Can't we ban porn on LimeWire?
 

Even though I have filtered Porn, it still manages to work its way in to my search results of something. Why is it on Lime Wire Pro? Can some one tell me how to stop this from happening?
Thanks alot

Your truly
Jermaine Evans

As long as there are people sharing porn you will keep receiving queryhits for porn. However you won't find much porn, if you are searching for audio files, for example.

Thanks for replying Taliban. Its annoying that porn will keep surfacing isn't it?!

Hello!

It is not possible to filter out porn completely and the reason is that the persons/company's that do distribute these porn files also include some meta tag information filled with words and names that has nothing to do with porn at all just so that you will get them in your search result list when searching for music etc.Also another trick that they use is to take advantage of celebritys name's in the file names so that when you search for music for instance Edit or Edit you will ge a lot of porn files in the search result list.

One way to almost get around this is to use the Audio only search feature in LW and search for music but I have personally tryed it and have notice that it inhibits me and that I get less results for the stuff I was actually looking for so I no longer uses that option insted I always use the Any Type option and get much better search results and just live with the fact that I will get some porn in the results but I just ignore them.

Why would limewire stop allowing porn to be shared? Porn is the leading industry on the internet, meaning a LOT of people want to look at it. If you don't want to look at porn don't download it.

I can understand not wanting kids to see porn names listed, especially hard-core or deviant stuff. However, I would be more concerned with the new trend of acceptance towards pirating music, software, and movies.

most of the porn available on gnut is pirated, anyways... lol.
copied img sets, ripped prON CDs and so forth..

ah well, "piracy"... imho that's what all p2p networks are about.
it's digital anarchy, and all the happy messages about "freedom of information'" say just that- but in euphemistic terms.

i'll never get why people come to the boards and get all "concerned" about the so-called "piracy".
makes me wonder why those people are on the gnu-net, anyways.
it's kinda like going to a porn video store and complaining about the nudity on display :p


noci

Thank you for all of your replies, I can see where you all are coming from and I understand what you are saying because it makes perfect sense. I have children and do not like to see the result of porn coming up but I think I'll have to deal with it, and monitor them while searching! Also though, when we download files, and delete them and delete them again in the recycle bin, they won't be stored any where else on my computer will they? Like there is no back up back up storage?!

Thanks alot
Jermaine

I'm 99.99% sure there isn't a back-up back-up on your computer. I know their isn't one on my computer.

;)

No, BUT, if you've watched these files, there might still be traces of the file names in whatever you watched them in, like under the "File" menu in Media Player, or even under your "Recent Documents" menu on the Start Menu. The files won't be there, but you still may be able to read the names.

"Back Up"
 

Ummm. From my brother's experience with his computer, the files are sometimes still recoverable, even though you put them in the recycle bin. This is because, I think, windows will not remove the information from your drive, rather it will just not recognize it, and will if needed overwrite it. If you want to really make them go away, try something like internet eraser. Of course with the technology the government has, they still might be able to figure out what you are so worried about, which if it is some of the sick stuff that shows up on some searches (i.e. kiddie porn), then you should be worried.

REPLY BACK TO EVERY BODY
 

Thank you, I now understand what I can do to protect my children from the horrible search entities. Those dumbass porn stuff should be erradicated off all MUSIC sharing programs. Who agrees? If you want porn, then download a program specificly for it and stop punishing other users by showing it on music sharing. It really irritates me but I guess there is not much that can be done at the moment.
Thanks alot every body. You have been a big help.

Yours truly
Jermaine Evans

Excuse me, I'm looking for [EDIT], please share it on Gnutella!

RE: Jermaine
 

Sir,
You're preception of what Limewire is is flawed. It's a FILE sharing program, not a MUSIC sharing program.

Well, the System Resore feature in windows Me or XP is a sort of backup, but I don't believe it is sensitive to MP3 or image files, and FOR SURE it will never restore something from the My Documents folder (I read that somewhere). But be mindful of the registry; file names (not whole files) always get lodged in there after opening them.

There are two additional filters available for you to reduce the number of unwanted porn hits in your searches: words and hosts. Likely, what you are getting is merely pornographic advertising for websites, not larger video files. Most of the "Famous Name" female singer porno is short files that open your browser automatically after a few seconds of tasteless hardcore (I downloaded one just to see). That means they have a static IP that you can filter out (which I have done). The same goes for the four letter words: just type them in, and all those porno files with strings of four-letter words will not appear.

