United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 20-3189 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. THOMAS J. OWENS, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. No. 18-cr-00157 — William C. Griesbach, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 28, 2021 — DECIDED NOVEMBER 19, 2021 ____________________

Before FLAUM, KANNE, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges. FLAUM, Circuit Judge. It is criminal “distribut[ion]” of child pornography within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2) to knowingly make a file containing child pornography availa- ble for others to access and download via a peer-to-peer file- sharing network. See United States v. Ryan, 885 F.3d 449, 453 (7th Cir. 2018). The government has developed an investiga- tive practice where it employs a confidential software pro- gram to participate in the peer-to-peer network and detect 2 No. 20-3189 and download child pornography files shared therein. Once a file is downloaded and its illicit contents verified, the gov- ernment ascertains the IP address of the sharing user, contacts the Internet service provider to identify the residence associ- ated with the IP address, obtains a search warrant, and seizes the suspect’s electronics. Often, the downloaded file is then located on the suspect’s device, and the government can ver- ify that the file was indeed made available for downloading. Yet sometimes the file cannot be located on the device or there are questions about the defendant’s sharing settings. In the case before us now, Thomas Owens was arrested and charged with the distribution and possession of child pornography after a government investigator used such a program, Torrential Downpour Receptor (“TDR”), to down- load a video file containing child pornography from a folder shared via the BitTorrent network at an IP address later asso- ciated with Owens. Nonetheless, a forensic search of Owens’s computer at the time he was arrested failed to locate the file on his computer. Owens moved to compel the production of information relating to the government’s download of the file pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16. The dis- trict court held an evidentiary hearing and denied the motion; Owens now appeals that decision after entering a guilty plea preserving that right. Given that we review a district court’s Rule 16 decision only for abuse of discretion, we reverse only if a defendant can demonstrate that the pretrial disclosure of the disputed evidence would have enabled the defendant “to substantially alter the quantum of proof in his favor.” United States v. Orzechowski, 547 F.2d 978, 984–85 (7th Cir. 1976) (quoting No. 20-3189 3 United States v. Marshall, 532 F.2d 1279, 1285 (9th Cir. 1976)). Because Owens falls short of meeting that burden, we affirm.

I. Background

A. The BitTorrent Network and Torrential Downpour Receptor BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing network that is used to distribute large amounts of data over the Internet, such as movies, videos, music, and images. In contrast to a centralized network, which relies on a single server to provide an entire file directly to each user, peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent enable users to download portions of a file from numerous other users simultaneously. In this way, BitTorrent users can avoid slow download speeds that occur as a result of the sharing server’s restricted upload bandwidth. As the defense expert explained to the district court, because most individual