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Has Verizon Forfeited Common Carrier Status?
An anonymous reader writes, "Freedom of speech, the future of the Net, you name it. In October, a U.S. vigilante group asked Verizon to cut off Net access to Epifora, a Canadian ISP that hosts a number of (entirely legal) web sites offering support to minor-attracted adults. Shortly thereafter, Verizon gave 30 days notice to Epifora, ending a 5 year relationship. Telecos have traditionally refrained from censoring legal content, arguing that as 'common carriers' it is outside of their scope to make such decisions. Furthermore, they have refrained because if they did so in some cases, they might be legally liable for other cases where they did not exercise censorship. The questions are: has Verizon forfeited their claim to common-carrier status by selectively censoring legal speech that they do not like? And can the net effectively route around censorship if the trunk carriers are allowed to pick and choose whom they allow to connect?"
Verizon is just protecting the children, you pedophile freak.
Seriously though, Common Carriers should really not be censoring ANY content if they want to be common carriers. Here in the real world, though, Verizon and all of the other big telcos have the FCC in their pockets, so I wouldn't hold my breath on anything happening to them because of this.
seems like a similar debate to net neutrality.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Next
"Minor-attracted adults"? Is that a euphemism for paedophiles?
So, since they did this, isn't the obvious thing to do to sue Verizon for transmitting something bad that "hurts" you? They are no longer protected now, yes?
In theory, yes, but no corporation with that much money will ever be held accountable to the laws of our country unless they kill the citizenry, and even then, only after many, many years, and especially not when they're Thinking of the Children
My Heart Is A Flower
But it's not going to be a quick process. If the backbones censor content, then encryption and onion routing will make sure that the backbones can no longer see what they carry. That however requires a change of protocol and will take time.
The phrase "minor-attracted adults" makes baby Orwell cry.
Can the editors please mention that a site might possibly not be safe for work?
As eager as I am to rally behind censorship, I'm not too keen on gay shirtless men popping up on my monitor as I eat my lunch. My Christian coworker might think odd things of me.
They certainly aren't arresting people or hanging them or even imprisoning them. The article says they "destroy lives", when in fact the guys they "sting" destroy their own lives.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Now these pedophiles can go underground where, um, there, um, harder to find.
Shit.
Censorship is an ethical cancer. There can be no legitimate justification for it. This will not stop either the corporations or the legislators from implementing as much of it as they can get away with.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Common sense triumphs the "rights" of a minorty.
Sorry, you NAMBLA sickos.
Business 1 is their common carrier business which does not do any censoring etc, but just provides common carrier services.
Business 2: Value added services (hosting etc). This business then does all the censoring etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"Epifora, a Canadian ISP that hosts a number of (entirely legal) web sites offering support to minor-attracted adults."
You have got to love the way they say, "Minor-attracted adults".
The way we put that is pedophile.
Not even the person posting the story was willing to put their name on it.
Without knowing the websites it is hard to tell if they where legal in the US or not.
Notice no links to the sites, no titles of the sites, no nothing.
Kind of hard to judge with absolutely no real information, but that has never stopped anybody on Slashdot before.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The parent post really should be updated advising of that.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
you know it was so.
Minor attracted adults? AKA pedophiles? You're going to have a hard time drumming up sympathy for that particular group, no matter how legitimate the sites are.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Mod parent insightful THEN mod this offtopic. In that order.
fud notfud yes no maybe
Maybe itsatrap as well.
Why do we have tags if the same braindead ones are displayed for most of them?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
A business can be in two businesses. Verizon is both a webhost, which pretty much never qualify for 'common carrier' consideration, and it's in the internet tubing business, where its tubes transport god-knows-what. If the very same websites are hosted somewhere else tomorrow, Verizon will still carry their internets through their tubes (though the internets may arrive late, because of all the movies).
Likewise, theoretically "Pall Mall" and "Camel Club" clothing isn't advertising for cigarettes. And Microsoft's hardware division doesn't have to worry about being a monopolist.
Not that Verizons WANTS to be a Common Carrier. That would imply some sort of network neutrality. They would love to use inferior internet tubing for 'non monitored content', which might contain kiddy porn, as opposed to 'Verizon approved content', which they'd push to much wider tubes with higher pressure and less leaks.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
The right to refuse business is a long-standing tradition, at least in this part of the world. Verizon can generally choose not to do business with whomever they wish, with certain provisions relating to discrimination.
It is not censorship, it is Verizon's right to say "you can believe and say whatever you like, but please take your business elsewhere." Last time I checked, pedophiles were not a protected class under the U.S. Federal Civil Rights Act, or the Americans With Disabilities Act.
So no, I do not believe Verizon's status as a "common carrier" would be in question with regards to this matter. But thanks for asking!
It seems an odd thing for Verizon to do. I'm sure it's not the first time they've been asked by somebody to censor something they didn't like, but the fact is that if they actually did they'd be inundated with requests.
I don't think that Verizon actually wants to be an internet censor. It's more work for them, and it doesn't serve any of Verizon's corporate goals.
Even odder, and unmentioned in the summary, is that the group is apparently part of a reality TV series funded by NBC. They supposedly complained about the stalker behavior. It Epifora any worse than Myspace for that?
I think that somebody got punk'd here. It might be Verizon, but I suspect that it's Guidemag.com.
Shit that's funny.
They'er fucking pedophiles, for crap sake!! Will Political Correctness ever cease?
What the hell is a "minor attracted adult", if not a pedophile?
Notwithstanding the common carrier issue and the legality of the material, it bothers me to see the mainstreaming of pedophilia with terms like this. Years ago I worked at a Montreal ISP. Someone notified us of one of our user's 'secret' webpages--a page not linked from his home page, requiring you to know the exact URL. The page was a collection of links to NAMBLA and like organizations and websites, including a message board for "child lovers".
On the message board, pedophiles alternately discussed sitting in parks watching children play, and discussing how they "came out" to themselves and each other, and accepted themselves for who they are. What was most subtly grotesque was the manner in which they'd adopted the rhetorical stance of the queer community. They talked about 'coming out', and about accepting themselves, and reclaiming terms like 'boy lover'. They were mentally and emotionally setting the stage for the same sort of battle for public acceptance that the gay community has fought and mostly won over the last few decades.
I don't want them to 'come out', I don't want them to have supportive underground communities, and it was saddening to see the entirely appropriate discourse of public acceptance of homosexuality and queer identity perverted like this. This is exactly the slippery slope that the right uses to justify non-acceptance of gays, and we need to bring a big heavy boot down on crap like 'minor attracted adult' to demonstrate that we can make moral choices about who we will accept and who we won't.
The world's a better place because homosexuality has been mainstreamed. It'll be a better place still when pedophilia is absolutely and explicitly denied the same path and the same acceptance. It starts by calling bullshit on terms like 'minor attracted adult'.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Lets not try to blur the issue, call a spade a spade, they are peodphiles.
Why don't you just say pedophile?
I can't believe political correctness has filtered down to the point where we don't want to offend the pedophiles!
God forbid we make anyone uncomfortable about their perversion.
I cannot check the article, (slashdotted), and since no link to the sites in question was provided, I am left to trust that the sites were good-natured content, and entirely legal, instead of deciding for myself.
I also wasn't able to find out the name of the vigilante group, as it wasn't included in the summary. For all I know it could be the ACLU.
The discussion should be about the principal of content filtering, not what content was filtered or who requested it. Everyone has websites that they feel only tarnish the internet. Demogaugery like this:
Does not help your position. They are pedophiles, interest/lobbying groups and entirely legal in Canada. Your choice of words turned me off to a subject which I completely agree with the summary on, because it shows the same double standard you are crying about.
FanFictionRecs.net
'minor-attracted adults' would have to be the biggest euphemism of the century.
In the real world, we call such people paedofiles.
They tend to go to jail if they're caught, because what they do is ILLEGAL.
it all boils down to who has the control. Even if you were to get everyone in the same room, as a group, you would never be able to make everyone happy, unless you stopped using the medium (ie the internet).
r ds.jpg
Take the picture below as an example (It's safe for work)
http://www.thunderbirdnest.com/pictures/bristolbi
to most people, its a harmless picture. but I can bet you there are some people that would want to censor it completely off of the net. Competitors, might try to censor it so that their product would be more available for sale.
i guess what I'm trying to get to is everyone has a motive behind censorship. I think in some cases, its totally legitimate. But it seems like a lot of the time, its more political than anything else.
What does support mean? Does that mean support in finding children to abuse? That's not the way we typically use the word. Support usually means helping people who admit they have a problem and want to make things better. Alcoholics, drug users, rape survivors, widows, etc all have support groups and resources.
While I do agree that sexually abusing children is terrible, I also can see that it is probably related to a mental illness. I have read that such individuals are not necessarily in control of their actions. Isn't a good thing if these people are seeking help? If my child is abused, can I now sue Verizon for denying access for the abuser to a resource that might have gotten him to control his problems?
