Group Reveals There Are Ways To Fight Child Porn Other Than Useless Web Filters

from the progress,-perhaps dept

There has been something of a stink made in the UK after some children's charities complained that some ISPs weren't implementing web filters designed to stop people from accessing child pornography. While trying to stop child porn is certainly an admirable cause, the problem here is twofold: first, the filters simply don't work, and often do more to block access to legitimate content than to stop access to undesirable or illegal material. Second, simply thinking filters will solve the problem focuses only on catching consumers, rather than working to stop the producers and distributors of such reprehensible material. Stopping it at the source would seem to be a much more effective way to combat child pornography, rather than to just focus on the point of consumption. With that in mind, it's nice to see that a new pan-European alliance has been formed to go after child-pornography producers by tracking the flow of money around trade in it. The goal is to track the money back to those who are abusing children and making the porn, which would seem a much better way to fight the real problem. By only focusing on stopping consumption through filters, little is done to actually prevent kids from being abused, or to put the dirtbags who make this stuff out of commission.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Actors Now Fighting For Royalties That Will Make It Harder For Big Studios To Compete

from the short-sighted dept

After the TV writers' strike from earlier this year, we noted that the final settlement actually was not in the best interest of the writers, even though they got much of what they wanted in demanding royalties from online usage of their content. The actors unions are now gearing up for that same battle, as well, as they, too, are demanding rights over online usage, including royalties and the right to demand permission before any of the works they appear in can be used online. It's difficult to feel sorry for Hollywood producers here -- as they very much brought this on themselves, convincing lots of people that they should get paid every single time any of their content was used. Thus, it's no surprise that the writers and the actors are now demanding the same rights.

However, just as it was wrong for the producers to be demanding a fee for every usage, so is it wrong for the writers and the actors to be demanding such a fee. All it will do is make it much more difficult, time consuming and expensive for any of that content to go online. And that will open up much wider opportunities for other content to go online instead, decreasing the overall value of the content made under these agreements. It's hard to fault the actors (like the writers) for looking out for their short-term interests and demanding the same sorts of things that the producers have demanded of everyone else -- but it's setting up a bad situation over the long-term, where the studios under these agreements won't be able to adapt to the changing media landscape.

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