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Usenet Blocking Intensifies
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Jul 11, 2008 09:59 PM
from the forest-for-the-trees dept.
from the forest-for-the-trees dept.
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..."
Related Stories
[+]
Verizon Cutting Access To Entire Alt.* Usenet Hierarchy 579 comments
modemac writes
"Verizon has declared it will no longer offer access to the entire alt.* hierarchy of Usenet newsgroups to its customers. This stems from last week's agreement for major ISPs to cut off access to 'newsgroups and Web sites' that make child pornography available. The story notes, 'No law requires Verizon to do this. Instead, the company (and, to varying extents, Time Warner Cable and Sprint) agreed to restrictions on Usenet in response to political strong-arming by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat. Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups — out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist.' In response, Verizon will cut its customers off from a large portion of Usenet, as it will only carry newsgroups in the Big 8."
Firehose:Usenet Blocking Intensifies by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Technology: Why ISPs' "Stand" Against Child Porn Is Actually Not a Stand Against Child Porn 283 comments
TechDirt has an insightful article on the recent push for ISPs to turn off Usenet access under the guise of fighting child pornography. Unfortunately, the "stand against child porn" isn't actually a stand at all, it seems — more like ignoring the issue while trying to snag some headlines and good will. "Taking a stand against child porn wouldn't be overly aggressively blocking access to internet destinations that may or may not have porn (and there's no review over the list to make sure that they're actually objectionable). Taking a stand against child porn would be hunting down those responsible for the child porn and making sure that they're dealt with appropriately... Also, this sets an awful precedent in that the ISPs can point out that it's ok for them to block "objectionable" content where they get to define what's objectionable without any review."
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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, Funny)
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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:AGREED (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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???
Parent
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.
Parent
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: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.
Parent
Re:Spam filters (Score:5, Insightful)
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