Discussion of outrageously bad proposals for the regulation of P2P systems is becoming a staple feature of this column. This week, we have yet another misdirected piece of P2P legislation to consider, the Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography (P4) Act.

Porn is often used as an excuse to attempt to censor the Internet; it's an old bogeyman that just won't die. This bill, introduced in Congress late last month, would require file trading sites to get parental permission before allowing minors to use their services. Sponsored by Reps. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) and Chris John (D-La.) the bill would also require the Federal Trade Commission to regulate P2P networks and allegedly ensure that that kids are not accidentally encountering porn online. 

Most of the porn files that can be found on file trading sites are clearly labeled as porn. But the sponsors of the bill charge that porn makes up as much as 40% of all files traded online. How they actually got this figure is anyone's guess. Given the hundreds of millions of files traded around the world this type of estimate is dubious at best.

Even more dubious is the claim by its sponsors that this proposed legislation would shelter kids from porn. "Our legislation gives parents the tools they need to protect their children from pornography and threats to privacy posed by peer-to-peer file-trading networks," Pitts said in a statement. "By working together to protect children, we are building a broad and bipartisan coalition."

This is absolute nonsense. Any kid who gets online can view porn on the Web - a huge business driven by the enormous demand by adults for porn. The trading of porn files on P2P sites simply reflects the vast market for this material. In the U.S. alone, the adult entertainment industry is larger than all professional sports combined.

Some porn sites do require that users be 18 or over, but enforcing such a restriction is not possible unless the site requires credit card payment which limits some kids. This new bill would require P2P companies to respect the requests of parents who have placed a "do not install" beacon in their computers, indicating that they don't want file-swapping software on their children's machines.

This is wishful thinking by legislators who have no idea how technology works. No one has developed this so-called "do not install" beacon and if some one did, the kids themselves would likely figure out how to circumvent it. A lot of kids are far smarter than their parents in navigating their way around file trading sites. If they want access to them, they will create, or locate, the workaround tools to make this possible.