Verizon Cutting Access To Entire Alt.* Usenet Hierarchy 579
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."
Nanny Verizon (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nanny Verizon (Score:5, Insightful)
Real men use a bidet.
Re:Nanny Verizon (Score:5, Funny)
Bidet? Barbarians...
Real men get a rimjob from their toilet slave.
Re:Nanny Verizon (Score:5, Funny)
*rolls on the floor laughing*
Re:Wipe their ass in the proper direction? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wipe their ass in the proper direction? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think the question is, does your balls smell nice; the question is how did check?
Re:Wipe their ass in the proper direction? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nanny Verizon (Score:4, Interesting)
Net effect -- nothing, or very nearly nothing.
If you dont want this kind of ISP then move porn to
Simple really, you refused to move it to
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Children might be able to see boobies, and we all know that boobies are bad.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Funny)
I have a few ideas..
CompuServe
AOL
Prodigy
What?
Content can be published by companies though. And instead of URLs, we will have a menu system provided with a desktop application.
We could call this application "Information Manager", and lookup information using keywords.
That'd rock! And it could be absolutely porn-free.
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Funny)
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Insightful)
Who isn't surprised it's lasted this long?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My last ISP dumped Usenet (which like many still use over 'blogs'). I asked if they were going to drop the subscription cost. They said no, I said bye! That decision cost thousands of subscribers.
It's just an attempt to get rid of all discussion, which is what the governments want, especially "democracies" under pretext of terror or in this case a certain type of "porn".
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Interesting)
When we dropped it, we had exactly two calls to complain. Neither of them canceled because of it. This is out of a couple thousand subscribers.
I was probably the only one who actually cared, and it wasn't that big of a deal for me; Because I work there, I still had access to our upstream provider's news servers which weren't open to our subscribers.
I doubt Verizon will hurt much because of this. If they lose anyone, it may only number in the hundreds, if that. The cost of the bandwidth saved by dumping Usenet will more than make up for the subscribers lost.
There are always independent Usenet providers, too, for a few bucks per month.
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:4, Informative)
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Informative)
They just save on hardware.
Keep in mind, most ISPs only pay the big bucks for their internet connectivity. The network between them and you (and all their customers) is MUCH cheaper, measured only in maintenance costs. The internet lines have the same maintenance cost, plus bandwidth costs, on top of base charges.
Before, they transfered all of the news articles Once, using internet bandwidth once, from their upstream new servers to their own.
Customers could get these all from their news server, which can happen by any number of customers any number of times and there is no extra bandwidth fees to the ISP.
Now, all of their users will be transferring news articles from the internet to them, each one taking their share of bandwidth from the internet pipes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even worse than that, it costs them MORE bandwidth this way.
Now, all of their users will be transferring news articles from the internet to them, each one taking their share of bandwidth from the internet pipes.
By disabling most of usenet the provider saves about 3.8 TB per day for the whole usenet feed plus the maintenance and repair cost for servers to store this much data locally for several days.
They would only need more bandwith if all their customers who use usenet combined now download much more than that from external providers. I am sure they have done the numbers
Not necessarily (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's politics (Score:4, Insightful)
Politicians will never learn that the kind of oddballs who go for that crap will find ways to do it, no matter what laws they have in place.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the first rule about USENET was that you didn't talk about USENET....
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:4, Interesting)
The real surprise . . . (Score:4, Funny)
hawk
Re:The real surprise . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Interesting)
Little by little, in steps of increasing size, the Internet is becoming television. We all agreed that the spam video that came out a few weeks ago of the woman talking about how the "internet will disappear by 2012" was an overreaction and it really wasn't all that bad.
Unfortunately it is exactly that bad. Do you think Slashdot will be part of the Internet if they have their way? I'm betting that if each of us were to list our 10 favorite websites, that 8 out of 10 of them would cease to exist unless strict net neutrality laws are put into effect immediately. What will it take for you to see that the "free market" effects are going to make the Internet just a memory for those of us who lived through the 80's and 90's and saw the birth of such a remarkable phenomenon.
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:4, Insightful)
More importantly, are we expecting these customers to physically move? Because often, the big ISPs have a physical monopoly on an area.
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Insightful)
1. delaware.net - Can't complain about their service or policies as I was a member for years, but... it's dialup.