The Big Chill
Verizon's decision last month to shut off a Montreal ISP for hosting edgy gay chatboards points to a colder, grayer internet ahead
By Bill Andriette
The chilling of free expression-- sexual and otherwise-- on the internet is like global warming: almost everyone agrees it's happening, but the process is too big, too abstract, too long-term to readily notice. Only through the distorting window of dramatic events-- the collapse of an Alpine glacier or a Hurricane Katrina--do we see something's amiss.
When it comes to freedom on the net, lately a lot's been storming and crashing
On November 3rd, US telecom giant Verizon says it will disconnect a Montreal-based internet service provider (ISP) Epifora whose clients host sexually edgy chat sites. Civil-liberties experts say it's an unprecedented assertion of corporate control over legal expression.
The US government (see box) has also lately been turning down the thermometer on internet speech.
Based on SM stories she had written and posted to her web site, Karen Fletcher was indicted in September for obscenity by US federal prosecutors on charges that carry up to 30 years in prison.
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urged Congress in September to pass legislation requiring that ISPs log all users' internet activity
In August, the US Senate ratified the International Convention on Cybercrimes-- which requires signatories to investigate and arrest people for suspected crimes-- including crimes of expression-- that may not be even be illegal in the place where they were committed.
The internet was supposed to "route around censorship" and herald a global shift to "open societies." As repression hots up, is that dream heading into deep freeze?
Unplugged in Montreal
Certainly a chill has descended on a small Montreal ISP, Epifora, whose home page promises "respect for client privacy" and tolerance of "controversial speech." The company's clients host a number of websites and chatboards-- such as Boychat.org and Freespirits.org-- with a pederastic slant. On October 4th Epifora was notified by MCI-Canada that their connection to the internet backbone would be cut off in 30 days for violating the "acceptable use policy" of Verizon-- the giant US telecom that swallowed MCI in 2005. Epifora had paid for a high-speed link to the internet's "backbone" through MCI-Canada for five years, without incident. Neither Verizon, nor MCI-Canada, nor any law-enforcement agency had ever served Epifora with a "take-down notice"-- the established procedure in Canada to get an ISP to remove, pending a court hearing, a client's possibly offending material. So what was the alleged violation?
"I don't have any specifics for you," Verizon spokesman Peter Lucht tells The Guide. Nor did Verizon or MCI-Canada answer Epifora's queries. But Verizon, which maybe takes lessons in customer service at Guantanamo Bay, said their determination was final and unappealable.
In their particular corner of cyberspace, the chatboards on the Epifora network have proven vital. Some have been online for more than a decade, and have gained a loyal following, as they are among the few places on the net where people can talk relatively safely and anonymously about how to live with their feelings for youths.
"Every time I find a message from a newbie saying 'Thank God I found this place,' it's further validation for what I'd been doing for ten years," says a former Boychat webmaster. For many users, he says, the chatboards are key to participants' feelings of personal integrity. "We're a decent, civilized community of reasonable people," he goes on. "Ultimately our record is the chatboard itself and its archives."
Within a few days of news of the impending cut-off, Freespirits.org raised $30,000 in pledges for a legal defense fund-- and not because its users' are especially numerous or wealthy; its demographics are slanted to tech-savvy young people just coming out. "Boychat ch
Well, They have split their business. Which Verizon is this taking about? Core? Business? Wireless?
I haven't read the article, but from the description the site in question is hosted in Canada, and it's the connection to the hosting company that's being cut. Which would be entirely in "Business 1" in your system.
This is an action that a company deemed to be in its best interests. They decided to disconnect from a paying customer. The same customer is welcome to seek connectivity services elsewhere. They are not being "blocked."
Is it censorship? It might be censorship if, after they connected through another provider, were subsequently blocked. It might be censorship if the order for disconnection was at the demand of a government entity. From what I have read, it's a vigilante group and not a government entity making the damands. (Is this group connected to government or other controlling entities? Are they themselves controlling or overly powerful and influential?) At what level would it be considered censorship?
I think that by cutting off the entire relationship, they may have preserved their common carrier status, but then again...? Well, I think it's an interesting case to file into the back of my mind until anything similar comes about. But for right now, they just decided to sever a business relationship due to moral or ethical concerns. I would think that if they cut off, say, Iran, China or North Korea, would we be suggesting that it should be called censorship or would it be a "boycott" of those countries because of their crimes against humanity?
I would have to go back and look this up, but after the Cable Companies won (overall) in the Brand X case and the SCOTUS said they did not have to be classified as common carriers, the DSL companies petitioned the FCC, and two months later the fcc reclassified DSL carriers as well, so they were no longer beholden to common carrier rules. there was a one-year carry over, where they would continue under the old rules, which, i think, just passed.
This news.com story pretty much sums it up from summer of 05
Yeah, 'cause here in America it's the law that's repelling 14-year-old children from 50-year-old men and women...
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
That being said, it's not the ISP or carrier's duty to shut anyone down except for abuse or by subpoena. That's why Verizon did the wrong thing and there's no reason to use doublespeak like "minor-attracted" to sugarcoat it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
From RTFA, the issue is:
Epifora is a company that bought an ISP-scale connection to their backbone. They did not "buy hosting" from Verizon.
Verizon pulled the plug on the ISP entirely, because of their content.
this is very very clearly forefitting common carrier status and Verizon is now liable for ALLLLLLLLL traffic that crosses their network. This, is, of course, assuming there were not specific cases of illegal content which were referred to Epifora, which they refused to remove.
That doesn't seem to be the case as Epifora's website states that they proactively monitor their content and respond immediately to all requests of the sort.
Conclusion? IANAL. I don't know.
Stew
These sites, although gross to 99.99999% are legal, sadly. Censoring legal contact because they feel it is bad content is in general a bad idea.
I don't want to see where this ends up.... Because if censoring legal content due to moral inhibition is a steep and dangerous slope, and once it starts it could possibly landslide.
Common carriers have to carry all traffic from all bill-paying customers. That's what common carrier means.
About the only exceptions are illegal stuff or customers causing network harm like spam or DOS attacks.
The article [Google Cache] said Verizon carried this traffic for 5 years so I hightly doubt it's illegal or causing network harm.
I'm with the guy who said Verizon should put up or shut up: Call the cops on these guys or sit back and do nothing. Those are the options of a common carrier.
Search the web for neo-nazi, pro-drug-use, 18-year-old-porn, and other barely-legal web sites that a family-minded telco CEO might rather not carry. I bet a lot of that traffic flows from the likes of Verizon, ATT, and the other big players.
You may not like it. I may not like it. But as long as the sites are legal, they have as much right to demand service from a common carrier as the American Nazi Party, the American Hemp Society, or all the legal XXX sites out there. These are the rights American soldiers have died for since 1776.
Free Speech - it's in the constitution dammit.
PS: Hosting companies are not common carriers. I RTFA and it looks like Verizon owns the pipe not the webserver.
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:ppVgafEcNaYJ: www.guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm%3 FID%3DA2E247F1-CB55-4215-9F96211CDCD52F41&hl=en&lr =&strip=1
Apparently the ISP got cutoff because of Perverted Justice, which is funded by NBC.
And I just saw this article on Fark: "Dateline NBC" finally kills itself a pedophile
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
What if this is Verizon DELIBERATELY blowing their common carrier status as an end run?
If it is, watch for them doing a lot more of this in the future. Then when they start blocking access to Google (or whateveR) they'll say, look, we're policing our own network now. We're NOT a common carrier.
And thus kill Net Neutrality.
I make no claims as to the correctness of this theory. It's just something that occured to me.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Congressmen Foley, is that you?
Mark Foley?
I haven't RTFA, or tried to follow any links. But what if they aren't talking about a support group of that sort, but rather a group that works to find psychological help for people with this problem so that they can be stopped. What if a person finds themselves as a "minor attracted adult" and knows this is wrong, and wants to seek help? What options do they have?
Should we castrate them and lock them up in jail? Even if they've committed no crime?
Now if the site in question is one as you say, then I say yeah... hang 'em. But a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and I'm all for "minor attracted adults" to seek help.
You've got to be frackin' kidding me. Did they really name this bill such that it could be referred to as I-C-P-P? What's the sewage treatment bill called, Nationally Organized Policy On Odor?
If I understand Common Carrier status correctly, it shields also against civil liability (as long as you comply with the DMCA when you get a takedown note). I think the real danger of losing CC status is that the RIAA might be able to sue you for the entirety of copyright violations on your network.
Any lawyers, care to comment??
C - the footgun of programming languages
what happens betwen consenting adults is not the same as what happens between an adult and a child who cannot engage in informed consent
what's so complicated to you about that difference?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Since when did Canada add Freedom of Speech to its list of things to do? Last time I check, that wasn't a guarantee up there.
Yea, a threat no bigger than the threat posed by allowing anybody with the money to acquire guns.
Due to the sheer perversity of this issue, kiddie porn is being used as a surefire joker card by people/interest groups all around the world to bring censorship to internet.
Read radical news here
"In October, a U.S. vigilante group asked Verizon to cut off Net access to Epifora, a Canadian ISP that hosts a number of (entirely legal) web sites offering support to minor-attracted adults."
"Entirely legal" where, exactly? So long as we're talking about (ahem) "minor-attracted adults," we've already seen rulings from their respective courts that things like simulated child pornography are legal in the United States but not in Canada.
