Usenet Blocking Intensifies 449
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..."
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].
Re:AGREED (Score:5, Informative)
this is for you [4chan.nu]
Little girls running down the beach naked isn't cp either.
Re:Somebody tell that tool that you can *add* grou (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Somebody tell that tool that you can *add* grou (Score:1, Informative)
This is only true on the alt.* heirarchy. On the Big 8 you need to go through a review process [big-8.org] to have additional groups added.
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.
Why is the New York State Government (Score:2, Informative)
Re:AGREED (Score:3, Informative)
So, it's just the west? There's moderate to severe nudity taboos in Japan and China (don't know about the rest of the Far East), in many middle eastern countries, and most of the post-Russian block countries. In fact, the only place off the top of my head where nudity is a normal part of society is Africa, and the in much of Europe it's tolerated (kinda), and that's, uh, the West. No, nudity taboos are pretty universal among developed nations - the West has nothing to do with it.
finally (Score:1, Informative)
Child Porn did not exist before Usenet and with the banning of alt.* it is officially wiped off the face of the earth.
Re:Attorney Generals are out of control (Score:1, Informative)
Excuse the pedantry, but it is "Attorneys General".
Re:it's just a cover (Score:1, Informative)
The data isnt on their network [atleast it wasent with roadrunner/brighthouse] they outsourced their usenet access to highwinds then to newshosting.
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]
Re:they should stop chasing ISP's (Score:4, Informative)
They weren't given life sentences in prison, but they were branded as "sex offenders", which in some ways is worse.
That, in certain counties, means that the person can't live in any house in the county that the person is required to live in. (Yes, they are forced to be homeless [cnn.com])
Re:AGREED (Score:4, Informative)
Technically speaking, in the US at least, there's no requirement that there be any kind of sexual act or activity, only that there are minors engaged in something that can be described as lewd or lascivious.
What that means is that if some prude thinks the picture where you're giving your infant kid a bath in the bathroom sink... that can be child porn. That sort of thing actually does happen, and it ruins people's lives.
As another example, there are deeply creepy web sites where parents dress up their 12-year-old daughters in bikinis and miniskirts and get them to pose in very adult (think Penthouse) ways. People have gotten in trouble for that, too. I don't have links. I don't really want to go looking for links, but that stuff is out there.
Bye Bye Internet as We Used to Know It (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps Slashdot is filled with users that are just interested in publishing various "workarounds" instead of addressing the real problem. Here I am looking for someone/something to "rally-cry" with, but nobody is home.. .
Re:NY AG is despicable (Score:3, Informative)
Have you ever heard anyone chose and ISP because of USENET?
Actually, before this fiasco, Verizon was the ISP of choice for usenet access. Their retention never compared to the commercial services, at only about 10 days. But their coverage was 80-90% of the best. Many people chose verizon specifically for their usenet service, especially back when the cable internet speeds weren't much better than dsl. If the recent news hadn't polluted the google searches for older discussions regarding verizon and usenet, I'd probably be able to quickly dig up 10-20 threads specifically praising verizon's usenet service.
Here's the level of ignorance involved (Score:3, Informative)
From the front page of "nystopchildporn.com":
"Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office earlier this year conducted an unprecedented undercover investigation that revealed a major source of online child pornography known as Newsgroups, an online service not associated with websites."
Re:Wonderful. (Score:3, Informative)
Usenet is bigger than ever and there's more traffic than there's ever been. While P2P might be the choice for some, Usenet providers like Giganews provide far more content - including text groups - than P2P will ever provide and at very good speeds, without crushing your residential cable or DSL connection.
Giganews just announced 240 day binary retention. See if P2P can match that.
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!
Re:Dammit...do you not remember? (Score:4, Informative)