This may not filter out everything, but it will go a long way.

Re: REPLY BACK TO EVERY BODY
 

that would be good if gnet was JUST music

if you THAT worried about it why not filter out all non-mp3 files, that would get rid of ALL images, then all you would have to worry about is the small number of sound-bit files that are sexual in nature........


Plus, Sex is a part of life, deal with it, if you have kidsm you MUST have had sex.....

if you have kids over the grade school level they are exposed to it more so than gnet will ever expose to them anyway,

There are many ways to irradict 99.9% of porn from your system, I dont know how limewire filters work but the program I use (shareaza) as a very good filer system

I might sign up for such an effort, but only if people sign up with my effort to get religious programming off of television, political commentary off of radio, and about 80 other pet peeves.

why can't we ban ....?
 

Hi all,

Here is my own biased overview of this:

Gnutella is a public network. In theory, everyone on this planet is able to share files over this network.

A similar comparison might be made of radio communications or news papers and magazines.

There are some forms of communication that are not under strict government regulation, Gnutella is one. Good or bad that is the way it now works.

Limewire is only one of many tools that enable people to connect to the net. Limewire has no control over net content.

In an ideal world, a person would be able to filter out anything. I use Microsoft Outlook, (which is supposed to be one of the better email utilities) with all of the filters and rules that I can think of I still get unwanted email ads. If I had young children in the house I would not allow them access to my computer because of that.

I wish there was a 'kiddy-net' for kids, but there isn't.

An internet enabled computer is a powerful tool.

Children should use powerful tools only under close adult supervison.

Ken

i think it is really ironic that the very same user who wants porn "banned from limewire" is also wanting to know how to erase media player's history...what's wrong? did you see something that you don't want your spouse or children to knw you're watching? hehe

QUOTE:
---------------
If I had young children in the house I would not allow them access to my computer because of that.
I wish there was a 'kiddy-net' for kids, but there isn't.
---------------

All this shielding of children makes me really concerned. I am not sure where you "overprotectors" are currently located, but my educated guess is the united states.
The united states, correct me if i am wrong,
has such a thing as legal hardcore porn.
That does not go for most of europe, with the exception of germany, denmark and sweden.
80-90% of all porn on the internet comes from america. So the problem of porn on the internet is basically americas fault. But it seems that it is americans who are most concerned with their children suddenly bumping into it. Even though they "in theory" have the political power to do something about it.

Maybe you should ban porn from your video stores and magazine stores before you ban it on the internet. I would imagine it equally easy for a kid to find a hard-core magazine and to search for it on the internet.

The internet is not a toy for young children. I didn't get on the internet before I was 13 of age, mainly because there was no internet. But now a days, it's a god-given right to go on the internet , even though you an infant. We simplify even the simple things to allow younger and older audiences on it.

Why do you want your kids to surf the internet in the first place? And why for the love of god do you want them surfing the gnutella net?

Put your priorities straight, because you can't tell the million users out there, agegroup 16-28 (mainly male), that they can't surf porn!

OK...
 

I think you misread my post.

I am not advocating the banning anything. I would like to see a separate internet without porn, kind of like it was in the early 90's. I realize that will never happen. Also, that has nothing to do with the gnutella network.

What I am saying is that if you turn your kids loose on an unregulated network you are going to have some pretty confused children. I do support restricting internet access, in your own home, of your own children, as you sees fit.

Our (US) government already seems to be concerned with everything in this country, right down to the perfume in the toilet paper. I would rather not have them get into the child raising business too.

Things in our constitution may be changed by a majority vote of the citizens. So far, what adults do with their own sex life seems not to bother too many of us Yanks. If anyone is offended by 'American' porn (whatever the heck that is) I would recommend they get up a howling mob and tell their government officials to pull the plug on international internet connections. Blaming people, and countries, will not improve anything.

And so it goes...
 

In response to the concerned parent over file remnants:

Programs like Window Washer (by WebRoot) can be used to overwrite the file space taken up by 'deleted' files, so there are no traces left. Window Washer calls this process "bleaching." (as in adding bleach to a load of laundry). Bleaching file space 7 times, or overwriting it 7 times will make any file unrecoverable except by extreme means which probably only a few labs in America have access to.

In response to porn in Gnutella searches:

I have used LimeWire for 6 months and have only ever searched for music files. I have NEVER had a porn item come up as a search result, and I have no filters set up. Is there a benefit to leaving the search type on "All Types" instead of selecting "Audio"? If you are only looking for music, how are you running into adult material?

