I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The war against the alt.* hierarchy of Usenet continues as NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has convinced two more ISPs to drop access to part of Usenet. They've also set up the website NY Stop Child Porn, and convinced California to join them in the fight. In some sense, this is rather like bulldozing the slums to fight crime; sure, it might get rid of a lot of undesirables, but it also affects many innocent people, and everyone will now start migrating elsewhere in droves. The article notes, 'Cuomo's new web site signifies that he's clearly not done yet. It includes contact information for 20 ISPs that presumably operate in New York, and text of a letter to send to them to urge that they sign on to the campaign.' And you thought the Eternal September was bad..."
It's not just (or probably even mostly) about the kiddie porn - it's the software, video, and music that gets shared in the alt.* hierarchy, too. And the ISPs probably don't mind not providing a service that doesn't do much but cost them extra for bandwidth and storage.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday July 11 2008, @09:30PM (#24161047)
>And the ISPs probably don't mind not providing a service that doesn't do much but cost them extra for bandwidth and storage.
And customers.
Considering once the data is on their network, it costs them (virtually) zero to transmit it to their customers, a usenet leech is the best customer you could ever have.
There's a German joke about sharks prefering politicians because without a spine and butter on their head (German idiom for having skeletons in your closet), they're the perfect diet.
What really bugs me about this is the fact that the Attorney General has employed bogus threats to get ISPs to comply with his demands.
The AG's allegation is that all these ISPs have engaged in deceptive practices by on the one hand having terms of service that prohibit illegal content, and on the other hand failing to actively screen such content. If the AG's legal theory were correct, prohibiting illegal content would create a responsibility to screen all such content, and from what I can see it doesn't even matter whether the content actually originates on the ISPs servers.
Folks, the Attorney General's behavior is blatantly unethical. He's using false legal claims to bring down legitimate forums, and the ISPs are bending to his will.
This will be no more effective than spam filters anyway. Block any group named "kiddy porn" and they'll rename it to k1ddy p0rn, and all the way down to "kay didalee dee pooArn" Filter it by the binaries and you create a race between the sick fucks and the police. One side will make undetectable binaries, the other side will want to detect them. And you'll push up demand for stuff that hasn't already been passed around;_;
Gee, it's almost like the war against drugs and piracy! Strange how people keep doing what they want, against the "laws", despite the prevalent "morality" of their state. It's almost like the state doesn't truly represent the people at all.
One of those nice little features of usenet is that people can *create* groups. If they ban the entire alt.* hierarchy, people are just going to create new groups outside the alt hierarchy for everything, legal or not. This will, of course, be an enormous headache to sort out since there will be *many* new groups being created for each existing group and it will take time for people to agree on which ones to use. Perhaps some of the new names will even make sense...
e.g. startrek.ds9, music.lossless or porn.bigtits.
It's not just the alt.* groups or the binary groups. My ISP (Time Warner) dropped usenet access completely last month. I'm sure that's what the other ISPs will do soon as well. Gawd, I remember calling my ISP when their news server went down, and it was like pulling teeth to get anyone on the phone who had even heard of usenet, or would admit that they (at that time) provided such a service.
Alt was always going to be the internet's pariah, even before the binaries. Popular history has it that the first three newsgroups in the alt hierarchy were alt.sex, alt.drugs, and alt.rock-n-roll.
I've never seen any kiddy porn on usenet, but I know that there's 5 terrabytes a day of something illegal.
For me, the rub of it is that I just upgraded to an encrypted usenet service so that I can't get clapped in irons for downloading TV shows, and now I'm worried that I'll be labelled as a sex offender.
This whole thing is really sad. I love usenet. It's basically the only way I form more than passing personal relationships online. It's a great way to learn about and stay up with anything you're interested in. My ISP completely dropped usenet access last month.
I suspect that a lot of usenet users are simply going to give up at this point. There's been a vast amount of spam recently for knockoffs of shoes, purses, and watches. Many people whose ISPs have given up are not going to go to the trouble of finding affordable usenet access. Personally, I tried paying octanews, who ripped me off. Then for a while I used google groups, which reminded me of how much better a newsreader is than a web browser for participating in usenet. Finally a slashdotter recommended astraweb, which is working great for me now. Many people who had been using text-only usenet may not realize that you can pay for usenet access by the gigabyte rather than by the month, which means you can basically pay $10 and have usenet access for the indefinite future.