So before we get up in arms about what happened here, how about some details about what was hosted and where it is and might not be "entirely legal?"
To all the geniuses who are saying that a "minor-attracted adult" is a pedophile, that is incorrect.
A pedophile goes after those who have not finished puberty.
An ephebophile ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebophile ) is one who has finished puberty, but may still be a minor.
Your pubescent status does not correlate to your minor status under the law.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
"Should we ever meet a theatre, and you decide, for whatever reason, to yell "fire", I can assure you that I will not panic."
Whenever we hold a fire drill at work, I don't panic, but I do practice pushing people out of the way. Those who have been trained in wrestling or some other martial arts are immune, but those 80 year old ladies are really a pushover.
So I guess the lesson is, if you're going to work on the 67th floor of a building make sure it's the "AARP Building" and not the "Worldwide Ninja/Pirate Association Building". I mean, you can't control fire, but you can control where you work.
There is NO "slippery slope". If things "landslide" towards some terrible, unwanted state it is either because people are {stupid|corrupt|weak|uncaring} or because the legislative process itself is inherently flawed and cannot be used as a functional process with which to govern a population.
Your choice.
if i am dead drunk i can get in my car turn the ignition and get on the freeway
and if i wind up splattering your guts against the highway median, well then your family can seek recourse in court, right?
that's the same stupid logic that you have
someone is already dead in my example. in your example, somebody's good name has already been ruined. too late to seek damages
so how about this: how about we make against laws against stupid things so we don't have to go seeking accountability for damages after the fact?
of course you would counter by saying that just passing a law doesn't prevent people from doing that which is illegal. but there's a presupposition there: that passing a law has the intention of perfectly altering everyone's behavior. no law ever does that. but it does prevent SOME behavior. and that is better than not preventing any behavior, if no laws are written, and everything is allowed, and damages are sought after the fact
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20060909
If they give up their common carrier status by deciding what is and isn't appropriate, they can now be held responsible for all the inappropriate (and illegal) material that goes through their network. That includes p2p, spam, etc.
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
That's the reason for the term "minor-attracted adult" (MAA). It's not a euphemism for "pedophile"; it's a value-neutral term for someone who is attracted to someone under the legal age of majority. Pedophiles are attracted to prepubescents, ephebophiles and hebephiles to postpubescents. They are all minor-attracted, and if they are adults, they are minor-attracted adults.
The MAA community uses terms like "boylover", "girllover" and "childlover", but these terms are obviously biased. The term "pedophile" has an enourmously negative slant (bias) and is often used incorrectly. Hence the need for a term which has no load and carries no opinion. It simply states that we are talking about an adult who feels an attraction towards someone considered to be a minor. This gives us a neutral starting point to discuss fairly whether this has virtue or whether it is stone cold crazy.
Mod me to hell and gone, I don't care, but this is yet another prime example of people simply refusing to take responsibility for their own actions. How about you yell fire 10, 50 or a hundred times, till people get the "joke" and then on the 101st time, there really is a fire, and a crowded cinema full of people die, because they stopped believing you.
Communication is an important thing, and it depends on meanings of words and short phrases. In certain circumstances, you actually want to be able to convey huge volumes of data with only one or two words. If someone deliberately and willfully tries to erode the data content of that word or phrase (by censorship, by the childish bullshit outlined by the parent, or even by propaganda/google bombing/whatever), then they all deserve to be slow roasted. Its hard enough to move ideas between people as it is, without additional static clouding things.
look at what he wrote. stop. think. infer a position, the only possible position that would find it worthwhile to write what he wrote
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Does a bus forfeit common-carrier status by refusing to carry passengers without shoes? They do not.
Does a trucking company forfeit common carrier status because they refuse to carry live animals? They do not.
On the other hand, a trucking company will lose its common carrier status for insisting on inspecting your cargo absent an affirmative reason to believe its other than what you stated. And the bus will lose its common carrier status for refusing to let you on because they expect to be full at a later, more important stop.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Now look--even the article has been censored!
Ok, first up let me make a quick statement to head off SOME of the flames. I'm a libertarian (small L because the LP is clueless, hope they eventually grow up....) so what consenting adults do isn't really my business and certainly shouldn't be the government's.
> I don't want them to 'come out', I don't want them to have supportive underground communities, and it was
> saddening to see the entirely appropriate discourse of public acceptance of homosexuality and queer identity
> perverted like this.
But it is an unescapable consequence because of the WAY the queers (and the Democrats) played the game. The only way they could turn it into a 'Civil Rights' issue was to have the unspoken requirement that behaviour, even that which almost all 'decent and moral folk' considered perversion, was no longer subject to criticism in exactly the same way as a consensus was developing that sex and race were off limits. In other words, behaviour was an accident of birth or caused 'by society' and the individual was not responsible. Thus if a person can't be criticized for being 'born gay' why should they be criticized for being born with an inability to be sexually aroused by adults or desiring to have sex with sheep? Even if we decide that shildren and sheep can't give consent, eveb if we ban kiddie porn because the production must involve a criminal act, thus making any attempt to act on these inpulses illegal there is no possible argument for criminalizing talking about it. And since we can't say these people are WRONG, eventually they will gain enough political strength (obviously within the Democratic party in the US) to push for coming 'out', demanding tolerance and eventually acceptance.
If instead the argument had been that being a homosexual, while it might or might not be a minor mental disorder, it shouldn't be grounds for the widespread discrimination that used to be practiced when the person is otherwise mentally stable. After all until quite recently alchohol addiction carried little social stigma even though everyone then and now rightly believed it a disorder. No that path would have never lead to the kind of political power to do things like redefine the English language, but it wouldn't have set up the political ground for the coming 'coming out' of the truly diseased sexual deviants.
More bluntly, had the argument been that homosexuality IS abnormal but when confined to consenting adults not trying to ram it down everyone else's throats it isn't harmful enough to society to warrent discrimination outside a few narrow limits, we could have retained the moral clarity to say fucking kids is RIGHT OUT.
Democrat delenda est
There is no simulated child pornography on the hosted sites, neither is there any solicitation of minors or counselling of illegal acts. They are even very strict in enforcing copyrights, just to be squeaky clean in every manner. The major sites are BoyChat and GirlChat. Check for yourself.
Yes, this is the essence of freedom of expression; namely the freedom to express what others vehemently disagree with. If we can't have controversial speech, we can have no freedom of expression.
you are a moron.
I think it is generally accepted (at least by educated people) that homosexuals are just "wired differently"; i.e. they don't make a conscious decision to be homosexual. Likewise, I believe the same to be true for people attracted to children (or horses or whatever else). If you can accept that homosexuality is "natural" (i.e. not a choice), then how can you claim that being attracted to children is NOT "natural"? I think people should be encouraged to "come out" in order to seek help. But I can't help but feel a little hipocritical. We (generally) don't seek to change homosexuals in this regard because "that's just the way they are". But simply because the object of their affection is under age (or not human) we cannot accept that as "natural" and feel compelled to change them. It's not a crime to be sexually attracted to children or animals, you know; only when someone takes action has a crime been committed.
Creepy, but doesn't sound illegal to me...
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
1. You should have the right to have sexual relationships with anyone you want, irregardless of your or their age. Why the hell are Americans so neuroticly fucked up about sex? As long as both parties are consenting, why not? Otherwise it would be rape, which is an entirely different thing. To say someone who is under 18 can not consent to something, is riddiculous as hell. They consent to chose their own clothes they wear, their own food they eat, their own friends, their own things they want to do. Why can't they chose who they want to have sex with irregardless of the other persons age, whether it happens to be under 18 such as their self or over.
/end playing devil's advocate
2. Why do people have such hostility and slanderous use of the word pedophile, its like you can feel the snarlying hatred dripping off of it. Why? Why find it so rehensible? I think all across the world every day babies bums and fronts are wiped off all the time by parents and childcare workers. Those people are the most likely child molesters. Not guys sitting on park benches. Somehow calling someone a pedophile has become the new way of denouncing someone as a witch. You can smell the hatred. What do they fear? What are they angry about? Why must you label people, so you can then reduce them, stigmatize them, criminalize them, and imprison them.
3. Why is there an utter lack of hatred for baby killing, which I would think putting a bullet through someone is far worse than touching someone. If anybody had any rational sanity here, the hatred would be directed at American soldiers who killed scores of children in Iraq, Vietnam, and countless other places. Oh, no, thats not worse than sexually touching someone, see, we're fighting for "justice". I think it would of been far more less criminal to touch every single child sexually in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, than have melted them to an ash by dropping nuclear bombs on a civilian population. Children who were not enemy combatants. Not to mention the hundreds of years of slavery of children in the South. To have any American justice system pronounce judgement upon someone for such a thing, is quite frankly, a hypocricy.
4. Most people who have relationships with children, unplanned, accidentally, or intentionally, themselves has sexual relationships as children. You say you care so much to protect the children, then as soon as these same children grow up you want to put them away for life. You use terms like "sexual abuse"... and yet, most people who do what you call "sexual abuse" were by your own definitions "sexually abused" as children. I can't think of anything more messed up then putting someone you consider sexually abused away for sexual abuse. It blows the mind away. Can you imagine being that person?