2. Comcast.
3. Verizon (they aren't available for me, but if I lived a little further to the north and to the east, I could get it).
4. AOL.
Those are my choices if I want to get online. I'm not going to be so silly as to pull a number out of my ass, but I doubt that I'm in the extreme minority there.
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet in the US, now that it has been taken over as a telecom commodity, is only available to the vast majority of people as "choose one of the following options"...
1 - local cable monopoly (usually the fastest affordable option)
2 - local DSL monopoly (about the same price, but much slower)
3 - local dialup barely eking survival (cost about half 1 or 2, but too slow to matter)
4 - national dialup (about the same as 3, unless you also purchase a line from 1 or 2 as a carrier, increase speed at increased cost)
5 - local telco T# line (very fast, but bend over and grab your ankles for the pricetag)
Very few other alternatives exist anymore, as most were driven out of business. Lately we've been seeing FIOS as a new option, but the valid market segments in the US for people who can see fields and trees outside their home's windows can be counted on the fingers of one hand. For instance, I probably won't have FIOS available in my area until about 2019.
Do I like having Comcast as my provider? Hell no. Do I trust them with my connection? Hell no. Do I have any other options? Hell no.
This complaint has come up several times recently on Slashdot and other sites, and it always burns my ass when people reply with statements like: "Well, why don't you move?"
For an easy thing to say, it's one of the hardest things to do. Maybe those of you that are thinking this can pay for me to buy a new home and move to it. If it's outside of Comcast's influence, since moving that far would make my commute somewhere on the order of 3-4 hours each way, maybe you'd also like to get me hired to a job near my new home so that I can continue doing things I've gotten into habit to do - such as, you know, "eat".
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:4, Informative)
But some of us don't understand why we need to "move on" from a superior technology.
NNTP plus a good news reader still beats Slashdot and all other web forums in terms of usability/user-friendliness.
Re: alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Interesting)
Ditch that local copy and what happens? Some users will stop downloading these things. But many users would just find another way. For example: other provider's usenet servers, sites elsewhere on the web, P2P programs, etc. I reckon most of these forms would mean traffic from users to random places on the internet, read: much more expensive/troublesome for the ISP than if traffic came from their own servers.
Personally, I would vote with my feet ASAP if my ISP stopped passing on data for anything other than technical or legal reasons.
Re: alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, even after crippling usenet, Verizon is still the best in my area - I can either go with them, Comcast, or RCN (cable) unless I want to shell out for a dedicated line. I'm surely not going to vote with my feet over to Comcast, and RCN doesn't have a stellar reputation, either.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Insightful)
The free services came and went on a weekly basis, and every couple months I'd have to blow another afternoon looking for another service.
So I ended up ponying up for a pay newsgroup service that carried all the groups, for an extra $20/month I felt my ISP should already be giving me. The service was metered, and once you'd downloaded your monthly limit, you were done until next month. But they did have good speeds and almost 100% of the available groups with at least 2 weeks retention.
Although cost-cutting and censorship are both being blamed here, I don't think that's it. It looks more like a company taking the path of least resistance. The ThinkOfTheChildren tag seems most appropriate. People exercising extremely poor judgement and foresight that result in a massive net-loss in public benefit, under the guise of some holy cause, the only real purpose of which is to shut up a few whiners.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
But does it really save them bandwidth costs by getting rid of those groups? All the traffic to the usenet server should be internal to Verizon's network. Internal bandwidth should be very low cost for Verizon while external bandwidth would have a much higher cost. Cut this usenet access and how many people will switch over to using BitTorrent to download stuff. Which will most likely have to go outsides Verizon's network for all or a portion of the torrent. Will this increase in external traffic cost Veriz
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:5, Insightful)
Dropping the entire alt tree is an overreaction but it will save them money in server administration and bandwidth - I'm willing to bet 95% of their users have never even heard of usenet (and half of the remainder call it 'google groups').
Re:alt.binaries.* (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To protect children... (Score:2)
Re:To protect children... (Score:5, Insightful)
To my eye, looks like it's been pretty successful so far.
obviously thought through (Score:2, Funny)
Political stunt for the win!!!
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
I agree that it's overkill to do away with hosting the whole alt hierarchy, but there isn't much political speech going on in a newsgroup specifically dedicated to underage porn or warez binaries. I'm surprised they've gotten hosted for this long.
