Michelle Malkin wrote a post "CHILD PORN AND P2P: A REALITY CHECK". There she claims that since people can (and do, apparently) use P2P software for trafficking in child pornography (which is unspeakable vile and those people can't be killed dead enough), that Grokster et al. have must "... take increased corporate responsibility for doing something about it."

Her reasoning is that their product is being used in to commit crimes, and therefore they must necessarily "do something" to stop them. From this I can only conclude that she believes that Sony, Canon, and Nikon must also take increased corporate responsiblity for doing something about the criminals using their camera to take illegal pictures; that Swith&Wesson, Colt, and Beretta must take increased corporate responsibility for people shooting convenience store clerks with their guns; that Ford, GM, and Toyota must take increased responsibility for people driving their cars into pedestrians; etc etc ad nauseum.

I actually empathize with her revulsion: child pornography is an unmitigated abomination and its practitioners outght to be found and killed to remove their pernicious influence from our society and gene pool. It isn't Grokster's problem to solve, though, nor is P2P necessarily an especially good prism through which to view the problem. There are a number of technologies involved in producing and disseminating that excrement, so I don't see how you can justify singling out one of many possible last steps in the dissemination process as somehow culpable for the whole mess.

On a side note, Photoshop won't let you dork with pictures of money. Why isn't she demanding that the USG nationalize that technology and mandate its usage in all cameras, scanners, and image display devices so that child porn can't be photographed, manipulated, scanned, or displayed?

Colby Cosh is da man! I don't know that I've ever seen such a wonderful electronic drubbing as he delivers here. Read and marvel at the spectacular wondrousness of it all.

This also reminds me that I really do hate everybody, and attempting to pour oil on the troubled waters just isn't my thing unless it involves adding fire to the accelerant afterwards. Thank you, sir.