Most of the RBOCs (Baby Bells) that do traditional telephony and Internet tend to separate the two when it's convenient, and merge when it's not.
This is based on my understanding, not being a lawyer, but working up close with these companies: Of course, they sell their services as bundled, but when it comes to VoIP or ISP services, that's handled by the non-regulated side.
The regulated side deals with the FCC, appears before the Public Utility Commission (mutatis mutandis for any given state), and has to report certain outages. Most people think of this as the "common carrier" side as well. Sometimes, the regulated side just makes facilities available to the non-regulated side; e.g., DS3s.
The non-regulated side is just like any other company; they can do whatever they want. They can cancel your service or slow it down if they dislike you; they can search your email for contact with competitors.
LoL. I wish I had mod points because that's just funny.
"of course you would counter by saying that just passing a law doesn't prevent people from doing that which is illegal. but there's a presupposition there: that passing a law has the intention of perfectly altering everyone's behavior. no law ever does that. but it does prevent SOME behavior. and that is better than not preventing any behavior, if no laws are written, and everything is allowed, and damages are sought after the fact"
please point out what interpretation of what a "law" is above that causes you such consternation?
because in your words, i find a definition of what a law is to be pretty sound, and not in the least out of agreement with what i said!
the issue is whether we have laws or not, which is what i was responding to in my post. you don't seem to have a problem with the existence of laws, so i have no problem with you, nor should you have a problem with me
it's as if you are just being contrarian for the sake of creating friction where there is none
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
are you assering that franklin's quote enables you to drive drunk?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Does a bus forfeit common-carrier status by refusing to carry passengers without shoes? They do not." In this case, we are not talking about a dress code, we are talking about the content of **legal** but possibly controversial speech. A more accurate analogy is whether a bus company could discriminate base on the fact that you like to **talk** about not wearing shoes.
The story is "not work friendly" because the online magazine sells gay-themed ads including topless guys.
Not work-friendly if your boss is a Conservative Christian.
The world's a better place because homosexuality has been mainstreamed.
Clearly, the mainstreaming of homesexuality has made the world a worse place. It has, following your own logic, opened the door to mainstreaming every other sick perversion.
We have the best national telecommunications system that lobbyists can create.
Verizon is a "common carrier" only in the businesses that the FCC says they are, and the FCC has repeatedly refused to regulate Internet service OF ANY SORT as a "common carrier" service. The implication in the article title that Verizon has "common carrier status" for their Internet services that could be lost is a lie.
if everyone acted with responsibility and accountability, we would not only need no laws, we would probably have no wars and no poverty either
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How on earth does the fact that it's same-sex pedophilia make pedophilia OK?
minor-attracted adults
WTF?WTF?WTF?WTF?
I thought I had seen it all . . . how the hell can you soften the term pedophile like that?
I suppose you would call Drug Dealers Illicit Pharmaceutical Vendors and refer to serial killers as those inflicted with Obsesive Compulsive Life Removal Disorder
Gimme a break, and get a clue.
Perverted Justice is getting thier way, and our society is eating it right up. These narrow-minded souls and others like them have already twisted the english language in such a manner as to cause (in many people's minds) to equate "pedophile" with "child molester", even though a simple etymological study of the words in question would quickly reveal that one has nothing to do with the other. I would think that here on Slashdot we geeks would be more intelligent than this. Then again, I might as well be Don Quioxte arguing about the differences between a hacker vs. a cracker. Even so, words help to define and propel thoughts, and what was once a valid word to describe a legitimate topic has now taken on a wholly wrong and sinister definition.
Why on earth is it that our society can't seem to fathom the idea that there could actually be people out there who truely and honestly love children (without any sexual connotations), on a level that isn't just mere lip-service meant to console the consciences of the "think of the children" moral hypocrites? The fact that this self-same group targets and rallies against such people, while entrenching the concept of "pedophile=child molester", further gives lie to their hypocrisy: This process has little to do with "thinking of the children", and everything to do with "thinking of myself and my power". What these people hope to acheive with this power is anyone's guess, but I can guarantee it will not be something free-thinking people will enjoy.
Instead, we are now a nation who constantly "thinks of the children", while simultaneously fearing them. This fear brings a cost onto our society, as such fear (ie, the legitimate fear of being branded a new-speak "pedophile") causes legitimate teachers and counselors to avoid working with children closely, doing what they do best - teaching, counseling, mentoring, and consoling. Our society, by deligitimizing contact between children and adults (including parents, on many occasions!), is slowly raising a generation of individuals who have never had honest adult guidance. Rather, the little guidance they may have had (from parents or others) was presented to them couched in fear, uncertainty, and doubt. These children aren't robots, they are picking up on these notions. One has to honestly wonder what effects such watered down (and dishonest through ommission) interactions will have on these children as they grow into adults. I sincerely doubt they will be good. In fact, it seems like it would serve to cause more of the same "for-the-children" behavior from these children-turned-adults, or it will flip 180 degrees from where it is today. Both of these outcomes are equally extreme, and neither are a world I want to live in.
Despite all of these cries of "for the children", though, our society continues to turn a blind eye toward the other side of the coin: The sexualizing of children and youth by the media. We the people legitimatize it by doing nothing about it - by letting it continue and expand in scope. By continuing to buy (for ourselves, and for the children, too) and consume the products being advertised, we are effectively saying out of one side of our mouths "this is OK", but lest any member of that society espouse an attraction to these youthful portrayals, we pounce on them and decry "PEDOPHILE" - figuratively rending the individual who dared to utter such thoughts limb-from-limb (interestingly, though, this seems to only apply to certain sub-groups within the larger whole - but this goes well outside the scope of this rant). We ostracize them as a pariah to the group. T
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The particular sites were advocating more than just Pedophilia, they including child rape.
Verizon gave them 30 days notice to move or be shut down. They moved. The new company they moved to was informed about the content on the site. They gave these pedophiles 30 days to move or be shut down.
Shed no tears for these guys, with the laws as they currently are, they may have crossed from free speech to illegal speech.
Thus, the word "pedophile" means "lover of children", and the word "ephebophile" means "lover of early adults" - no sexual connotations should be implied by either. This is simple stuff, people - we supposed geeks here on Slashdot, with the tons of resources available to us, both on and off-line, should be able to figure this out. I have, why the hell can't you (I mean "you" as directed toward the denizens of Slashdot, not to you in particular, parent poster)?
It is only in recent history, most notably in America, has society sought to equate "pedophile" to "child molestor" (and, in theory, "ephebophile" to "statutory rapist", though given the lack of our societies knowledge of the word "ephebophile" as distinct from "pedophile", and the lumping of seemingly any adult interaction with children in the "pedophile" category, I sincerely doubt this is currently the case - give it a few years).
We as a society are going down the path where we are (at the very least entymologically, but quite possibly purposefully!) confusing "love" with "rape", of a good feeling/thought with that of a heinous and terrible action (regardless of the age of the victim!). Since words define and propel thoughts, and thus ultimately actions, to myself as a free-thinking person, none of this can end in good.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Common Carrier Status is not something that you can simply give up. It is not a right. Common carrier is a legal clasification given to those companies that were awarded federal funds in order to build private networks. In exchange for these federal funds, they are forced to provide universal coverage. Because they are forced to provide universal coverage they are also protected from having to police content on thier network. This is not an optional agreement and they can not forfeit thier status. It would take nothing short a bill reclassifing Verizon to do that.
That link was to a gay website and now there's a gay cookie on my harddrive that I have to manually search for because I don't feel like wiping out all my cookies because I like some of my cookies, especially the chocolate chip ones (yeah yeah, that was lame, bite me). Damn. I hate when that happens.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
Its interesting that Epifora is a hosting provider that if cut off wouldn't actually effect anyone other than sites which are deemed socially inappropriate. Now if other sites were being hosted there say oh a "Free Tibet" site or georgewbushatemyballs.com (I dunno if that exists, Im just trying to make a point) it would recieve a whole DIFFERENT set of attentions. But because by and large Epifora handles (that I know of) girlchat and boychat (sites which allow the discussion and support for individuals with leanings towards attraction to minors of a certain gender) and although the individuals running those particular sites are extremely keen (according to the article) to comply with the laws of Canada (which in this case are stronger than the US... again something referenced in the article) and MCI who was the original backbone provider to Eipfora even did their own checking of this, felt they really didn't have grounds to remove them, now Verizon feels it can simply chuck them off their pipes raises some interesting eyebrows. Anyone coming to the aid of Epiforia publically would be committing professional/social suicide, because there isn't anything else on Epifora to defend it becomes acceptable to say screw em and let them hang from the gallows.
Its a slippery slope, and need one reference the Niemöller poem? Just replacing communists, social democrats, trade unionists, with pedophiles, TS/TG, Gays and Lesbians? Very damn slippery.
Peg Bundy was HOT. The original MILF.
If you were serious, you have a strange view of how major corporations operate.
CEO discussion:
"Cutting off Epifora will have 'x' effect on our financial situation"
"Yes, but ignoring Peverted Justice will have 'y' effect on our financial situation"
"Hey guys, we'll just protect the children!"