I mentioned usenet to my sister the other day, and she asked me what it was and why I wanted to use it. I actually had a hard time explaining it until I thought about it later. Basically, it gets the job of running a discussion group done way better than web browser interface. It's also noncommercial and very general -- none of this stuff about screwing around with some specific web-based group that will evaporate in a few years and that has no world-wide profile.
I gave up reading on USENET around 7 years ago - many of the technical discussion groups became spammed by junk mail and overloaded by students looking for quick solutions to their coursework assignments.
There was some mystique in dialing up your ISP, hearing than modem connect and see your newsgroups download. Then you could spend an hour or so just reading the world technical news and humour.
Just wait...if Cuomo discovers that child porn is shared via HTTP, he might force ISPs to drop access to the web.
I have dug a lot of Cuomo's recent suits for their customer/consumer-friendliness (recently he settled with Verizon when they advertised unlimited cell phone use and then dropped customers who talked too much, and also sued Dell for failing to deliver support). This is kind of silly, though. I mean, it's essentially declaring war on a protocol. It reminds me strip #2 of Get Your War On [mnftiu.cc].
He's playing the "Ooooh ooooh look at MEEEE!! I'm stopping those evil kiddy porn traders from hurting kids! I'm going to huff and puff and blow their house down!!!" game.
Of course nothing he is doing is having any sort of an effect whatsoever, but then that isn't the point. The point is that the average dimwitted (but I repeat myself) person doesn't knows very little about computers and absolutely nothing about usenet. But they sure do vote! So when Cuomo shakes his stick and growls at imaginary hobgoblins, the voters think well of him, and remember that good impression come election day.
Unfortunately the only real way to stop someone like him is to give him REAL problems to deal with and REAL bad guys to chase after.
This is what happens when you get rid of the mob, people like Cuomo have too much time on their hands.
I used Usenet way back in the day when it was the primary--nay, just about the only way to find like-minded people to discuss topics of interest. Particularly the alt hierarchy.
But now I find that web site forums, Google/Yahoo groups and email lists have supplanted Usenet. I haven't found any content I was looking for for a really long time on Usenet and haven't found a reason to delve there myself. I think the last time a search returned Usenet was a tech support question I asked like 4-5 years ago. We used it a little bit for Mozilla coordination but even then it felt like the bastard child of communication--bug reports, IRC and email lists were the method of choice.
It's definitely a sad day, killing a fly with a sledgehammer, etc. etc.--but how relevant is Usenet anymore really? Is it actually still heavily used and I just don't happen to know anyone who uses it?
Frankly, I've been amazed for years at Usenet's continued slipping under the radar. It's interesting that these days it's considered a kind of advanced or very geeky part of the internet, when in the old days it was often our first foray into global networking (after FIDOnet, of course!).
Increasingly, it seems like Usenet is being hosted by a few large, dedicated Usenet providers, and ISP's just subscribe to them for their users, which is understandable. Who wants to maintain an NNTP server?
Only problem is it makes it easier to take down.
The stupids, now that they are starting to finally grasp the true power of the internet, are naturally keen to see it destroyed...because they're stupid. We gotta remember who's right in this struggle, and the importance of protecting unpleasant and unpopular speech--including filez, warez, movies--everything. If you can keep me from sharing data you don't want shared, you can control what I say. There's no two ways about it, you can have one or the other--free speech or control over content.
Besides, didn't I read a year or two ago how some of the big Usenet providers were working with the Feds to try to filter out the kiddie porn? I highly approve of that action, and I think thats where we need to draw the line.
I mean seriously, do any of these usenet categories contribute anything of value to society???
Well, you could apply that question to all of Usenet and on average, the answer would be No.
Besides... if alt.binaries.* gets blocked, the pervs will just move to the rec.* branch, or whatever strikes their fancy. They've done this in the past; they're probably doing it now. In all seriousness, they might as well ban Usenet binary distribution altogether. That's what they're going to have to do if they're serious about going the distance with this.
It's quite easy to simply stop carrying the feeds for those groups. What this action is, is the equivalent of using thermonuclear bomb to kill a fly. I'm sure that out of the multiple thousands of groups in the alt.* hierarchy, there's probably some kiddie porn. For all I know, there might be some in the free.* hierarchy, but I have zero interest in searching through all the hierarchies to see if I can turn up any kiddy porn. I guarantee you it isn't present in the alt.help.*, alt.health.*, alt.animal.*, alt.fan.*, or the alt.sport.* groups. Even looking through the list of the alt.binaries.* groups, they're overwhelmingly obviously not kiddie-porn groups. But hey, somewhere in there there might be some.
