I have always ignored the porn that inevitably sneaks its way into newsgroups, spam-mail, etc. I have lived by the rule that if I don't like it, I do not have to download it.
I approached my use of Gnutella/Limewire in the same fashion. When files come up on a search that are of an adult orientation, ignore such and download what you are looking for (or refine your searches).
However one of the coolest things about gnutella (passing searches directly onto your peers/acting as a router for said searches), also makes it the thing which has made me decide to kill it from my system.
Monitor your searches, and you will see that you are facilitating the distribution of child porn. It doesn't matter that you do not have such on your machine. The client running on your machine is happily passing on the nastiest search terms possible to your peers...and you have no say in it. The manner of the architecture not only allows you to become an unwitting participant in the distribution of child pornography, but *forces* you to do such as you cannot set filters on the searches you are passing on to others.
If some "dirty old man" came to your door and asked you if you had any pictures or movies of naked children, your first response would be to call the authorities.
For those who still wish to utilize gnutella without the vendors doing the responsible thing and making it so you are not an unwitting participant in child porn, do what I did and start downloading a few of these things so you can get a list of IP address and then go to www.missingkids.com and report the scumbags trading this crap around. Even better...why don't the vendors or some other hardy soul develop or modify a client which will capturing the IPs of those searching for this crap and automatically forward on to law enforcement.

If you're going to go as far as blaming LimeWire and/or the Gnutella network for distributing child porngraphy. Why dont you blame the ISPs of the affending host which is giving service for them to be connected to the 'internet'. Or blame Intel or AMD for manufacturing the processors that compute the data that is created by the software that makes the computer function!? Rosie O'Donnell please sit down there is no place for a talk show dyke in the P2P world.

don't be a ***.

To moralthickline -- I did a search for kiddie porn -- most of these files are not children; they are 18+ people who look young. For some reason people try to make porn files more attactive by appending a string of stuff like: lolita, kiddie, young, pre-teen, illegal, etc.. I don't think it's as big an issue as you make it out to be.

By the way, don't spout morals when you are stealing files.

..i thought the p.c. term was "sharing"!

The "***" is directed to scud, not moral thick line.

If you're going to censor me, morgwen, for calling a bigoted idiot an a-hole, censor the bigoted comment as well! "Talk-show dyke" is ok??

Why people fight vehemently for an uncensoring government, but then censor things in private practice is beyond me.

I do agree with a choice or weather or not to allow child porn to go through a persons computers, howeve now knowing this, I would like to say that everyone has a choice.
The choice may not be convenient to the person who desired to use the limewire, howeve does not desire to allow files in any topic range to be passed through his/her machine.
The answer is simple don't use limewire and deal with the inconvenience of not using limewire, if indead a person objects to this.
I personally do, however feel no conviction on this topic.
Here is a good example:
Althought I don't condone drug abuse, I have people who work for me, and they get paid. Knowing that they will most likely spend their money on drugs. Should I not pay them / or fire them.
or just not work them to begin with. The fact is that these are good worker and make me money. So the answer is simple, to support my conviction I need not work them and deal with solution of how to find other workers myself.
This may be inconvenient, but why sit around complaining that my workers are on drugs.
Bye the way this is an example, not a true situation, but I have seem this in the work place before.
What does this have to do with this topic regarding child porn.
Well everything if there are things that someong does not like but they do like other features, then they have to weight what is more important, if their conviction is strong enough, the details of why they do not like a particular feature of lime wire out weights the features that they do like and regardless of how much they like those features they are willing to give it up to support their conviction.
This is called making the right descision.
I have already stopped using lime wire myself, as it appears to be mostly for porn and bootleg copies of software and lic.
I have tried to uninstall and now my machine get a strange starup message that I now need to tweek and fix. which I will , but what a pain.
anyways just fyi, this is my idea of making a descision and being accountable.
good luck to all and may God Bless you and your families.