My prediction is that the media companies and/or government agencies will start harassing usenet users next. Now that many major ISPs are discontinuing this kind of binary newsgr
Re:obviously thought through (Score:5, Funny)
alt.verizon-sucks
alt.verizon-sucks.dick
alr.verizon-sucks.ass
Competition? (Score:5, Funny)
That's all? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's all? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure you completely understand just how much 1.5TB a day is...
Either that, or they don't understand how fast an OC3 line is. If I've done my math right, 1.5TB a day is 18.2 megabytes per second, which is almost exactly the speed of an OC3 [wikipedia.org] line, assuming you keep it completely saturated 24/7.
Verizon FIOS [wikipedia.org] tops out at about a third of that in certain areas, or considerably less everywhere else.
Logical progression: (Score:5, Insightful)
Child pornography has also been found being shared by approximately 0.5% of users on peer-to-peer networks. Verizon will be shutting down access to this service immediately.
Ahh, nothing like feeling protected. Pretty soon you'll find you can receive the same level of service and "protection" AS Verizon provides by cancelling your internet service entirely and save yourself $40/month in the process.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are concerned about pornography or even piracy of any kind, you don't carry alt.bin tree , problem is solved.
alt.* tree besides bin is really about freedom of speech in its pure form.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Logical progression: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Huge overgeneralization (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, Google groups and the Germany/.edu based http://www.individual.net/ [individual.net] to the rescue. Both doesn't carry bin groups. That is what they should do if they were concerned.
quick... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:quick... (Score:5, Funny)
Where can we go with their logic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we apply the same logic and standard to New York's population. If the state has any areas/counties/towns with a
What about other crimes? After all we are talking about everyone's well being. If NY's overall crime rate is greater than
Democrats are obsessed with Child Porn (Score:4, Insightful)
If you thought GOP was bad in these past 8 years wait until Democrats assume the wheel with supermajority to push whatever nanny-state bullshit they can think of in the name of the "children"
Video games and the internet seem to be the useful idiots for Democrats. Just blame it on violence and child porn to shut things down and generate talking points for the next election cycle. Oh yeah, do that in between paying lip service to net neutrality proponents.
the problem with filtering (Score:5, Insightful)
follow me, on this. right now, the network is *mostly* unfiltered and for many users, they do get a clean unfiltered net feed (home, work, whatever). and so if laws are broken (say you illegally download something), the own-ness is on you. the carrier or the authority policing the carrier isn't at fault since its not them who are guaranteeing a '100% legal internet feed'. they clearly can't say that all things you could pull down are legal and they are just a common carrier. I know that CC status is magical and not all real CC's have it but that's just because our laws in this area are not well fine-tuned yet. any reasonable person knows that an ISP is a service provider just like the water department, electric department or the phone company.
but say that they now have the job of regulating the legality of all things you could net-access. then, if you -do- find some song or other 'illegal content' and you do manage to download it, you SHOULD be free and clear. right? afterall, there is now a policing layer (a 'great firewall' if you will) between you, the user, and the ISP or upstream service provider. if they take on the job of filtering and 'ensuring a clean and legal net experience' then ANY bad deeds you do by downloading files is not your problem anymore.
I don't think they want either side, to be honest. they don't want to be in the regulation business because once you do that in an above-board manner, you should be liable for any faults in your so-called filtering algorithms. if you tell some grandma that 'the net is now safe' and she finds something she does not like, she SHOULD be able to sue your damned ass.
its sad to think that the ISPs are not thinking far enough in the future to see where this leads. they must insist on common-carrier status and all that that implies. the net is like a water pipe (cue the infamous senator quote about 'tubes!' here) and it should not be filtered or mangled by some well-meaning (cough!) government moran.
responsibility belongs AFTER the demarc point, so to speak. NEVER EVER before it!
Re:the problem with filtering (Score:5, Insightful)
Common carrier does not necessarily demand you service anybody. A common-carrier truck line can only service two major cities (say, Portland OR and Seattle WA), or only be able to provide services with a 14-foot van.
Similarly, Verizon can choose to not carry a wide swath of net.news, provided their reasoning for not carrying it fills a technical requirement. All they have to say in front of a judge is that it is increasingly difficult to operate and maintain a news server to carry those groups, and any potential lawsuit is over.
If it even sees the inside of a courtroom. Last I checked, Verizon subscribers are tied to binding arbitration.. so good luck with this ever being seen by a judge.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:the problem with filtering (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not go after the people who MAKE child porn? You know the ones ACTUALLY HURTING kids? Oh wait, that's because this requires actual police work, which is DIFFICULT. The prosecutors and lawmakers need someone to blame, so they blame the people who possess and distribute simply because they are easier to find.