Saying Usenet is "full of kiddie porn" is pretty much a lie. There are a lot of groups in the alt.hierarchy I've belonged to over the years, and still do, and I've never seen any. However, I've always used the rule of "if it looks like something you're not going to want to see, then don't go there!
Saying Usenet is "full of kiddie porn" is pretty much a lie.
You don't understand.
If there is even the possibility of child porn being present, then we have "Serious Cause For Concern".
If there is even the slightest amount of material that someone even thinks might be child pornography, then we have "Disturbing And Objectionable Materials Being Posted".
If there is actually some child pornography in any form, then we have "A Haven Of Depravity Full Of Obscene And Vile Depictions Of Abuse".
If you don't like entire internet protocols being tarnished in this manner, then you are a "Person Of Questionable Motivation".
And of course if the place is an actual child pornographer's hangout stuffed to the gills with the worst of material, then you have an "Private Gentlemens Club, For Pillars Of The Community".
And dropping alt.* creates lots of collateral damage -- much intelligent discussion on various topics, and variety of non-porn-related subjects that happen to fall in the alt.* hierarchy.
The last thing certain people in charge want right now, are people participating in intelligent discussions.
Just to be technical...unless the kids are doing something sexual...it isn't kiddie pr0n. If if the bar is 'that' low, then we got a bunch of parents out there that are liable to be arrested and taken to jail for taking shots of their little kids bathing or running around nekkid...
then we got a bunch of parents out there that are liable to be arrested and taken to jail for taking shots of their little kids bathing or running around nekkid...
I work for a data processing company in Australia, where I oversee a team of FIVE full-time operators who each spend eight hours a day, five days a week scanning "Working With Children" license applications on behalf of the Department of Justice...every volunteer for sporting, religious, educational etc organisations, schools, daycare centres, you name it! The state I cover has only got a population of 5 million, and these guys can scan in 400 applications an hour EACH...and the backlog grows every...damn...day. The hysteria is everywhere.
I don't know why there's a flamebait mod on this. I am British, I live here, and I can tell you that there's a ridiculous amount of groundless fear and hysteria in this country. The article saying that they are struggling to find people to work with children because people are terrified someone will think they are a peadophile is spot on. I don't know how this country is in comparison to other countries, so maybe that's where the flamebait comes in, but it seems to me that things are pretty bad here and we need to find a way to make it acceptable to actually like children again and enjoy spending time with them, even when you don't have an "excuse" such as being their parent.
Is some of that really 'kiddie porn'? I checked out naturism newsgroup has lots of regular looking folks not engaging in sex and doing regular activities in the nude, I wouldn't exactly call that 'porn', many of them look like family vacation/bbq/get together photos to me IMHO.
Looking at pictures in naturism.family doesn't seem like porn to me at all, (disregarding cross posters) there are regular people taking pictures in the background in a few of them.
I think this all has to do with judeo-christian cultural values of the west and it's crazy puritan heritage, other cultures do not share the same values. The idea of 'kiddie porn' is not universal.
People are naturally born naked, and many other cultures are comfortable being around people (strangers) in other countries, it's only really the west that is so repressed.
Who am I to decide why someone looks at pics? We're getting pretty close to thoughtcrime here.
Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? I'd guess so, since I don't understand the appeal of watching people BBQ naked (unless you're in some twisted way interested in how people react when they get burned in more sensitive places, I wouldn't stand next to a BBQ without some protective clothing).
But just because I don't understand it doesn't make it "evil", or leads automatically to the train of thought "there is no other reason to do X but Y", since Y is the only thing I could think of. Along the same lines, you could argue that games like Battlefield and Call of Duty serve no purpose but to prepare people for terror attacks, since I don't understand why someone would play it for the sake of playing it.
There's moderate to severe nudity taboos in Japan and China
Can't speak to China, but Japan had their nudity taboo imposed on them by Westerners. [japanvisitor.com] Originally, onsen (hot spring baths) and sento (public baths) were not separated by gender. Out in the countryside, people worked in the fields pretty much naked.
Take a look at all the newsgroups you listed. What do they all have in common besides being in the alt. hierarchy? Here's a hint. Look at the second item in the name.
