Anti-Piracy Group Says: 'Child Porn Is Great' Since It Gets Politicians To Block File Sharing Sites (original) (raw)

from the wow dept

For many years, we’ve seen the entertainment industry make totally bogus and unsubstantiated claims about file sharing sites being hotbeds of child pornography in an effort to get them to regulate or shut down those services. Of course, the actual evidence shows that file sharing porn is no worse than what’s on the wider internet. But that doesn’t stop the entertainment industry from making such bogus claims — and it seems like they’re gleefully admitting it these days. Jamie Love points us to an account of an event in Sweden, entitled “Sweden — A Safe Haven for Pirates?” put on by the US Chamber of Commerce, where someone from the Danish “Anti-Piracy” group spoke out about how great child pornography is, because it makes it easy for them to get politicians to block or shut down file sharing sites.

“Child pornography is great,” the speaker at the podium [Johan Schluter] declared enthusiastically. “It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites”.

Of course, this is no surprise, but having him say so directly is a bit surprising. He goes on to admit that the entertainment industry is planning to use child porn as a wedge to demand “a giant filter” for copyright:

“One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand.”

Of course, those filters don’t actually work, and using them to force entire sites to be blocked, despite them having a relatively tiny proportion of such content isn’t just dishonest and underhanded, but dangerous. We’re all in favor of trying to stop child porn, but you do that by focusing on the source, not by putting up filters willy-nilly in a misguided attempt to get politicians to also protect your business model.

Either way, it’s incredibly disgusting to have anyone claim that child porn is “great,” just because it can be improperly exploited for the sake of protecting another industry’s business model. That he’s basically admitting that he doesn’t remotely care about stopping child pornography, but prefers to use it to his advantage is downright sickening.

Filed Under: anti-piracy, blocking, child porn, file sharing