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
It will not stop the pedophiles. Simple censorship will not stop them, and in the meantime you open up a can of worms. If the ultimate goal is to stop child abuse, shouldn't they focus on methods that WILL actually work?
"minor-attracted adults."
????
WTF, add me to the list of me-too's calling this hyphenation absolutely stupid.
Pedophilia MUST NOT be made to sound like someone who enjoys teaching primary school.
does Verizon currently have common carrier status? And if so, to which divisions does it apply: ISP, cellular or POTS?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm not defending pedophiles, but these shows are REALLY close to entrapment. There is no 13 year old boy or girl. It's an adult acting like one over the internet.
Well, my girlfirend and I have had the opportunity to chat with a member of PJ on a couple of occasions (who is on my girfriend's buddy list) and I can tell you that they aren't even REMOTELY close to entraping these sexual predators. PJ is also NOT A VIGILANTE GROUP AT ALL. They do NOT take the law into their own hands--they work WITH law enforcement closely and make VERY sure they do not conduct themselves in a manner that would jeopardise the case against a suspected predator.
Whether the chatter misrepresents themselves as a minor has NOTHING to do with entrapment at all. Law enforcement personnel work undercover all the time representing themselves as prostitutes, drug dealers and so forth. Entrapment is about enticing someone to commit an illegal act with the intention of charging them for that act--it isn't the same as misrepresentation at all. When a member of PJ goes online, they do so under a profile that clearly suggests he or she is underaged. They NEVER initiate a conversation with a paedophile. When someone messages an undercover PJ chatter only then do they respond and start a conversation. Once the conversation is started they do NOT make any effort to steer to the conversation to sexual content--generally they play the typical "angst-ridden teen" and mention shool troubles, or that they had a fight with a friend or so on. Sometimes they just talk about nothing in particular. In any case, they are simply compliant or agreeable with the suspect--if they ask for a picture they send one...of the paedophile sends a file they accept it.
They are simply putting the bait out on a hook and fishing for sickos. Entrapment would be coralling all the fish into a pond filled with freely-swimming bait. In any case, PJ have thier hearts in the right place but I could see them being overzealous in advocating the shutdown of these sites as they are quite passionate about the issue. I haven't seen the kind of content available on this "boychat" site so I can't say how illegal it would be, but it could be that one or more members of that forum have been conviced of sexual crimes against minors or have been chatting with undercover PJ members. That could very well be enough for PJ to try and shut down the site regardless of actual legality of the content.
I certainly think that Verizon has overstepped themselves here however. These guys are small-fry and from the article anyways appear to be more of a support group than a child porn ring. Yahoo chatrooms and Myspace and usenet are probably much bigger and more dangerous breeding grounds for paederastic sexual predators than some little forum sites. These outfits, however are either too big or have too much money to abuse this way.
I live in Canada and as the article states our laws ARE much stricter on the definition of illegal child porn. Its constitutionality has been challenged in the past even though our protection of "free speech" is not as rigourous as in the US. I'm pretty sure our child porn laws would be ruled unconstitutional in the US. OTOH, for some reson I cannot fathom we have 14 as an age of consent which is lower than the vast majority of the world, and though we are pretty strict about what kind of porn and behaviour involving minors is legal the penalites for violating those laws are pretty weak. That IS significant though is that the Canadian authorities have reviewed the material on this boychat site and have determined it is not illegal by our standards...this suggests to me that it is more like a child-abusers version of alcoholics anonymous. I think the site should be monitored closely by police but I certainly don't think it should be shut down if that is the case because perhaps it actually keeps paedophiles from acting on their urges. I also do not think it is Verizon's place to decide what content is appropriate. That is t
Do you even know what avant-garde means? And are you trying to say that Mac users are insufferable asshats? In that case, I'll leave decent OSes to me, and leave the crap known as Macintrash to you.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
From my point of view, the real reason Verizon should not be making this call is that they're taking the responsibility for someone else's actions. It's never becoming to do this, and should this become an illegal or para-legal situation, I'd rather point the finger at whomever put the offending site up, not the ISP (can you imagine the number of sites they would have to audit?) And certainly not verizon.
To add balance to my message, though, as part of my job, I maintain servers for some hosting companies. When we find someone doing something illegal we shut them down. Our providers will TOS/AUP us if they notice it before they do, but they're bright enough to realize that the hosting company doesn't intend to have this content or kind of traffic (depending on the infraction, usually phishing site, spam or DoS source of some kind) and give us fair warning. But they don't bother us about our cutsomer's content when it's legal content, no matter how offensive (except in rare cases where it violates their TOS, some NOCs are anti-porn, etc.) We will, even if we simply don't like the content (I can think of two cases, one similar to this), but they're *our* customers and that's an important difference.
The reason they don't bother us with legal content is simple; they're not serving our customers. They don't care about our customers, and they shouldn't have to. Verizon shouldn't have to care, and they should realize that they're just feeding this whole "protect the stupid america" movement that's been going on for as long as I can remember. The other side of that is that if someone wants to take a stand for something, he's buffered from the risks that he'd otherwise have to face because some removed party is pulling him out of site. I'd rather see him face it personally than 2 steps removed. If he falls on his face, maybe he deserves it. If he doesn't, then maybe we all need to know about what's going on in his head, but as it stands, he can hardly take this to Verizon because they're not repsonsible to him. So it's his ISP, who shouldn't have to risk themsleves on this when they choose to let him do as he pleases.
One final thought: as much as I don't think Verizon should be doing this, I don't think it should affect their common carrier status. They're saying "we don't do business with your kind" in a sense, which is fine (but bad in the sense described above.) Also, they're not really making themselves liable for illegal content because this issue has nothing to do with illegal content.
~sigh~ ...and I was SO hoping to live my life without posting on slashdot, too.
...instead, it arose from internal affairs... the ages-old question of "what about me" when discussing politics INSIDE the MAI/AAM community. Using the terms "pedophile" or the more literate "paederotic" tended to offend and alienate those who, frankly, weren't paederotic... the large crowd of people who can confess to themselves that, yes, that 16yo has a rather nice chest. ...so, by all means, if you think "MAI/AAM" sounds too "sickly-sweet," feel free to use such terms as "infantfucker" or "diaper faery." We're quite proud of the label, frankly, and "diaper dipper" ONLY draws offence because of it's implications of primary heterosexuality... and we ain't breeder. Hell, some of us even make "Womb Raider" spoofs.
...the thing was hosted in Canada, of all places, with the lowest free-speech protections of any first-world nation whatsoever, and the administration reflected this.
Let's see... first factual corrections first. The term "minor attracted individual" (here miswritten as 'minor attracted adult') does NOT mean "pedophiles" - which is exactly why it was adopted. While Orwell may be turning over in his grave over this "philanthrope" prevention in the horiffic misuse of greek, DISequivocation is sort of the opposite of deception.
The common term "pedophile," and the accurate term "paederotic," were noted to exclude and ignore large amounts of the community - both the babylovers, and people attracted to anything with breasts (or on the BL side, anything with a few whiskers).
The "political correctness of not wanting to offend queers" had NOTHING to do with "omg this will sound sweet and fluffy." The current theory is that anyone with human decency in their soul would have already exercised it, and thus it leans more towards the "bigger albatross" theory - an astounding number of people WILL fight under a flag of "infantfucker pride" even though themselves won't swing that way - just to offend a bigot.
Secondly, there's been some FASCINATING mythologization about, oh, "meeting to exchange kiddie pr0n" and "exchanging tips on how to molest kids" and the like.
This is a fucking joke.
A quick view of the bottom of any post screen on http://www.boychat.org/ or a review of the FAQ at http://www.annabelleigh.net/, will in fact include such tidbits as "Do not advocate or counsel sex with minors" (rule #6)... which would be a 1st-amendment violation in the US, I believe, if done outside any specific case, as well as "Do not post erotica or overly-detailed sexual discussions" (rule #1) in light of Canada having the world's most stringent "written erotica" laws in the world... and, yes, rule #7, "Do not request meetings with posters who are under age 18"
Usually, rule #7 was invoked on underage youth showing up with a "I'm looking for gay guys in the ____ area," as well it should have been... but I suppose that's off the topic.
For half a flippin' decade, the RMCP read the board every single day, without any action being taken. Before plagarizing whatever tabloid you read that morning, perhaps it would be prudent to investigate the actual topic at hand? It is, in fact, rather impossible to discuss "ways to seduce minors" under one's real name (as many posters are) on a public forum read by the police department (who has been VERY helpful in consulting on topics of legal compliance), and still be in operation.
Finally, a technical note : Verizon's holdings (Sprint/MCI) did not provide any form of hosting whatsoever; all hosting was done by the hosting company Epifora, which has no responsibility for the sites it hosts.
Sprint/MCI, a subsidiary of verizon, was simply the *backbone provider*, and in fact holds regional monopoly as the internet backbone for the area.
"Common carrier" status - often discussed in the germ
Didn't that concern go away entirely with recent deregulation? Sure, it's still an issue with voice communications but not Internet... at least not now.