They aren't just dropping alt.binaries. They are dropping the entire alt. hierarchy. Including the ones where you can't even trade files.
These people have admitted that they only found child porn in 88 of the 100,000 newsgroups.
If Cuomo really wanted to stop the child porn, he'd focus on the child porn. But this absolute idiot who is a disgrace to the human race is running some kind of agenda to shut down the internet. Instead of asking these ISPs to close off the groups that have the porn, he's creating a situation where people who have absolutely nothing to do with the porn, and are involved in groups that do not have any porn, are forced to go somewhere else, which is likely to have those same porn groups. This is an action that won't shut down porn. It will just move it elsewhere... and move the other people that effectively and unknowingly help support it, along at the same time. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! That is one dumb politician.
He's only making the problem worse.
The child porn will go somewhere else. He hasn't eliminated the market for it. Then he'll demand shutting down other parts of the net. Next you know he'll demand ISPs block port 443. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! That is one dumb politician.
Unless I'm mistaken, they aren't blocking access to USENET, what they are doing, is essentially blocking groups or encouraging ISP's to drop carrying USENET on their own servers. You would still be free to connect to pay or free USENET servers out there...you just won't have one run by your ISP to connect to any longer.
"Seriously, though. There are very, very few people left who use the USENET for anything real."
Far from it...I still find programming advice, and discussions out there. I've had discussions with lawyers and accountants on corporate law (especially when wanting for form my own corp)...and lets not forget the huge amount of binary material out there, easy to download tv shows you might have missed in real time.
I'm guessing your are gonna say that IRC is dead and unused for anything real too?
From a technical standpoint, I have absolutely no problem with an ISP dropping access to USENET. It's an old protocol that has outlived its usefulness. No one expects their ISP to carry access to UUCP anymore, this is no different.
But that's not the argument that Cuomo is making. He's essentially saying that because some third grader pissed in one end of one pool, we have to close and drain all the municipal pools and outlaw swim lessons. This is absurd. Kiddie porn traders used to send their garbage through the mail, did anyone suggest shutting down the postal service? What's next, will he try to force ISPs to inspect every email that traverses their network and make sure there are no images of little kids in them? (Oops, I think they're actually already doing this one.)
He's had some good press lately with the consumer protection stuff, this is just completely insane and should be laughed out of court.
First of all, you're confusing a network protocol and a community. The Usenet of NNTP is the same as the Usenet that used to be propagated via UUCP. Some people might still get their messages via UUCP - how would you know?
Second of all, we don't have many things we took for granted at the height of Usenet:
Multiple competing clients for a single discussion venue
Downloading messages for offline viewing
Cross-posting between multiple groups, storing only a single copy of the message
Reliable and accurate flagging of read messages
Reading a cross-posted message once and seeing it marked read everywhere
Ability to delete (err, cancel) posts
Extensive filtering and archival, depending on client
Real, nested, arbitrary deep threads. Most online discussion venues on the web have dumbed-down linear threads that are a pain to read
Today's fragmented web has nothing that can approach Usenet, and every time somebody wants to add these features to some web app or another, he has to do it from scratch, and often incompatibly and poorly.
CENSORSHIP IS NEVER THE ANSWER. WHAT YOU PROPOSE IS STILL CENSORSHIP.
Information can never hurt anyone. If you want to stop harmful acts, then stop harmful acts. As a Supreme Court justice one said, the answer to bad speech is more speech. Not banning what you personally find offensive. Banning things is the way to a repressive, stagnated culture.
Also, what ISPs are doing, although reprehensible, is perfectly legal. Stop the sloppy thinking already. Learn to separate the concept of "right" from that of "legal". You'll get bitten in the ass time and again.
The answer to "why shouldn't I do this?" should always be "because it's wrong", not "because it's illegal."
My favorite sandwich is peanut butter, baloney, cheddar cheese, lettuce
and mayonnaise on toasted bread with catsup on the side.
-- Senator Hubert Humphrey
Wonderful. (Score:5, Funny)
no more kinky sex stuff on usenet :\ That's the only good part of it, too.
it's just a cover (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just (or probably even mostly) about the kiddie porn - it's the software, video, and music that gets shared in the alt.* hierarchy, too. And the ISPs probably don't mind not providing a service that doesn't do much but cost them extra for bandwidth and storage.
Still, Cuomo's an asshole.
Re:it's just a cover (Score:5, Insightful)
>And the ISPs probably don't mind not providing a service that doesn't do much but cost them extra for bandwidth and storage.
