WASHINGTON-Congress last week dipped its toe into the dirty waters of digital pornography, an emerging issue with financial and intellectual property implications for mobile-phone operators globally.
Last Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing was designed to focus primarily on the use of peer-to-peer networks to distribute smut, particularly child pornography, via online file sharing. But the hearing was a forum for the broader issue-indeed, a growing problem-of public policy consistently lagging behind technology.
In this case, lawmakers are debating how policy should address content-everything from erotica to mainstream music-in a digital age characterized by decentralized architectures and a virtual absence of borders. Even where borders do exist, they tend to be highly porous.
Digital content has become fertile ground for debates on privacy, security, copyright and freedom of speech. There are also ethical issues of corporate responsibility.
“I believe that peer-to-peer has the potential to revolutionize the way people share all sorts of information. But with any technology, it can be abused,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.
Indeed, a General Accounting Office official testified the Internet has become the principal tool for exchanging child pornography. While much adult content is protected by the First Amendment, child pornography is prohibited by federal statutes because it is considered sexual abuse of children.
While wireless porn has not surfaced as a major issue in the United States, it is a hot item in Europe and Asia, where adult content sometimes reaches subscribers through multimedia messaging services offered by carriers and from third-party messaging subscription services. However, there are industry and government efforts in those regions that would allow subscribers to block adult content. It is a matter of prime concern for policy-makers and parents, given the ever-increasing use of mobile phones by youth.
Congress last week was mostly concerned with peer-to-peer online file sharing, a technology not typically associated with wireless networks.
But a Web search turned up one company with a P2P wireless solution. Apeera, a French company, claims to hold the key to a technology that enables mobile-phone subscribers to share content such as songs, ring tones and photos. A programmed subscriber identity module card supposedly lets mobile-phone operators manage the flow of content to avoid copyright violations.
File swapping, however, may be impractical and ill suited for mobile phones because the technology gobbles up bandwidth and could zap valuable battery power.
Digital rights management poses a more immediate challenge for the wireless industry, as mobile phones gain the micro-processing power to run sophisticated multimedia applications. The wireless industry is kicking around various business models.
As a legal matter, P2P file-sharing technology commands the spotlight.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court here will hear oral argument in a challenge by Verizon Communications Inc. to a lower court ruling earlier this year forcing the nation’s top landline telephone carrier (and No. 1 mobile-phone operator) to comply with a subpoena seeking subscriber information on individuals allegedly guilty of violating copyrights using P2P filing-sharing technology.
“Back in 1998, Verizon and other service providers agreed in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to conduct voluntary industry negotiations aimed at developing `standard technical measures’ (also known as digital rights management tools), to protect copyrighted works from online infringement. The copyright community has never accepted our offer to begin those negotiations …,” said Verizon General Counsel William Barr in Senate testimony.
Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America-the entity that subpoenaed Verizon-filed lawsuits against individuals who have allegedly shared copyrighted music files on public peer-to-peer networks.
“It is particularly troubling to our industry that Verizon actively encourages its new subscribers to visit unauthorized P2P services-instead of legitimate, licensed sites-as their preferred source for music online … And people wonder why the copyright community is skeptical of Verizon’s claim that the real issue is privacy and not their tacit acceptance and promotion of piracy by their subscribers,” stated Cary Sherman, RIAA president and general counsel.