It was titled, "Home for Lunch." In it, three black men are hitting the showers. One has a white penis. The explanation is that the three men are coal miners and the one with the white penis went "home for lunch." ;-)
Minor attracted adults?
Bull%$#! That just a euphemism for child molestor!
I'm glad Verizon cut them off!
As Verizon just blew it.
Not that the government really needed a reason to look at your data, but this was a stupid move that just opened their doors wide open to a lot of things.
I wonder what will happen when they are forced to censor data that doesnt originate on their network but simply passes across. ( since they are no longer a common carier, this is likely to happen sooner then later )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sorry, I don't identify with or understand anyone that has the urge to molest children. So, sympathy, empathy, compassion all have too strong of a meaning for me.
"The particular sites were advocating more than just Pedophilia, they including child rape." Not only can you not prove that - you're lying. ...and the fact that you're lying - can be proven.
It reminds me of this t-shirt from T-Shirt Hell:
8 8.gif
http://www.tshirthell.com/shirts/products/a588/a5
Libertas in infinitum
Legally, Verizon Communications Inc. is a corporation that has diverse operations and subsidiaries. Among these subsidiaries are common carriers. Among them are companies that are not common carriers. Both types use the brand name "Verizon".
Verizon Online is an ISP. As such, it is not, and has never been, a common carrier. UUNET, now part of Verizon Business, is also an ISP, and the ISP portion of its operation is not, and has never been, a common carrier. MCI's long distance operations, now part of Verizon Business, are a common carrier, to the extent that they carry telephone calls and leased lines ("special access" is the tariff term), but some parts of it are no longer common carriage.
With regard to the responsibilities and privileges of each (in the US), there are basically three different levels.
-A common carrier bears no responsibility for content, and isn't even supposed to look. Bits is bits. This is what Verizon does when it leases a DS3 between somebody's routers.
-A publisher is responsible for content. In the web world, this is generally the person who puts up the site, not the host.
-An ISP is not a common carrier, but is not a priori responsible for content; in its hosting role, it can be asked to take down objectionable content that they host, once they are made aware of it. An ISP in its transmission role is still an "information" provider, and is permitted to pick and choose what it wants to pass and what it wants to block. It may be asked to block objectionable material, though its not quite clear to me, at least, when it must do so.
So while I am the last person to defend VeriZontal, they did not do anything wrong here, if we're talking about their ISP blocking another. Indeed if an ISP did not block a known spam generator, it would be remiss in its duties. It was probably not the Telephone Company that did the blocking, though the international leased line business is basically deregulated and they probably could choose to deny service to an entity of questionable legality.
Here's the sticky part: This system all worked because of the split between the ISP and the common carrier. There might be a monopoly on local telephone lines, or a very few common carriers to choose from, but any number of ISPs could operate using (leasing) their services. Verizon was forced to keep the two sides separate. So Verizon New York leased its raw DSL common carriage to Verizon Online on the same terms that it offered to Earthlink and many other ISPs.
But (based on Verizon and SBC petitions) the FCC dropped that rule in 2005, effective this past August. So now Verizon New York does not have to offer raw DSL to anyone but Verizon Online. So the other ISPs can be cut off. This is why there is a network neutrality debate. With the old rule (which goes back to 1983 and really made the Internet possible), an ISP who blocked too much would lose customers to other DSL ISPs. Now, there's much less competition. So there are calls to legislate the behavior ("neutrality") of ISPs (such as Verizon Online, but this tends to trickle down to mom'n'pop shops too) themselves. This is not trivial, because it would lead to infinite fights over who is or isn't a spammer, what is or isn't objectonable, etc. The FCC screwed the pooch this time. And the beauty of it is that the fight over Network Neutrality stopped Congress from giving Verizon and SBC ("AT&T Inc.") what they really really wanted, national cable TV franchises.
What you have said is absolutely correct. It just goes to show how many people do not understand the underlying principles behind free speech and simply parrot the line 'all censorship is bad' ... and amusingly, the person who marked you as flamebait was choosing to exercise /. version of censorship.
It is very possible that this support group is there to help paedophiles resist their attraction to children. I don't know because I'm not into that kind of thing. However, this censorship (of filtering) can have major implications elswhere. These implications can range from what content gets blocked, which content provider gets preferencial treatment and so on. One thing is very clear is the fact that for whatever reason, when a government or corporate power gets or usurps authority to take certain actions, that authority will eventually be abused.
I believe that companies like Verizon, SBC, AT&T, and their various combinations will likely abuse the power of censorship for the sake of making lots of money and squelching competitors. This is the reason why I advocate such things as FreeWan's Mesh Networks, Muni-nets and so on. People themselves need to build their own infrastructure so that the infrastructure is owned and controlled by everyday people rather than governments and mega-corporations. It will get to the point where the monitoring, filtering, and throttling will get so bad that the Internet will become just another medium controlled by mainstream media. When this happens, people will get creative and more local networks will be built. The technology to do this is already out there, and hackers will use it to their advantage. The telcos and media cartels need to accept the fact that their monopoly on information is finished. We the people are in control, now.
fuck those children abusing (or want to be abusing motherfuckers)..... Fucking bullet in the skull if what those minor molesting motherfucks need.
they can goto hell and take their "help us figure out how to molest children" website with them..
From what i can gather the sites in question are support groups attempting to prevent pedo's from actually carrying out and act of molestation. given that it's proven to be impossible to change a persons sexual orientation, it leaves us with 2 ways of dealing with these people. 1. locking them up or killing them. both of which will force them underground, putting kids at risk since then we won't know about them till they've commited a crime. 2. treatment and support, to try help them vent their sexual frustration in a manner which doesn't damage anyone. only an idiot thinks door number 1 offers any kind of solution. so i can only assume this group is a bunch of hystrical women screaming WONT SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN and letting all reason and logic fly out the window in an attempt to push their agenda. an isp censoring content purely because one group asked them to, is a disgrace and i feel sorry for anyone who uses their service. now that one little pressure group has succeeded, it will open the flood gates for any asshole who was ever offended by something to demand it be blocked to everyone no doubt the rightwing closest cases on here will mod me down.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Does this mean Canada can invade the US now? I promise to greet you as a liberator!
...and if you support capitalism, you don't believe in government involvement, regulation, or the ability to sue a business. With all of that removed, the protections of the common carrier status aren't necessary in the first place.
First a disclaimer. I was homosexually abused for 5 years. I am speaking from personal experience.
For a child to be a sexual relationship with an adult is a very confusing experience. A child simply does not possess the drives that an adult does. A child does possess body parts, sensations, and feelings that will later synthesize into those drives, but that is very different.
It is easy for a sick adult to mistake natural childhood curiosity for sexual interest. Particularly when that curiosity is a child's attempt to figure out why the adult wanted to do some "weird stuff". This mistake is has a fairly universal basis - a classic sign that we're interested in someone is that we convince ourselves that that someone is interested in us. That's true no matter what your sexuality is.
Furthermore "consent" from children means less than with adults. It is part of being a child that you're inclined to respect and obey adults. Certainly this obedience is not absolute as any parent of a toddler is painfully aware. But the overall tendency is to consent without trying to understand.
So when a paedophile has access to a child, the experience is confusing for the child, the paedophile is apt to think there is more consent than there is, and the child's consent is fairly meaningless. Is that all?
Unfortunately not. The final big piece of the puzzle is that the damage done is not fully visible while the child is a child. What gets harmed is the child's relationship towards sexuality, and that only becomes visible when the child hits puberty and develops his or her own sexuality. Only to find that it is already twisted and damaged.
The result is that actual expressions of paedophilia are almost always very damaging to the children. The only real question is therefore how society can best minimize the expressions of paedophilia without undue harm to society as a whole. (Politicians who justify legal abuses with, "Think of the children!" sicken me. I want results, not platitudes for a self-serving agenda.) There is no question that making paedophilia more legitimate will increase experimentation by people who have some desire that way. Therefore there is no question in my mind that paedophilia should not be made more legitimate.
Incidentally given current rates of sexual abuse, I should point out that paedophilia is already pretty darned mainstream. What is not mainstream is acceptance of paedophilia. And as a former victim and a current parent, that is something that I hope we never see.
What do you call sodium chloride and nickel cadmium? ... ...
Wait for it...
A salt and battery!!!
*rimshot*
Thanks I'll be here all night, try the veal
3 AC
Because of pedophle hysteria, I have rejected taking any position that involves interacting with minors. When minors are around, I make it a point to show active disinterest so they do not inteact with me. I'm sorry, but I will not risk the unwashable stigma of a false accusation. The hell with the children, I have my own self to save.
If the article had not been slashdotted, you would know that in this particular case Verizon had instructed its subsidiary, MCI Canada, to cut the connection.
Epifora is the ISP in question, MCI Canada just provided the physical connection.
IANAL, but as far as I can tell, common carrier status applies in this case.
Verizon cut the phone lines to an ISP that hosted sites that offer community support to MAAs. Much discussion is devoted to self-acceptance and living within the law.
On the other hand, the group making the complaint to Verizon, Perverted Justice, has long been involved in entrapment schemes, and recently was involved in the death of one of their victims in Texas. Perhaps the funniest thing is the rumors that PJ founder "Xavier von Erck" got involved with a 14yo girl a few years ago.
