No, You Can't Go to Your Room

Baldwin Louie — Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:00:00 -0700

Churning out reports is part of congressional reps' jobs. So why do the media cover these reports with so little skepticism? The latest scandal sniffed out by Capitol Hill investigators is that kids might be using file-sharing to look at dirty pictures online. We guess getting sent to your bedroom isn't the punishment it once was.

The congressional report's conclusion isn't that kids are doing peer-to-peer porn, but that they might. Exhibit A? Seventy percent of files turned up by a search for Britney Spears videos on Aimster contained porno pix. Presumably this revelation translates into a youth issue: Who but the Clearasil crowd would search for the pop queen's videos? But substantiated evidence of a teens-turned-porno-rats trend seemed G-string thin, and given that another of the report's findings is that "preteen" and "lolita" are among the top 10 searches on the Gnutella network, we suspect that more than teenaged boys are figuring into the Spears mix.

The study had a sensible kernel to it: Remind parents that filtering software can't work its censoring ways on file-sharing. But mostly the report seemed to confuse reporters. While CNN cautioned that teens are "unwittingly" trading porno files, the Los Angeles Times concluded that the dirty pix are often the result of intentional searches. ABCNews.com set a calming tone with a balanced report that quoted the head of CyberAngels, an online safety organization, who shrugged that "Kids aren't using this for porn. They don't need to," given its abundance on the Net. And a filter-software company exec spoke the ugly truth: The smartest step for parents who are genuinely concerned is to talk to their children.

Talking? About s-e-x? Perhaps the two representatives who commissioned the study, Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Steve Largent, R-Okla., would better serve their constituents by studying how to deal with that alarming topic. But Largent would probably find fewer colorful sound bites to generate. Triple-X file-sharing is "a monster let loose on the Internet," the Los Angeles Times quoted him as saying. He also called it "a cancer eating away at the soul of this country," according to CNN. Maybe. But is it really any easier than reaching for the stack of dirty mags under our older brothers' beds and looking at them with our friends?

Roll Call's gossipy "Heard on the Hill" section poked fun at the conservative Largent by noting he was spotted at "Legally Blonde," a movie that, as Roll Call gleefully noted, the Washington Post had pronounced full of "schoolyard-grade vulgarity and naughty sexual innuendo." Hmm. Field research?

X-Rated Files Finding Child Audience
Washington Post

Children's Online File Swapping Often Yields Porn, Report Says
Los Angeles Times

Report: Net file-sharing exposes kids to porn
CNN.com

A New Internet Concern for Parents
ABCNews.com

File-Swapping Is New Route for Pornography on Internet
New York Times
(Registration required.)

New Online Porn Warning Sounded
MSNBC

Reps Warn Parents About Porn
Wired.com (AP)

New File-Trading Services Expose Kids To Porn
SiliconValley.com (Reuters)

Blonde Ambition
Roll Call

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No, You Can't Go to Your Room