The very idea that the state requires you to become involved as an informant or else be
falsely branded a sex offender is utterly unconscionable.

In states where prosecutors are elected the danger that a prosecutor would commit such a
crime is very real and has been reported to occur more than once in the past few years. None
of these cases were as famous as the crime committed against the lacrosse players at Duke U,
but that is mostly because this is the kind of thing that is typically done in the dark, out of the
press and public scrutiny, as both the falsely accused and the criminal accuser want it that way.

Currently there is no safe way to submit an anonymous tip, and if you try to do so while
maintaining your anonymity you face the strong possibility of the above crime being
committed against you. Not all prosecutors behave in that way, but in governments where
they are rewarded for doing so, some will indeed do so and are criminal enough at heart or are
so blinded by the horror of kiddy porn that they feel no remorse for their crimes.

Until that situation changes for the better I suggest that one either jump in or jump away. If
you want to be an activist then go right ahead and take your chances. Just be sure they always
know you are "on their side" even if it becomes obvious you inadvertantly turned in another
innocent victim of a mislabelled file, or you may end up on the receiving end along with your
victim. In light of this ridiculous situation the most responsible and safest course at present,
if you accidentally downloaded a file of that kind, is to delete it securely and move on.

As always, I suggest in the strongest terms that it is best to avoid sharing incomplete
downloads and your downloads folder. If what you share is always under your complete
control than this horror story can never happen to you.

I have always advised the developers of gnutella programs that automatically sharing files
before a user can check them is dangerous for many reasons but they always dismissed such
warnings because "it's good for the network". Well, now some years have passed and we have
seen some of these false prosecutions, many examples of RIAA extortion against people who
didn't know what they were sharing, the rampant spread of worms and spammers taking
advantage of inadvertent sharing to flood the network and accusations levelled against the
developers themselves of inducing copyright infringement by causing this inadvertent sharing.

Perhaps now they will take another look and think it through this time.