Don't know if that particular rumor is true, but there have been a number of reports that he has made use of minors as young as 13 (IIRC) to go into sex chats with older men, and try to get those men to visit them as part of his entrapment operations.
There is absolutely nothing illegal at Free Spirits or Boychat. The only photos on the site are non-porn photos of the person posting when he was a boy or teen himself. All posted links are checked and if the link to illegal material, they are removed. The site also supports https.
A lot of non-boylovers read there regularly, hoping to find something to bring the boards down, but in 10 years on the net, they never have...
https://wwwboychat.org/
just offer a wide open DNS and a filtered DNS for those who wish to use it...wouldn't that make everyone happy?
I am personally quite pleased to see a large company working against the warped, sick individuals who label pedophiles and child molesters as "minor-attracted adults" ... the more upset these freaks are, the happier the rest of civilization should be. This was not a story about censorship or about individual rights; it was a story about a corporation setting a limit to the disgusting depths of depravity it would be associated with. Every time some tech-savy person defends child molestation under the umbrella of "censorship", it becomes harder to convince the non-tech-savy to listen when we tell them about REAL censorship, privacy concerns, DRM, etc. I for one will consider a move TO Verizon. This did not really belong in YRO; NOBODY has a RIGHT to persue minors for sex.
Yes, they have, lets make an example out of them so that SBC/ATT and Comcast get the idea and don't try that.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Last year when the US Supreme Court decided that carrying Internet service on cable didn't make the cable companies telecommunication services under current rules, the FCC decided to "level the playing field" and said that the portion of any service used for broadband Internet would not be classified as a telecommunications service. Many ISP's were afraid at the time that this would give Verizon and others the power to deny ISP's connections to the Internet.
Fearing anti-trust suits, the telcos grandfathered in all current ISPs and still provide them with service, but if you are a new ISP, just try to get a DSL line for a customer - you can't. The telcos do not have to take on new broadband ISP's so they are not (they still have to take on dialups, though).
So cutting off the websites in question no longer falls under common carrier statutes and if the website owner was not a competitior, Verizon was free to deny them service.
Switzerland is planning a nuclear war
Great, now the Swiss know that we know and have gone to beige alert....
Thank you for perpetuating a commonly-held misconception. When people hear about their "[right to] the pursuit of happiness," they conveniently mumble their way through the word "pursuit."
Unfortunately, that's the key word. You have a right to pursue happiness. You do not have any right (or guarantee) to succeed in your pursuit.
Your pursuit of happiness is not hindered by his exercise of free speech. Your pursuit carries on in its temporary (we all hope) state of failure.
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
You criticize Verizon's decision of ending a business relationship which made them a conduit for a pederast sites ("what's a pederast, Walter"), because the pederast sites were "entirely legal". What the hell? Does that mean that if the sites was illegal you would approve? If so, you're saying that only the government has the right to make moral decisions, and you're a lunatic. You're probably actually saying that "all censorship is bad," (that is, that no one should make moral decisions about their actions, or business dealings), and the government shouldn't get involved either, and your "entirely legal" arguement was purely hypocritical. ...and in which case you're also a lunatic.
As for your (non-)question, no a common carrier doesn't give up its status by deciding which ISPs it's going to do business with.
"Minor attracted adults". If that's not the vilest euphemism for pedophile I've ever heard...
http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/MAAs
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/MAAs Here's an article which was written for people who dislike "paedophiles" for their thoughts - http://paedosexuality.blogspot.com/2006/10/fms.htm l
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
The division of Verizon in question is a Tier 1 peer, they are one of about a dozen [style:big ass & blinking]major[/style] data carriers in NA. AOL & Verizon@home are both ISP's. They provide consumer grade products, not commercial transport. Different rules apply to the 2 groups of companies. In this case Verizon@home would be liable for hosting obscene material, whereas Verizon - the peer - isn't for transporting the same material.
http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/MAAs
m l
Here's an article which was written for people who dislike "paedophiles" for their thoughts - http://paedosexuality.blogspot.com/2006/10/fms.ht
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
That is was many of the Epifora-hosted sites were for. Okay, they don't offer help from real therapists, but you can't expect an MAA to seek help from a therapist IRL, when they know they will be treated like a child molester.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
How, as a tier 2 provider, do you find another Tier 1 provider? It's not like they are everywhere. Most Tier 1's cover a specific geographical region and competition is legally barred in that zone. IE - there is nobody else to go to.
That's the issue here, to maintain it's common carrier status, Verizon-the-tier-1, has to provide service to everyone as long as what they do is legal, and they pay their bill. They don't get to choose, and in exchange, they get immunity from lawsuits regarding such minor things as facilitating copyright infringement etc... Per the Canadian legal system, they are not breaking any laws, and they are evidently paying the bills.... so cutting them off is a violation of the Common Carrier status, thus - they loose the protections based on that status.
gear up RIAA, you might just recover your $325M lost to piracy.....
Paedophilia / ephebophilia = sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children / teens (thought)
-
Sex with children = sexual activity with children (action)
Murder = (action)
-
The difference should be obvious.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
They are the Tier 1 Peer covering the area - so yes, they should be common carrier.
That was a reply to anon.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
http://clintjcl.wordpress.com/2006/04/14/294/
d =16420251
Also:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=200459&ci
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
You have entirely failed to make a case:
"Oh yes they are. These vigilantes are creating their own "law" by condemning lawful free speech and are actively pursuing punishment by working to deny the "perpetrators" with access to the internet"
The exercise of free speech is not vigilantism. It is merely exercise of free speech. Animal rights activists who write to a newspaper to ask it to remove a sportsman column are doing the same sort of thing. They are "condemning lawful speech" (which is never the creation of a law, and is ALWAYS a part of free speech: the freedom to criticize others' speech).
The original article used the word "vigilante" without any regard to its meaning. So are you. I don't care about who the "burden" is on, but it is clear that you are way out on a limb by choosing to use the vigilante/vigilante term for a subject to which it never applied.
Where were you when the voynix came?
The whole common carrier thing is more complicated than this. Of course, I agree that Verizon should not have dropped these people even though most of us find the site's content to be questionable, if not offensive. But there are lots of kinds of traffic that an ISP needs to filter, and they have been traditionally reluctant to do so.
For example, DOS attacks. You could argue that DOS attacks prevent the system from working correctly, and so they must be blocked by th ISP to ensure proper functionality. And I think that most network engineers would agree with you. But see, here, we're starting down the slope a little-- when we say a common carrier does not block any traffic, we don't really mean "any" traffic. It just blocks the really bad stuff. In any case, we could probably make a strong argument that blocking this stuff doesn't violate their common carrier status. Same thing goes for DNS cache poisoners, BGP manipulators, and so on.
OK, now what about RPC worms? Certainly, they make make Help Desk techs unhappy, and probably a fair number of sysadmins as well, but is it breaking the system? Not at all-- the Internet is working fine, delivering those RPC buffer overflow attacks to their unsuspecting victims, turning their machines into botnets and whatnot. But a lot of people have been pushing for ISPs to do something about this-- certainly, I have contacted a number of ISP abuse departments myself. So here's another class of traffic that we want the ISPs to deal with-- filter-- before it even gets to us. Does this violate their common carrier status? I don't know-- it's in a grey area.
Here's another one-- SPAM. SPEWS is a great example of a DNSRBL whose sole existence is to place pressure on ISPs to drop abusive customers. Actually doing so certainly technically violates the idea of a common carrier, even if it doesn't violate the spirit, unless you really consider SPAM to be a valuable bit of Internet communication. Some spammers might, I guess. But I think there's probably nearly universal support for ISPs to drop the really awful spammers.
The point of all this is that common carrier status is not so cut-and-dry. Where do we draw the line? There's also the question of a company's right not to do business with someone. If an ISP decides not to accept the business of a questionable website, is this filtering/censorship, or just a good business decision? I don't think this is at all clear.
5. Do not advocate or counsel sex with minors.
- Rule #5, boychat.org and annabelleigh.net
inspector Bob Matthews, of the OPP's "Project P" declared the material on Epifora's servers in compliance with the Criminal Code.
That says a lot, as Canadian law sets a higher bar than the US and most other countries, making no distinction between, say, photographs of minors having sex, textual descriptions thereof, or even speech "advocating" such acts.
- Bill Andriette, the Guide
It is proven beyond all possible equivocation that you are flat-out lying. What is more, you are engaging in a pattern of fraudulently accusing specific people of criminal activity for which their innocence is proven.
I strongly suggest you cease.
You've... lied alot, yes, but the proof that you're lying is ample to a degree obscene. There was not a damned thing illegal about any website hosted by Epifora, Inc under US, UK, or Canadian law.
You have voiced exactly the sentiments I would have liked to voice.
There is no reason why two human beings can't touch eachother's bodies in any way which does not cause physical hurt. To make a law forbidding them to do so, just creates trauma to one's society. We who are immersed in our culture, don't realize the depth of the injury which our society suffers because of these types of morality laws. People, as children, don't learn how to properly take care of their genitals and their anus. They get mentally confused and obsessed with daydreams about and around these parts of their bodies. It's very difficult for men to ever have proper genital health - because no one has thought to design clothing with proper ventilation in the crotch... and wearing shorts which are too revealing is a problem. The list goes on and on.