And customers.
Considering once the data is on their network, it costs them (virtually) zero to transmit it to their customers, a usenet leech is the best customer you could ever have.
Parent
Re:it's just a cover (Score:5, Insightful)
it's the software, video, and music that gets shared in the alt.* hierarchy, too.
That's basically the first thing I thought of: Cuomo in be with {RI,MP}AA and using child porn as a smokescreen.
Parent
Re:it's just a cover (Score:5, Funny)
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
Parent
Re:it's just a cover (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:it's just a cover (Score:5, Funny)
There's a German joke about sharks prefering politicians because without a spine and butter on their head (German idiom for having skeletons in your closet), they're the perfect diet.
Parent
Dammit...do you not remember? (Score:5, Funny)
You don't talk about USENET.....
Parent
Re:Dammit...do you not remember? (Score:5, Funny)
alt.binaries.* came later.
Parent
Today Usenet (Score:4, Interesting)
bbs FTW! we dont need no steenkin ISPs.
So whats to stop some enterprising individual from putting all of Usenet on a distributed, encrypted network?
they should stop chasing ISP's (Score:5, Insightful)
and start chasing the people that harm the children.
Re:they should stop chasing ISP's (Score:5, Insightful)
And stop hurting the people under 18 who take pictures of them selves.
A life sentence for taking a picture of *yourself*? (In prison or registered a sex offender, there isn't much difference in some places)
Parent
NY AG is despicable (Score:5, Insightful)
What really bugs me about this is the fact that the Attorney General has employed bogus threats to get ISPs to comply with his demands.
The AG's allegation is that all these ISPs have engaged in deceptive practices by on the one hand having terms of service that prohibit illegal content, and on the other hand failing to actively screen such content. If the AG's legal theory were correct, prohibiting illegal content would create a responsibility to screen all such content, and from what I can see it doesn't even matter whether the content actually originates on the ISPs servers.
Folks, the Attorney General's behavior is blatantly unethical. He's using false legal claims to bring down legitimate forums, and the ISPs are bending to his will.
Spam filters (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Spam filters (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Somebody tell that tool that you can *add* groups (Score:5, Insightful)
e.g. startrek.ds9, music.lossless or porn.bigtits.
Re:Somebody tell that tool that you can *add* grou (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Somebody tell that tool that you can *add* grou (Score:5, Insightful)
TWRR dropped Usenet because they were sending too much money to Newshosting for their outsourced news server, and Cuomo gave them a convenient excuse.
Parent
Protecting the children (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I can be protected from alt.rec.motorcycles
I'll miss it, but after all, it's for the children.
Also, there should be no "content" on the internet not owned by a benevolent large corporation.
Losing alt.rec.motorcycles is worth it to serve our new masters.
Re:Protecting the children (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never seen any kiddy porn on usenet, but I know that there's 5 terrabytes a day of something illegal.
For me, the rub of it is that I just upgraded to an encrypted usenet service so that I can't get clapped in irons for downloading TV shows, and now I'm worried that I'll be labelled as a sex offender.
Parent
usenet on the ropes? (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole thing is really sad. I love usenet. It's basically the only way I form more than passing personal relationships online. It's a great way to learn about and stay up with anything you're interested in. My ISP completely dropped usenet access last month.
I suspect that a lot of usenet users are simply going to give up at this point. There's been a vast amount of spam recently for knockoffs of shoes, purses, and watches. Many people whose ISPs have given up are not going to go to the trouble of finding affordable usenet access. Personally, I tried paying octanews, who ripped me off. Then for a while I used google groups, which reminded me of how much better a newsreader is than a web browser for participating in usenet. Finally a slashdotter recommended astraweb, which is working great for me now. Many people who had been using text-only usenet may not realize that you can pay for usenet access by the gigabyte rather than by the month, which means you can basically pay $10 and have usenet access for the indefinite future.
I mentioned usenet to my sister the other day, and she asked me what it was and why I wanted to use it. I actually had a hard time explaining it until I thought about it later. Basically, it gets the job of running a discussion group done way better than web browser interface. It's also noncommercial and very general -- none of this stuff about screwing around with some specific web-based group that will evaporate in a few years and that has no world-wide profile.
Re:usenet on the ropes? (Score:4, Interesting)
I gave up reading on USENET around 7 years ago - many of the technical discussion groups became spammed by junk mail and overloaded by students looking for quick solutions to their coursework assignments.
