The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) might be celebrating its victory over the people responsible for the development of the file-sharing program Limewire, which was recently ordered permanently closed down for violating copyright law, but what seems like a minor win for the music industry is also a victory for police in their fight against child pornography.
For many computer users, Limewire was one of the top sites that could be used to download almost anything for free — music was king, but so too were digital movies, pirated computer software and even pornography. But what most of the public and casual Limewire users probably didn’t know was that the file-sharing program was one of the easiest ways to access, view and distribute child pornography. Because of its nature as a peer-to-peer network, Limewire users had access to any kind of photo, music or movie file that any other user had stored on a computer. This included pictures and videos of under-aged children being illegally depicted in pornographic situations.
One such instance even occurred in St. Albert in August of 2007 when a man named Christopher Pokorski pleaded guilty to one charge of accessing child pornography. He was originally charged also with possession and distribution, much more serious charges. And he did it all by using Limewire. The Integrated Child Exploitation (ICE) unit was able to quickly track and arrest him because many of the images were “well-known” to the unit and it was relatively simple to find who was accessing them at any given time. What police also found on his computer were several files that were being downloaded but for one reason or another did not finish. As a result, they were saved in a separate folder he did not know about. He deleted the complete files after viewing them, but not the incomplete downloads which, due to the nature of the peer-to-peer network, were subsequently accessible to other Limewire users.
The Internet is riddled with stories of people who were caught using Limewire to download child pornography, yet because of the nature of the program there was little Limewire’s creators could actually do about it. Regardless, the trade in child pornography continued right up until it was shut down last week. Some individuals claimed they received the files while downloading adult pornography or that viruses that infected their computers were responsible. Some claimed other users possessed innocuously named files that turned out, in fact, to contain child pornography.
It is difficult to believe that an individual with child pornography found on a computer would be unaware of what had happened. Limewire was the idiot-pervert’s way of finding it — more sophisticated pedophiles create secure online domains they use to personally trade what files they have. Regardless of what was intentional and what was not, some small child was re-victimized every single time a person typed the words “kiddy porn” into Limewire. Its demise gives peddlers and would-be viewers one less place for them to indulge in their sadistic fantasies.
Limewire is not the only file-sharing system out there — there are numerous others already experiencing jumps in membership. Yet while some might bemoan the loss of free music and movies and others become so enraged they join in on denial of service attacks to the RIAA website, what many media users see as an inconvenience is actually a small victory — one less place to access, possess and distribute child pornography means fewer children who are being victimized thousands of times over. It is a small victory, but an important moral one nevertheless.