It's laziness combined with a need to point a finger at someone. And it really stinks.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So what do YOU suggest they do? (Score:2)
Re:So what do YOU suggest they do? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about just blocking the 88 groups that have been identified as carrying child porn? That's quite doable and they could even include a provision to drop other groups if they had more than X reports of child porn in them as well. That way they only drop groups that are known to have child porn in them but keep the rest for their customers.
I think Cuomo's mostly concerned that they took no action on the groups they reported in the sting. If they did something like the above it would probably satisfy him because they're acting on reports (which they should have been doing anyway).
Actual Verizon Business Discussion: (Score:5, Funny)
John: Cocks?
Suit: Yeah, Cocks. The network for the ballsiest.
Anyway, they want to be hooked up to our digital cable service. What's the capacity on our system right now?
John: Well we still have 50% of our bandwidth av--
Suit: Sweet Virgin Mary! Only 50%? Who's eating up all our bandwidth?
John: Well it's mostly HD football channels, and then peer to peer, and then Usenet.
Suit: Well, we sure as hell can't get rid of the football, and you were supposed to block peer to peer anyway! What in God's name is Usenet?
John: It's a bulletin board system where people can share files.
Suit: Well drop it! I'm not going to limit quality programming for some godless file sharing faggots.
John: But how do we explain that we're arbitrarily dropping a significant portion of our service?
Suit: What are you, stupid? Just say what we always say: we found child porn. Why do I pay you if I do all the thinking?
in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
RE: Does anybody mind? (Score:4, Insightful)
ISP usenet services are 9 times out of 10 either outsourced, or have terrible retention, spotty coverage, and no propogation.
BitNabber [bitnabber.com] has all my usenet needs taken care of.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Since I use Usenet+NZBs, BitNabber works for me.
Others that might work for you:
Giganews.com [giganews.com] - 200 days retention, from 7.99 p/m [SSL available] - no nzb service
SuperNews.com [supernews.com] - from 3.95 p/m - the owner / admin Daniel is very hardline against spam, possibly the cleanest provider out there
Whilst it's frustrating that service should be cut, it seems that Verizon is behind the curve on cutting NG access anyho
This is all hype (Score:3, Informative)
Why is this such an issue? (Score:5, Informative)
Want press freedom? Get press. (Score:3, Interesting)
If we want to have access to all the internet then we have to control our access to the internet. We have to create our own internet service providers. We have to have the demonstrable power to convince politicians (not the loud ones but the ones who actually control things by blocking bills in the early stages) not to interfere with our activities.
Developing the ability to control and/or prevent child pornography distribution through the web would go a long way to convincing loud politicians that we recognize this problem and can control it better than the giant corporations who approach everything with a 'just shut it all down for everyone' approach. This is assuming that the politicians are actually doing this to prevent distribution of child porn. They could be using child porn as a red herring to shut down ALT access to non-teckies because they can't control it.
My point is that if we want to control the access to the web (so that we don't get shut out of parts that are important to us) then we have to be able to do a better job of catching the criminals who use the web than the police or giant corporations can.
Taking kiddie porn off net is stupid. Here's Why. (Score:5, Interesting)
Before the Internet, how did they track it down? Huh? How did pervs get their porn? Most likely, they got it through the mail or stores, via porn distributors that put up a legal front, but did some percentage of their biz in illegal material. To bust guys like that, back then, must have taken some effort. You can't just open mail willy-nilly or search store inventory looking for the needle in a haystack.
Now, I'm as much against warrantless search as the next guy, but with kiddie porn on the 'net, you can quietly ask Verizon to monitor a suspect's traffic. They don't have to comply, but if they don't you just get a warrant and then they have to comply. Then, getting all the guy's traffic is as easy as adding him to a list in a file. You don't have to tamper with his mail, which might give him telltale clues he is being watched.
Remove kiddie porn from the Internet, and you remove an electronic audit-trail that might even bring us all the way back to the original source, all in the comfort of the agent's office. Remove it from the 'net and you drive it into a new underground. Most likely it would be retro to whatever was used before. Agents would have to go back "pounding the pavement" more, and with the cost of ga$ going through the roof that's not likely to happen.