There was some mystique in dialing up your ISP, hearing than modem connect and see your newsgroups download. Then you could spend an hour or so just reading the world technical news and humour.
Parent
HTTP (Score:5, Informative)
Just wait...if Cuomo discovers that child porn is shared via HTTP, he might force ISPs to drop access to the web.
I have dug a lot of Cuomo's recent suits for their customer/consumer-friendliness (recently he settled with Verizon when they advertised unlimited cell phone use and then dropped customers who talked too much, and also sued Dell for failing to deliver support). This is kind of silly, though. I mean, it's essentially declaring war on a protocol. It reminds me strip #2 of Get Your War On [mnftiu.cc].
NY Stop Child Porn? (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.nystopchildporn.com/ [nystopchildporn.com] - is that like http://www.expertsexchange.com/ [expertsexchange.com] or http://www.kidsexchange.com/ [kidsexchange.com] before they added their hyphens?
Or are they trying to lure in the kiddie-porn people, hoping they'll be looking for New York'S Top Child Porn?
Somebody wants to be Governor. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cuomo isn't an attorney, he's a politician.
He's playing the "Ooooh ooooh look at MEEEE!! I'm stopping those evil kiddy porn traders from hurting kids! I'm going to huff and puff and blow their house down!!!" game.
Of course nothing he is doing is having any sort of an effect whatsoever, but then that isn't the point. The point is that the average dimwitted (but I repeat myself) person doesn't knows very little about computers and absolutely nothing about usenet. But they sure do vote! So when Cuomo shakes his stick and growls at imaginary hobgoblins, the voters think well of him, and remember that good impression come election day.
Unfortunately the only real way to stop someone like him is to give him REAL problems to deal with and REAL bad guys to chase after.
This is what happens when you get rid of the mob, people like Cuomo have too much time on their hands.
Sad day -- but how relevant is Usenet anymore? (Score:4, Interesting)
I used Usenet way back in the day when it was the primary--nay, just about the only way to find like-minded people to discuss topics of interest. Particularly the alt hierarchy.
But now I find that web site forums, Google/Yahoo groups and email lists have supplanted Usenet. I haven't found any content I was looking for for a really long time on Usenet and haven't found a reason to delve there myself. I think the last time a search returned Usenet was a tech support question I asked like 4-5 years ago. We used it a little bit for Mozilla coordination but even then it felt like the bastard child of communication--bug reports, IRC and email lists were the method of choice.
It's definitely a sad day, killing a fly with a sledgehammer, etc. etc.--but how relevant is Usenet anymore really? Is it actually still heavily used and I just don't happen to know anyone who uses it?
Surprised it's taken so long (Score:5, Insightful)
Increasingly, it seems like Usenet is being hosted by a few large, dedicated Usenet providers, and ISP's just subscribe to them for their users, which is understandable. Who wants to maintain an NNTP server?
Only problem is it makes it easier to take down.
The stupids, now that they are starting to finally grasp the true power of the internet, are naturally keen to see it destroyed...because they're stupid. We gotta remember who's right in this struggle, and the importance of protecting unpleasant and unpopular speech--including filez, warez, movies--everything. If you can keep me from sharing data you don't want shared, you can control what I say. There's no two ways about it, you can have one or the other--free speech or control over content.
Besides, didn't I read a year or two ago how some of the big Usenet providers were working with the Feds to try to filter out the kiddie porn? I highly approve of that action, and I think thats where we need to draw the line.
Re:AGREED (Score:5, Informative)
this is for you [4chan.nu]
Little girls running down the beach naked isn't cp either.
Parent
Re:AGREED (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean seriously, do any of these usenet categories contribute anything of value to society???
Well, you could apply that question to all of Usenet and on average, the answer would be No.
Besides... if alt.binaries.* gets blocked, the pervs will just move to the rec.* branch, or whatever strikes their fancy. They've done this in the past; they're probably doing it now. In all seriousness, they might as well ban Usenet binary distribution altogether. That's what they're going to have to do if they're serious about going the distance with this.