Unfortunately... there are lots of vigilantes out there who want to threaten bodily harm to anybody who argues on behalf of a debate standpoint which they think is not good. And even our current politicians will threaten the careers and futures of any academic who pubicly speaks up on behalf of this issue. (example - the furor about the Rind Report). I would love to write as freely as you do about this subject... but I never feel safe to do so. And I am not alone. So, in respect to these types of issues, we usually miss half of the debate, because people who are of one opinion or the other are too afraid to stand up and say their piece.
Reading some parts of this forum is just like watching people debate the war against the middle east two or three years ago. The only debate was in terms of who was more patriotic than who... and who was most supportive of killing people over there, across the ocean. It was absurd. Finally, a year after our centralized media began convincing people otherwise in the usa, people feel free to see that their politicians have sinned.
For those who lobby on behalf of pedophilia, it's getting bad. I mean "pedophile free zones" - making people sell their houses... or leave their jobs? - get real! This is like the course that middle europe took in the decades before the extermination of the jews. Beware, usa, on the courses you choose to travel.
Boys don't get the mentorship they need because men have exactly that attitude. One always needs to protect oneself first, I agree. But, if in doing so, you lose the soul of your society, that's not acceptable. If the children of your community grow up without guidance, without a way forward for their lives, without someone to see in them their aptitudes... and people who will further them along the course of their lives... that's tragic.
Thank you for your very sound and rational essays on the matter. You are quite kind, to spend the time with us.
"That's right, because I've never claimed that free speech is vigilantism"
Do you want me to quote where you did? A hint: you were referring to the subset of free speech known as "slander."
"No they aren't because they aren't claiming that crimes are being committed in the column"
Would that matter to this? No. Claiming this or that is merely speech. It is not action. It is not vigilantism. In fact, there is nothing those animal rights activists can possible say (short of threatening some sort of action, such as assault) that can remotely be called vigilantism. Certainly, no description, pejorative, or anything which might in someone's opinion be "slanderous" can ever be vigilantism.
If there was some definition by which the mere act of free speech (including "slander") could count as "vigilantism", you'd have found it by now and presented it. You haven't. I even looked for one myself. Slander is something you say, vigilantism is something you do. It is very "ill-informed" to confuse the two.
The original author, like you, used vigilantism without regard to its meaning. There is no evidence that any vigilantism occured. Yes, I am close-minded enough to want to use words within, or even close to, established meaning. My close-mindedness is based on the facts of the definitions of these terms, not my "opinion." That is why I refuse to acknowledge the repeated false claim that free speech can be vigilantism. A search on the words "slander" and "vigilantism" find precious to imply that anyone else has the false idea that speech can be vigilantism. I do, however, find references to groups accused of both, but the mentions very typically accuse certain groups of two different and distinct bad activities (slander and vigilantism).
Back on topic. Do I think Verizon should have blocked the rapists' gathering site? Actually, probably not, regardless of the anti-rapist group's proper exercise of its free speech to pressure Verizon to get rid of the pages.
Where were you when the voynix came?
heh... alright, alright... the aneurystic hysteria of the subject line was more me amusing myself than any actual outpouring of vitriol against you... but seriously.
...see? It's not really THAT hard to wrap your mind around, is it?
It's simple.
All paederotic individuals are minor-attracted individuals.
Not all minor-attracted individuals are paederotic.
See? Wasn't so hard, was it?
Now, to answer such questions as "are MOST minor-attracted individuals paederotic," one would have to ask one's self such questions as whether more people are attracted to a 19yo with a C-cup, or a 4yo (presumably WITHOUT a c-cup)...
I'm sure different people would have different answers, some saying "more people would go for the 4yo," and some saing "nah, most people would go for the 19yo." Either way, however, the 21yo buying drinks for a 19yo that s/he hopes to get jiggy with - while "furnishing alcohol to a minor" - is not, clinically speaking, paederotic in orientation.
Nah. If you'd bothered to read anything, the term "minor attracted individual" exists entirely for internal discourse because there are a diverse array with in the faction, and most blocs in the AAM/MAI community are not paederotic in orientation.
Just because you call two 19yo college students dating one another "paedofiles" merely shows that you're a remarkably bloody ignorant person. Both of them are "minor-attracted," as can be shown by reading the charge you'd get if you sold either of them alcohol in the US... but only ignorant trash as yourself would call them "petafiles" to justify beating completely-random people with a tire iron.
That would be... what?
Tending their garden?
Writing literature?
Voting?
See... every time someone says "I'm going to send you to jail for your immutable status," I just have to... laugh my fool ass off. It's a lot like saying "You'll go to jail if anyone finds out you're black." The rule of law, at least, has never worked like that... however much people like you try to corrupt it.
Now, go log off and visit your local library. It will do both you and the world much good.
The logic-impaired : civilization's greatest threat...
"You must actually be a member of the vigilantes"
I'll let you have the last word, with satisfaction at thinking that I am a member of "the vigilantes", never mind that no vigilantes have been discussed (only people exercising their rights of free speech.).
Where were you when the voynix came?
Yeah - I've had practice shooting down your orwellian doublespeak... but yes, it's a yes or no question, no essays, and everyone can figure out the answer.
Just a piece of unrelated trivia...
You're OBVIOUSLY not a rights holder of Ms. Temple's work, I see...
Seriously, however... for the most part it's neutral. Let's take an example - let's say a woman engineers a bridge. Does it really flippin' matter one way or another to whether or not the bridge is useful if she's queer or not?
Exactly. Its value to society is unchanged. Same as if that babyfuckin' woman instead build's car saftey seats, or devotes her life towards promoting toy saftey with regards to choking hazards, or in fact, whatever the HELL she does.
Umm...
"is minor"
"is attracted"
"minor attracted."
I suggest you study boolean algebra.
Yup.
I'm a-gonna do it...
Discuss!
Nope... no text.
No text...
"I'm a-gonna do it... ...I'm gonna bring up the example of Dr. Kevorkian, orgiastic consensual serial murderer... :p"
Last time I knew, Mr. Jack Kevorkian does not have his medical license. It was pulled.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Thanks.
Incidentally, it was advanced gradeschool logic, followed (much) later with formal boolean algebra in the course of programming... but that still doesn't change the underlying facts.
Contrary to your assertion, the existance of a in set b means neither that all, nor even most, of b are in set a.
This is why it was an -nt message, and if you frankly can't read an obvious two-word point as to something you were obviously confused about without reams of snide commentary, I'm going to have to ask you to log off and sign up for that Intro to Logic class, yourself.
Thank you.
Ad-hom is the last refuge of the profoundly chickenshit, you know...
While we're at it... to the best of my knowledge, there is no "boylove.com," nor to the best of my knowledge has there ever been...
Have fun.
Luckily, the rest of the world will also be reading, so quite bluntly, dodging the issue won't help...
That would be one or two goons who tend to claim affiliation with PJ.
It seems that when one takes it upon themselves to record chats in which the overlord of PJ discredits himself - especially when they make it into the wikipedia article - PJ goons have no qualms whatsoever about targeting law-abiding minors in criminal attacks.
You know - that very same criminal hate group which is the topic of the entire thread. Frankly, I'd rather expect you to be a little more up on the topic - at least enough to be aware that the wiki article exists - before discussing...
How... charming of you. You assert that you don't grasp anything I said - quite literally - while trying to project.
1) You tried to assert a grotesquely flawed and clinically inaccurate definition in an apparent attempt to hide the excesses of hate groups.
2) I proceeded to call you on the invalidity of using such as definition.
3) You pussed the fuck out with the message above. Poorly at that.
So basically, since you don't grasp simple english...
1) Definitional exclusion of the victims of violence from being counted is invalid.
2) As noted and established, the targeted class is at minimum 1.2 billion in number, many of whom are children.
3) You may either explain support for the impact of criminal hate groups on over a billion completely innocent lives - or, you may cede.
Then again? I suppose you did the latter.
The Verizon subsidiary was the tier 1 monopoly provider. The ISP, otoh, did not boot them.
On occasion... and while I'm advertising "flaws of the regieme," click here.
16, dear, 16... though we've been chatting for a year or two...
Actually, I was drafting a comprehensive media management response which she opted to discard... but thanks for asking.
Umm...
Read the links again.
She didn't solicit sex over the internet, and that's not what she was targeted for.
False. Click the little underlined things.
Other news, ostensibly 16 year old {edit} ella has been indentified, with only a autheticated photo preventing full contact information being posted here. As soon as the photo comes in, up everything goes. Address. Telephone. Stay tuned.
Actually, the minors targeted have not been trying to have sex with... anyone... as far as any of the claims involved have asserted.
Yes, I did edit the quote a bit, because that's exactly the point...
Frankly, I suppose that makes all the difference. Much as from the start, the question has been more one of whether the "vigilance comittee" model of ethnic cleansing for those who committed no crime is a morally valid one. If memory serves, you supported and defended an organization which had illegally targeted children in interstate stalking and harassment in the course of doing so.