of people offering child porn, why has anyone not asked the ISP to turn over the

names of the end users? Is that impossible to do, for any reason?

Mr. SAAF. Well, MediaDefenders tried to encourage law enforcement officials, and we have had very low success. There have been

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a few District Attorneys around the country that have taken interest in this.

I have a list right here that I collected over 2 days, of 300,000

IPs that I believe have something to do with child pornography, at

least by their facial terminology, and I would be happy to turn that

over, but who do I turn it over to? I really do not know.

Mr. NETHERLAND. I can say that with respect to tracking these

individuals back to the person opposed to damages, the files, and

I will not discuss exactly what our techniques are, but we have a

means by which we can backtrack and locate those individuals.

We do, in fact, do that. We look for persons who are posting multiple files, hundreds of images. So we do have a means to do that.

Mr. WAXMAN. Do you get the cooperation of the ISP, Internet

Service Provider, to do that?

Mr. NETHERLAND. Yes, sir, we do.

Mr. WAXMAN. And there is a problem in getting their cooperation?

Mr. NETHERLAND. Correct; the point here is that in these type

applications, there is no centralized location; there is no centralized

ISP that can report this.

This particular network is simply, each desktop computer, in and

of itself, is a server. So you have to locate the end user or the poster, in order to shut it down.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you; I thank the gentleman for yielding, because that was a point I thought we would need to clarify.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you; I yield back the balance of my time.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much; Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; Mr. Chairman, thank you

for having these hearings. Mr. Waxman, thank you for the good

work you and your staff have done on this, as well.

This may sound a little crazy, but bear with me a second. I want

quick answers, and I want to go all the way down the line. Ms.

Koontz, I want to know who are the bad guys.

Ms. KOONTZ. The pornographers.

Mr. SHAYS. I want you to be a little bit more specific; just the

pornographers?

Ms. KOONTZ. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Netherland.

Mr. NETHERLAND. I believe the pedophile drives the market.

They drive the market. They are the ones preying on our children,

and they use whatever vehicle they have by which to do so.

Mr. SHAYS. Well, I think there are two kinds of bad guys with

regard to peer-to-peer networks. There is the original pedophile,

who creates the information and originally posts it to the network.

That guy is the bad guy.

But let us face it, there is a huge demand; 300,000 people is a

huge group of people. That means there is a lot of mid-level, borderline pedophiles, who have a fleeting interest in this stuff enough

to download it and maybe even accidently re-share it.

So I do not know if you want to necessarily put that in the same

moral evil as the guy who originally creates this stuff, but it is definitely a lot of people. Probably you would be surprised. I mean,

clearly, there is a bunch of people in the Government who are the

bad guys, to some degree.

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Mr. SHAYS. And in the sense of the Government, quickly, who

would that be?

Mr. NETHERLAND. Well, like I said, NASA, Department of Defense, Los Alamos National Laboratory. I could give you another

couple hundred computers that are all tracked down. You could

identify every one of those computers to an owner of that computer,

someone that works at the Government, who has a file that appears to be child pornography.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Rung.

Mr. RUNG. I would say the creators of the child porn and the consumers of the child porn.

Mr. SHAYS. A little louder, please; the creators of child porn and

who else?

Mr. RUNG. The creators of the child porn and the people that

consumer it. That would be the people that download it.

Mr. SHAYS. Would you consider yourself one of the bad guys?

Mr. RUNG. No, I do not believe so.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Greenfield.

Ms. GREENFIELD. That is a very hard question. But I think I

would probably go with Mr. Rung’s answer.

Mr. SHAYS. Would any of you consider Mr. Rung one of the bad

guys?

Ms. GREENFIELD. Well, I feel like we should not pick out peer file

sharing; that this is a problem throughout society. It is a problem

on television. It is a problem throughout the Internet. It is a problem when you go now to checkout at the supermarket, with what

used to be very innocent women’s magazines. The banner headlines

all over the covers now are all about sex.

So I think that throughout society, and I could even get closer

to home, there has been a highly sexualized environment, and that

is a problem. But I do not really see one bad guy.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Rung, I am starting from the bottom here, just

to try to understand something. In your terms of agreement, you

prohibit the use of your service in transmitting any content that is

‘‘unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable.’’ But is that not kind of a joke?

Mr. RUNG. If you mean from the standpoint, is it enforceable by

anything that we can do? That is correct, we cannot enforce that.

Mr. SHAYS. So what do those words mean to us? I mean, are they

to protect yourself from legal action? What is the purpose of your

terms of agreement?

Mr. RUNG. I think it is two-fold. One is to provide protection; let

us be honest. But the second is to put our users on notice that this

not the type of activity that you should engage in, with the product

that we provide.

Mr. SHAYS. How much of your income would you say is attributed to the very topic that we are discussing now? By the way, I

appreciate your honesty. You are helping me understand this issue

better than most people have. So it is good you are here and thank

you. I am just trying to understand it. But how much of your income would it be?

Mr. RUNG. No, that is fine and I appreciate that. I have learned

a lot coming here too and, as a matter of fact, I would like to spend

a little time with Mr. Netherlands after the meeting.

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. RUNG. But again, I really do not know the percentage of

child porn that goes through by the users. But I believe it is relatively small, compared to the universe of files that are shared.

Mr. SHAYS. Would you come back to the committee and give us

a more specific answer to the question of how much of your income

you believe is the result of stuff like what we are talking about?

Mr. RUNG. Yes.

Ms. GREENFIELD. One thing I think could be done by the companies themselves would be not to sell banner ads for things like

condoms. Because those are under their control, and they are something that children or anybody else cannot avoid when they come

onto the site.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Are there any other questions; Mr. Van

Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. No, and Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you

for holding this hearing. I am still trying to master the art of being

in two places at one time. I was at another committee hearing.

I want to thank Congressman Waxman and his staff for what

they have done. As the father of three children 12 and under, this

is something that I have a great interest in.

I have been looking through some of the recommendations. One

of the big frustrations, of course, is trying to come up with concrete

measures we can take. Obviously, education, and public education,

and making sure parents are alert is a critical part of this.

But I am going to look through this to see if you have any other

specific recommendation. Law enforcement is a key part. But are

there other tools we can use, and I realize how difficult it is in the

Internet age, to keep these kind of things from popping up when

you put in ‘‘Pokemon.’’ It is incredible, and as much as we monitor

our kids, it is impossible to be there 24 hours a day, standing in

front of the computer.

But I look forward to reviewing some of the recommendations

and hearing more about this. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much; and Mr. Waxman,

let me thank your staff, too, for helping in calling this to our attention and doing the work on this. I think this was a very useful

hearing.

I want to thank all of our witnesses for attending. I think for

Members, we have learned a lot today, and we will go back and

probably re-visit the issue. If any other thoughts occur to you,

please feel free to let the committee know, and we will be happy

to put it in the public record.

We will be posting on our Web site a list of the top 10 things a

parent can do to limit their children’s exposure to pornography on

peer-to-peer file sharing networks, compiled by Mr. Waxman’s staff

and mine, and we will also be following-up on this issue.

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In addition to the pornography problems, file sharing programs

raise serious security and privacy issues, as users may unknowingly share personal files, or may accidently download files computer viruses.

Thank you very much. The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the committee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

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