Parent
DISAGREED (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quite easy to simply stop carrying the feeds for those groups. What this action is, is the equivalent of using thermonuclear bomb to kill a fly. I'm sure that out of the multiple thousands of groups in the alt.* hierarchy, there's probably some kiddie porn. For all I know, there might be some in the free.* hierarchy, but I have zero interest in searching through all the hierarchies to see if I can turn up any kiddy porn. I guarantee you it isn't present in the alt.help.*, alt.health.*, alt.animal.*, alt.fan.*, or the alt.sport.* groups. Even looking through the list of the alt.binaries.* groups, they're overwhelmingly obviously not kiddie-porn groups. But hey, somewhere in there there might be some.
Saying Usenet is "full of kiddie porn" is pretty much a lie. There are a lot of groups in the alt.hierarchy I've belonged to over the years, and still do, and I've never seen any. However, I've always used the rule of "if it looks like something you're not going to want to see, then don't go there!
Parent
Re:DISAGREED (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't understand.
If there is even the possibility of child porn being present, then we have "Serious Cause For Concern".
If there is even the slightest amount of material that someone even thinks might be child pornography, then we have "Disturbing And Objectionable Materials Being Posted".
If there is actually some child pornography in any form, then we have "A Haven Of Depravity Full Of Obscene And Vile Depictions Of Abuse".
If you don't like entire internet protocols being tarnished in this manner, then you are a "Person Of Questionable Motivation".
And of course if the place is an actual child pornographer's hangout stuffed to the gills with the worst of material, then you have an "Private Gentlemens Club, For Pillars Of The Community".
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Re:DISAGREED (Score:5, Insightful)
And dropping alt.* creates lots of collateral damage -- much intelligent discussion on various topics, and variety of non-porn-related subjects that happen to fall in the alt.* hierarchy.
The last thing certain people in charge want right now, are people participating in intelligent discussions.
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Re:AGREED (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:AGREED (Score:5, Informative)
then we got a bunch of parents out there that are liable to be arrested and taken to jail for taking shots of their little kids bathing or running around nekkid...
You haven't visited Britain lately...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/06/25/noindex/nbaby.xml [telegraph.co.uk]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/06/25/noindex/nchild.xml [telegraph.co.uk]
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It's the same in Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:AGREED (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know why there's a flamebait mod on this. I am British, I live here, and I can tell you that there's a ridiculous amount of groundless fear and hysteria in this country. The article saying that they are struggling to find people to work with children because people are terrified someone will think they are a peadophile is spot on. I don't know how this country is in comparison to other countries, so maybe that's where the flamebait comes in, but it seems to me that things are pretty bad here and we need to find a way to make it acceptable to actually like children again and enjoy spending time with them, even when you don't have an "excuse" such as being their parent.
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Re:AGREED (Score:4, Funny)
Uh oh! A website with questionable content!
WE'D BETTER BLOCK ALL WEBSITES TOO
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Re:AGREED (Score:5, Funny)
Why wait? You can just disable them in your hosts file, like I'm doi@'#^&2:_=
NO CARRIER
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Re:AGREED (Score:5, Funny)
Channel28.EverybodyLovesRaymond
Channel52.AmericanIdol
Channel76.FriendsReruns
Channel95.FoxNews
Channel176.WWESmackdown
I mean seriously, do any of these TV shows contribute anything of value to society???
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Re:AGREED (Score:5, Insightful)
Is some of that really 'kiddie porn'? I checked out naturism newsgroup has lots of regular looking folks not engaging in sex and doing regular activities in the nude, I wouldn't exactly call that 'porn', many of them look like family vacation/bbq/get together photos to me IMHO.
Looking at pictures in naturism.family doesn't seem like porn to me at all, (disregarding cross posters) there are regular people taking pictures in the background in a few of them.
I think this all has to do with judeo-christian cultural values of the west and it's crazy puritan heritage, other cultures do not share the same values. The idea of 'kiddie porn' is not universal.
People are naturally born naked, and many other cultures are comfortable being around people (strangers) in other countries, it's only really the west that is so repressed.
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Re:AGREED (Score:5, Insightful)
Who am I to decide why someone looks at pics? We're getting pretty close to thoughtcrime here.
Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? I'd guess so, since I don't understand the appeal of watching people BBQ naked (unless you're in some twisted way interested in how people react when they get burned in more sensitive places, I wouldn't stand next to a BBQ without some protective clothing).
But just because I don't understand it doesn't make it "evil", or leads automatically to the train of thought "there is no other reason to do X but Y", since Y is the only thing I could think of. Along the same lines, you could argue that games like Battlefield and Call of Duty serve no purpose but to prepare people for terror attacks, since I don't understand why someone would play it for the sake of playing it.