In response to children surfing unattended:
The Internet, as I see it, is like a huge library. The difference of course is that any yahoo with a thought in his or her head can write a book and submit it to this library. I would not let my own kid cruise the adult section of a library unattended if I was not first confident that his own values were solid enough to guide him through the rough parts.

The issue here is not monitoring our children, but preparing them for a wild and woolly world that doesn't care about their welfare. If you take the time to teach your children about morality, good intentions, healthy attitudes, and sticking to their own values, then your children should be fine and trustworthy no matter what material they are exposed to.

Again, this is another case of shifting blame and responsibility to the government instead of realizing that the duty is ours.

My 2 cents.

I agree with the unregistered poster just above.

A logical instinct for a parent is to want to create a hermetic, disinfected cocoon for their children where everything they see and hear is all sweetness and roses. Perhaps if you brought them up in the wilderness in a house with no electricity, 'phone lines, cellphone coverage or neighbours it might still be possible, but somehow I doubt that many users of this forum live in those conditions.

I've read many articles and posts on the filtering internet/P2P for children issue and I think , like many things, it needs to be placed in context: Imagine that you were able to filter all illegal/adult content from the internet and P2P software (which as others have said is very difficult to do). The child finishes downloading a non-copyrighted song from his favourite file-sharing program (:D) and trots off to watch TV where he sees an ultra-violent, stroboscopic Japanese manga cartoon followed by the news with various images of Israeli tanks and American B52s bombing anyone that looks vaguely Arab. He then goes for a walk in the park with mummy where he sees a drunk bloke swearing at his girlfriend and a teenager sniffing glue. When they stop to buy the newspaper, he sees a row of life-sized, naked Barbies all siliconized and retouched in Photoshop on the top shelf. On the way home they pass a man picking up a prostitute. He then returns to his room for another session surfing the squeaky-clean kiddy-net.

You might be able to filter the internet, but you can't filter the world. Part of a parent's responsibility is to monitor and explain. Simply banning and censoring is not going to do the trick - in fact it will probably be counter-productive and arouse the child's curiosity more.

True
 

Hi,

I cannot disagree any with the previous two posts.

I do believe that raising children is up to their parents. My own personal belief, after having raised two children, is that the ultimate responsibility for a kid's welfare is up to the parents.

I, personally, would not allow my children to have free access to the internet. I cannot, however, disagree with the way anyone else raises their children.

The neat thing about the internet is that it is like a 'living' thing that no one has been able to cage. I would sure like it to stay that way.

I think the answer to the original question, 'can't we ban porn...?', would have to be no. We do not have to look at it though.

As far as shady characters distributing porn under fake file names, I don't know. There are always people who are going to operate outside of existing laws. I doubt more laws will fix that. Downloading copyrighted material is illegal, I guess that would be the 'bad guy's' defence.

ken

This is an interesting thread from an Australian perspective because it highlights the difficulty of seperating the best from the worst of US developement - Whereas the US was first colonised by puritans, Australia was settled by convicts shipped out from England as punishment for petty crimes (so lots of prostitutes and petty thieves) - one consequence of this is that Australia has a far more relaxed and sensible attitude towards sexuality - (the leaders of the third and fourth largest political parties who together hold the balance of power in the Senate are both gay a fact that draws no undue/adverse comment) - in contrast - the puritanism of the early US settelers continues to cast a dark and shizophrenic shadow upon contemporary american life - but but but - that very puritanism was (crucially) a particular variant of ascetic calvanism that placed a huge value on hard work and progress (spiritual worth was indicated by worldly success) - with the transplantation of that ethos to an immense resource rich new world - capitalism takes off and never looks back - whilst we've all benefited from that we nevertheless still see the same tension being tirelessly played out in ever new forms - the present danger is that the latent puritanism of computer iliterate american policy makers can be drawn upon to provoke moral panics about the dangers of the internet by absolutely amoral folks actually only concerned with a perceived threat to their worldly success (come on down RIAA/Hilary)

creating some sort of all powerful internet nanny or internet-lite wouldn't address the underlying cultural/economic tension that leads to so much (very easily filtered out) pornography being available via gnutella - all it could ever be would be a profoundly undemocratic strategy that concentrated even more power in the hands of businesses that are so afraid of their clients that they'd rather smash the telephone exchange than risk people making calls to someone other than themselves

bad_vlad

whatever You said
 

Cool

(ethos eh?)

ken

It's really simple actually: make a .porn suffix.