In other words, it will just go further and further underground. Pervs are as lazy as anybody else. If it's easy to find on the 'net, they'll find it.
Taking it off the 'net only makes sense if you believe that having it there is likely to "convert" normal users into pedophiles. That's probably as bogus an argument as the idea that having gays in your neighborhood is going to convert people. I don't have a study to back it up though. Do they?
Re:Taking kiddie porn off net is stupid. Here's Wh (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if music piracy is supposed to hurt the music industry, and movie piracy is supposed to hurt the movie industry, then shouldn't child porn piracy hurt the child porn industry? By shutting down child porn piracy, aren't the feds and the ISPs helping the commercial producers of child porn by protecting their business model and intellectual property rights?
(Hee hee, I figure a post that equates the RIAA/MPAA with pedophiles has to get a +5)
alt.sci.physics (Score:3, Interesting)
Stupid fucker (Score:3, Insightful)
I would imagine that. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Destroying the Evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
This foolish shortsightedness isn't just prosecutors and cops misunderstanding the newfangled Internet. This is cops and prosecutors failing to understand how free expression is always a benefit, when you understand it enough to use it right. That's a lesson at least 200 years in the making. It's about time Americans forced our "justice" system to get smart about it.
You find what you are looking for (Score:5, Insightful)
I have never, ever, in my life, found a child porn, nor seen it.
It is pretty simple, I think. I have never looked for it, so I never found it.
If a dumb politician thinks that him looking for something and then finding it (and he was looking for nothing less than child porn) is a reason to be upset, well... I feel sorry for the people he represents.
the last time this came up as an issue (Score:5, Interesting)
The 90s called. They want their alt.* debate back (Score:4, Insightful)
So what's different now? Everything.
This isn't just one university. This will soon be most major ISPs. If most U.S. ISPs drop alt.*, the posters will just hammer big 8 groups. With NZB files, the actual group things are posted to doesn't matter very much. Issuing cancels will be a full time job for the few that care to fight the flood.
What's sad is that this really threatens the argument that ISPs are common carriers and aren't responsible for filtering content. Sure, I understand the different between filtering and not providing groups on your NNTP server, but people that wear suits and robes for a living don't. If alt.* falls what's next? All of Usenet.
Usenet is an unusual asynchronous, disconnected, communication model and in a way, is an almost priceless anonymizer. There is (almost) no link between the sender and receiver of a message. I've always wondered how we've let an almost untraceable communication system survive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:so what (Score:5, Informative)
I think the issue for many people is more about being blocked from accessing the alt.binaries.* groups, of which Google Groups doesn't provide access (well, not to the actual binary files at least).
Re:so what (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so what (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Common Carrier Status *poof* (Score:5, Informative)
Just like every single NNTP server out there.
But don't let that stop you from overreacting, though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But dropping all of alt.* just because a few have had child porn floating about on them?
I'd still consider them to be overreacting more than the grandparent poster is on the subject as there's quite a bit more actual useful stuff in the alt.* branch as it was for anything that didn't fit into the normal comp.*, etc. branches of organization in USENET. As someone said, this is a convenient excuse to lose quite a bit of bandwidth consumption on their part.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But dropping all of alt.* just because a few have had child porn floating about on them?
Of course they didn't. They wanted to drop it because of economics, and got a convienient excuse for dropping it with kiddie porn. What are you going to do, complain and demand that they reinstate the kiddie porn groups? That doesn't change the fact that they were in full rights to drop the alt.* tree anyway, even if they used a bullshit excuse. It's not censorship, not YRO, not illegal, doesn't change their common carrierish status or anything else. It's a business decision with an ounce of truth and a to
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
sorry you didn't get the link.
maybe the post below will help you get the point
Cheers,
Dean
http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/and-so-now-it-begins.html [blogspot.com]
Sent: Sunday, 15 June 2008 4:49 PM
To: Dean Collins;
Subject: Re: And so now it begins......
What motivation would they have to do that? Just dumb or nefarious in this instance?
---
Andrew Cuomo - gets press, and to be seen to be doing something, (probably being advised by people who have 'ulterior m
Re:Binary groups (Score:5, Insightful)
Very bad things...
Re:Binary groups (Score:4, Funny)
Yes indeed. Now what did that fellow from Verizon say his username was?
And the name of the network he was on? And who was he peering with again?
Ah, yes. <clickity-click>
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But don't tell the politicians that...