Beware the borders of thoughtcrime.
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Re:AGREED (Score:5, Informative)
Can't speak to China, but Japan had their nudity taboo imposed on them by Westerners. [japanvisitor.com] Originally, onsen (hot spring baths) and sento (public baths) were not separated by gender. Out in the countryside, people worked in the fields pretty much naked.
Shinto still has hadaka matsuri - literally, "naked festivals", though these days people usually (but not always) wear fundoshi. [wikipedia.org]
Old Japanese erotic prints usually depict clothed figures, not naked ones!
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Re:AGREED (Score:4, Informative)
Take a look at all the newsgroups you listed. What do they all have in common besides being in the alt. hierarchy? Here's a hint. Look at the second item in the name.
They aren't just dropping alt.binaries. They are dropping the entire alt. hierarchy. Including the ones where you can't even trade files.
These people have admitted that they only found child porn in 88 of the 100,000 newsgroups.
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Re:AGREED (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with "something must be done" is that it rapidly turns into "this is something, therefore, it must be done".
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Re:AGREED (Score:5, Insightful)
If Cuomo really wanted to stop the child porn, he'd focus on the child porn. But this absolute idiot who is a disgrace to the human race is running some kind of agenda to shut down the internet. Instead of asking these ISPs to close off the groups that have the porn, he's creating a situation where people who have absolutely nothing to do with the porn, and are involved in groups that do not have any porn, are forced to go somewhere else, which is likely to have those same porn groups. This is an action that won't shut down porn. It will just move it elsewhere ... and move the other people that effectively and unknowingly help support it, along at the same time. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! That is one dumb politician.
He's only making the problem worse.
The child porn will go somewhere else. He hasn't eliminated the market for it. Then he'll demand shutting down other parts of the net. Next you know he'll demand ISPs block port 443. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! That is one dumb politician.
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Re:Bring Back BBS (Score:5, Informative)
Unless I'm mistaken, they aren't blocking access to USENET, what they are doing, is essentially blocking groups or encouraging ISP's to drop carrying USENET on their own servers. You would still be free to connect to pay or free USENET servers out there...you just won't have one run by your ISP to connect to any longer.
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Re:The USENET is dead! (Score:4, Insightful)
Far from it...I still find programming advice, and discussions out there. I've had discussions with lawyers and accountants on corporate law (especially when wanting for form my own corp)...and lets not forget the huge amount of binary material out there, easy to download tv shows you might have missed in real time.
I'm guessing your are gonna say that IRC is dead and unused for anything real too?
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Re:The USENET is dead! (Score:4, Insightful)
From a technical standpoint, I have absolutely no problem with an ISP dropping access to USENET. It's an old protocol that has outlived its usefulness. No one expects their ISP to carry access to UUCP anymore, this is no different.
But that's not the argument that Cuomo is making. He's essentially saying that because some third grader pissed in one end of one pool, we have to close and drain all the municipal pools and outlaw swim lessons. This is absurd. Kiddie porn traders used to send their garbage through the mail, did anyone suggest shutting down the postal service? What's next, will he try to force ISPs to inspect every email that traverses their network and make sure there are no images of little kids in them? (Oops, I think they're actually already doing this one.)
He's had some good press lately with the consumer protection stuff, this is just completely insane and should be laughed out of court.
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Re:The USENET is dead! (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, you're confusing a network protocol and a community. The Usenet of NNTP is the same as the Usenet that used to be propagated via UUCP. Some people might still get their messages via UUCP - how would you know?
Second of all, we don't have many things we took for granted at the height of Usenet:
Today's fragmented web has nothing that can approach Usenet, and every time somebody wants to add these features to some web app or another, he has to do it from scratch, and often incompatibly and poorly.
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Re:Pro-control (Score:5, Insightful)
CENSORSHIP IS NEVER THE ANSWER. WHAT YOU PROPOSE IS STILL CENSORSHIP.
Information can never hurt anyone. If you want to stop harmful acts, then stop harmful acts. As a Supreme Court justice one said, the answer to bad speech is more speech. Not banning what you personally find offensive. Banning things is the way to a repressive, stagnated culture.
Also, what ISPs are doing, although reprehensible, is perfectly legal. Stop the sloppy thinking already. Learn to separate the concept of "right" from that of "legal". You'll get bitten in the ass time and again.
The answer to "why shouldn't I do this?" should always be "because it's wrong", not "because it's illegal."
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