I do think there are FAR more important issues facing the world than naked men and women in various positions.

1. starvation
2. war
3. lack of medicine
4. pollution
5. social inequality
6. western matierialism

on the other hand - for every complex problem there's always a simple answer - and its always wrong

explicit porn is illegal in many jurisdictions so a .porn suffix could probably be blocked by the ISP without jeopardising their common carrier status which is what permits all this file sharing via gnutella

of course there are - but sexuality is experienced in the 'here and now' whereas the misfortune of others is all too often an abstraction

plus - the connections between 'porn' and third world starvation are far from straightforward - todays 'acceptable marketing image' is yesterdays pornography - in the west, sex sells and is therefore fundamental to capitalism - world starvation could easily be 'fixed' (the pet food fishing industry in america alone could feed all the starving) - the problem is that of distribution - it is no coincidence that the countries most at risk fom starvation/social inequality etc are those least integrated with global capitalism - which is of course driven by materialism and lashings of sex

it is also no coincidence that the most materialist society in recorded history (america) is also the society that has done more to advance issues of equal rights/social equality etc than any other country in recorded history

you can be uncharitable and say this is just because of a never ending desire for new markets/consumers or you can take the alternative view thar capitalism 'works' best in the context of educated, liberal, pluralistic and tolerant democracies (who knows?)

either way - part of the process is an increasing sexualisation of popular culture - personally I'd rather have gnutella absloutely flooded with porn (that I could easily filter out if I want) than live in a sexually repressive society that punished very human behaviours because they went against some idealised moral code that ignores the fact that most people spend an enormous amount of time focused on sex (and thats ok)

I am saddened that so many educated people have been abandoned by the voice of reason. The presence of sex (the mere mention of the word causes me discomfort) in a person's mind can only mean one thing - the weakening of the human spirit and vastly increased susceptibility to sin.

Pornography is evil. Its debauchery leaves cracks in our will that will be penetrated by the voice of the devil. I myself have been forced to see a mass of this evil on Gnutella as, in order to fight one's enemy, one must get to know him - however painful and arduous this task might be. The box of tissues in my office is for hayfever. By the way, I don't suppose anyone would have the last five minutes of.....I was unable to sample the full extent of its immorality.....oh never mind.

Ahem...We must give a better example to future generations. We should lead them to follow the example of popular icon Edit whose chastity is a shining light in a sea of darkness. You can rest assured that her partner, Edit (another popular icon and companion to a future astronaut, no less), would not even consider placing his beloved's purity under threat. If only more of their peers would follow this excellent example and avoid the Siren call of sex and pornography - especially as so many have temptation so near in the form of a computer with internet connection.

So I bid you to join me in my quest to preach a message of morality to young people , especially to the slim, sweet , beautiful, teenage blondes of my neighbourhood as they, poor things, are the most vulnerable to moral corruption. I have even taken the trouble to avoid burdening my wife with knowlege of the ****** of this responsibility.

It is time for the American government to take the lead and begin a cybernetic war against the rogue service providers who allow this offensive data to pass through their systems. To march against them as if they were Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden rolled into one. In fact, I sincerely believe that much of the pornography on the net and P2P systems has been placed there by followers of Bin Laden in order to weaken the will of Western Civilisation, so this crusade could be legitimately undertaken in the interests of national security. The net must be cleansed at all cost!!!

:D :) ;)

I'm ready to fight the good fight - where do I sign up - my loins are girded and my soul is pure

My 2 cents worth
 

Let me be the first to say I am far from sainthood. I do believe that pornography and sexual exploitation is wrong. Any nation who justifies these things are on a downward spiral towards complete moral corruption. Which is where us adults come into play. It is our responsibility to teach our children right from wrong and possibly change the direction in which our society is currently going.
After saying that, let me add the flip-side of the coin.
It is NOT the government's responsibility to censor us in any form or fashion. Isn't freedom what we are, at this very moment, fighting to conserve? Yet we seem to take this right for granted much too often. We want to use it when it benefits our personal agendas, and at the same time ignore and cry out for censorship when someone gets offended.
As Americans, we need to uphold the Constitution. We can't pick it apart and choose only to agree with the parts the suit us at that moment for whatever given circumstance. That Constitution has held this country together, if we continue to pick it apart and fight to ammend all of our rights, we won't have any rights left, and that will surely lead to the decline and fall of this great empire.
Everything on the internet, both good and bad, represents the real world because it's real people putting these things up on the net. We can't filter our children from the real world, nor should we want to. We can only teach our children to follow the path of the righteous and hope that when their morals are questioned they remember the ways they were taught. It is inevitalble, our children, no matter how hard we try to protect them, are going to be faced with comprimising situations. We cannot shelter them, and our only hope of controlling the content that is available out there is by teaching our children good God-fearing ideals. Because our children really are our future and will decide what direction our society takes.
But wherever that path may lead, I hope we choose to value and uphold our constitutional rights.

