The Recording Industry Association of America appears to be expanding its fight against online piracy by encouraging a legislative crackdown on peer-to-peer networks, warning they are infested with child pornography. On Tuesday, one day after filing the landmark series of lawsuits, RIAA President Cary Sherman cautioned the U.S. Senate that Kazaa could be a tool for adults to lure children into having sex. A pedophile could send "an instant message to the unwitting young person who downloads an Olsen twins or Pokemon file from the pedophile's share folder on Kazaa," Sherman said. A government report released in March, Sherman said, concluded that "a significant percentage of the files available to these 13 million new users per month are pornography, including child pornography." Sherman's remarks to the Senate Judiciary committee, which held a hearing devoted to pornography on peer-to-peer networks, were buttressed by similar testimony from a top official in the U.S. Department of Justice's criminal division. John Malcom, a deputy assistant attorney general, said that "P2P networks are of significant law enforcement concern and focus, particularly because of their decentralized design and relative accessibility and ease of use...(The FBI) is currently considering a protocol for investigating child pornography cases in the relatively new area of P2P technology." But Malcolm acknowledged that the Justice Department is even more focused on child pornography on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks, which can be more fluid and secretive than P2P networks. "Using IRCs, a child pornographer can increase the size and diversity of his collection, which collectors of child pornography characteristically and compulsively seek to do," Malcolm said. "By contrast, offering files on P2P does not automatically result in receiving files in return." Operators of P2P networks angrily dismissed charges of rampant child porn swapping as an attempt by the major record labels to smear a useful and popular technology. Alan Morris, executive vice president of Sharman Networks, which distributes the Kazaa software, claimed the RIAA was on a "deliberate campaign to try to smear P2P technology itself" after it lost a key legal battle in April when a federal judge in Los Angeles rejected a request to shut down P2P networks. "We are dedicated to the eradication of child pornography from P2P networks and will continue to cooperate with Congress, law enforcement agencies and dedicated nongovernmental agencies in support of that shared goal," Morris said. Full Story