Pornography and P2P has been much in the news lately, as foes of P2P (such as the MPAA) attempt to smear the technology as a breeding ground for filth. See, for example a post of mine on LawMeme (Pornography Obsession on Both Sides of P2P Debate). Yesterday, as dc.internet.com reports, testimony concerning P2P and pornography was heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee (Hatch: P2Ps Are Child Porno Central). More information on the hearing and testimony can be found here (Indecent Exposure: Oversight of DOJ's Efforts to Protect Pornography's Victims).
The problem with this hearing is that some opponents of P2P and many of the reporters who publish on the issue are confusing two distinct arguments in the scatter gun attacks on P2P technology. The first argument is that child pornography is easily distributed via P2P networks (unlike the web or newsgroups, I guess). The second argument is that children have easy access to pornography via P2P networks (unlike the web or newsgroups, I guess). These are two separate problems; to conflate the two arguments is to confuse the issue, as the following quote from dc.internet.com shows:
While Wednesday's witnesses focused on Web sites featuring Internet child pornography, Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch singled out peer-to-peer (P2P) networks as the most pernicious purveyors of online child pornography.
"I am currently considering legislative solutions to the many risks inherent in the use of peer-to-peer networks. Almost half of the people who use these networks are minors," Hatch said. "Recent studies have shown that millions and millions of pornographic files are available for downloading on these networks at any given time."
Hatch's quote has nothing to do with child pornography, but rather dealt with access to pornography by minors. There are legitimate issues to be addressed here, but we won't make any progress by confusing them.