Thankyou for letting me vent. :)

as a practicing atheist its a little strange feeling sympathetic to such explicit but unusually even-handed religiosity (though the moral corruption and god fearing touches are still unsettling) - it would be easy to resort to some flip comment about the importance of protecting "the slim, sweet , beautiful, teenage blondes of my [Macterminator] neighbourhood as they, poor things, are the most vulnerable to moral corruption."

but - more seriously - between the 1930's and the 1990's sexual abuse of children was steadily rising (as measured by credible research studies) - but since 1990 its been in steady decline (at least as measured by a major american study examining substantiated cases in all jurisdictions , including Alaska) - the decline is huge - a 39 percent decrease since 1990 - if we remember that willingness to report has increased in recent years this decline is remarkable

two points about this research data - first any other such decrease in victimisation would be celebrated but in this case the finding is very unpopular in some quarters with the researchers receiving hate mail and being accused of being pedophiles - the second point relates to why the decrease has happened

the increasing sexualisation of everyday life which is so frowned upon by the religous and narrow minded has had an unanticipted benefit - children are no longer so innocent about sex and understand what is happening (ie sexual abuse) at a much earlier age and are able to talk about it to adults in a way that was simply not possible in earlier more conservative times - if you compare the levels of childhood sexual abuse amongst women now in their 50's and 60's with that of young children today the decrease is startling

whether we like it or not the intrusion of sex into everyday culure (and that includes pornography - putting aside the difficulty of actually defining what that might be) - is not all bad

hi every one
im 14 and my parents trust me on the internet, im 14 and im on at 12:00 at night just talking to friends. and i think all of you would enjoy hearing from some one my age

i have very high prioritys, after making a really bad mistake about a year ago that involved sex i swear i regret it to my moms death bed. If there are any 14 year old out there that are " horny " do not be intimanted by the girls. they ruin your life. They can be great, but they can be tempting. do not lay lust, its the worst thing u can possibly get into. Wait till after marriage. Thats the best advice.

Let god be with you all
-kyle

pornography
 

Hi - I just logged on to this forum because I have just discovered my 12yr old son downloading graphic gay pornography off limewire. This is mainly in the form of little quick time movies.
I want to stop this without confronting him or shutting down limewire ( he uses it alot for music) Is there a way? Also some of these sites contain chat links. This seems very disturbing and scary to me. Can anyone help with this?

There is no way for LimeWire or anyone else to control what people are sharing. - You can enable the adult content filter in LimeWire but your son will be able to deactivate it easily.

It's probably the best solution, not to let him use the internet when you are away (I can think of a dozen ways to get porn in the internet without using LimeWire). And talk to him about the videos he has downloaded. If you make it clear to him that you don't like it if he downloads porn he will be a little more careful until he's 14 or 15 maybe.

Once your son has reached a certain age, there won't be any way of preventing him from watching porn. He will get that stuff on LAN parties, from friends on CDs or video, in IRC chats, usenet newsgroups, from various websites. That's just natural curiosity for the 'forbidden. So, be open with him about it.

well, your replies are certainly enlightening and entertaining, however, some of us know we can't control the world or anyone but our own household. i just don't want my teenage son sitting at our shared computer, doing private things which may clog my keyboard! now, can limewire or can limewire not eliminate "sexy girl has shaking orgasm" from my particular account??? every song title or artist, no matter who or what we ask for, comes up with this selection. have you heard of Graboid video? they have all their "adult" movies in an "adult" section, and i was able to have them delete the adult section on my account only, in order to sleep at night knowing i've done all i could to keep my children's minds somewhat innocent. thanks for helping and sharing. or, or, if there was a way on my account to be able to review a history of all that was viewed, that would help.

Old thread to reply to. :) Direct instructions to eliminate porn from results (click on blue link) & add whichever other words you feel need to be. :)