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?"

Comments

Re:Right to Refuse

[Detritus]

Common carriers do not have the "right to refuse business". If the Gay Nazis for Nuking Whales and Buggering Baby Seals wants telephone service, Verizon is obligated to provide it. They can only terminate service for non-discriminatory reasons like not paying the bill. It's inherent in the definition of a common carrier that the service be offered to the public in a non-discriminatory manner.

Re:Legislation, Corporations, and Censorship

[fyngyrz]

I'm going to rape you, then kill you while your family watches. Then I will kill them.
Just words. Doesn't mean a thing. Not a crime, right?

Right. Just words. In the USA, they're a crime where the constitution has been violated by the government. As long as we understand that "crime" simply means "behavior forbidden by arbitrary and illegitimate government edict", rather than "behavior that causes harm."

Your words may (or may not) signal intent. Words are like that. I'd take your words in context, and I probably wouldn't worry much about them if the context was normal — conversation, joking, etc. If, on the other hand, you had a gun in your hand and were pointing it at me at the time, I'd do my best to disable you right there, because that's no simply longer an act of speech, now, is it?

There is nothing in the constitution that can even remotely be construed as a "right to not be offended by another's speech", and in fact, the first amendment explicitly goes the other way, because it is obviously much more important that we hear what you have to say than it is we protect our pissant little preconceptions from the fact that you wish to say it.

To put it another way, perhaps more easily understood by the "mommy protect me" contingent, I would far rather you tell me you intend to do my family in so I can keep it in mind, than you be forbidden from mentioning it so I will have no clue that you are thinking such things.

Re:Political Maneuvering

[StewedSquirrel]

I did some digging and found the "vigilante group" is "Perverted Justice" (www.perverted-justice.com), the makers of the Dateline "to catch a predator" shows. Their status as "vigilante" is debatable during their law-enforcement-supported television shows, but their daily operations definitely slide toward the vigilante area.

I found a site called corrupted-justice.com which is a site critical of Perverted Justice, and discusses a number of cases where they clearly violate the law and most people's ethical standards in a "the ends justify the means" sort of way.

In fact, I also found quotations from Perverted Justice and thier founders saying basically "we have no interest in protecting children, that's not what we're about, we simply hate pervs and want them to suffer miserably". Corrupted Justice seems to imply they use 15-17 year old "minors" in some of their stings as "bait" and tell them to engage older adults in sexual discussions.

I don't know, that sort of "by all means, hell with the law" approach is disheartening.

I also found that the websites hosted by Epifora include sites like www.boychat.org and www.girlchat.org.

Doing some more digging, they seemed to be linked to some sort of organization called "Free Spirits" (www.freespirits.org) which claims it is a "support group" for pedos, but it also says that it is very opposed to illegal content.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing saying that Epifora wasn't hosting child porn on their server, but I have a feeling that the FBI or RCMP or whatever would have beat down the door if there was any evidence of that, rather than Verizon quitely unplugging their upstream. In addition, comments from Canadian law enforcement mentioned elsewhere in this thread seem to lean toward their content having been audited by both law enforcement and MCI's legal team in 2001 and found to be entirely legal.

So a conclusion? Verizon pulled the plug because they didn't want to be listed as a "corporate sex offender" on the perverted-justice.com website. They had a meeting where lawyers said "we choose the better of two evils" and they chose to shut down the Epifora ISP and face the unlikely circumstance their "common carrier" status was put in jeopardy, rather than face the guarantee that "perverted justice" will be posting fliers on their headquarters with pictures of decapitated children or somesuch that say "VERIZON DID THIS".

Stew

Re:minor-attracted adult?

[FooAtWFU]

What the hell is a "minor attracted adult", if not a pedophile?

Medically, pedophiles are attracted to prepubescent or peripubescent children. An adult attracted to a minor who has passed puberty may be an 'ephebophile' (likes adolescents) or possibly engaging in 'pederasty' or something like that. but no one bothers to learn those terms in the general usage, so the meaning of the word 'pedophile' has become somewhat stretched.

Consider a moment if was 18 and I liked a 17-year-old girl, I could be considered a "minor attracted adult" - but pedophile? I think not.

Now, all that aside, I really have no idea what the site was about at all, and I decline to comment about Verizon's action at this time.

Re:Legislation, Corporations, and Censorship

[ajs]

I'm going to rape you, then kill you while your family watches. Then I will kill them.

Just words. Doesn't mean a thing. Not a crime, right?

Nope, that's a crime. The crime is called assault. However, it's grey (as it should be) and subject to interpretation. You did not commit assault, for example, because from context, it's clear that you were making an example. If you sent that comment as email to a particular recipient, without any context that indicated that you were being hypothetical, THEN it would be assault.

The simple version is: if a reasonable person would assume that the comment constituted a credible threat of violence, then it's assault.

IANAL, as you may have guessed, but I've had to look into what does and does not constitute assault and/or battery in the past.

More information of "Free Spirits"

[StewedSquirrel]

Here is a word-for-word copy of their webiste for those unwilling to visit:

Creepy, but doesn't sound illegal to me...

hy does BoyChat exist? Isn't it really about encouraging abuse?

BoyChat is a forum in which boylovers can explore issues related to their sexuality and provide mutual support and companionship - to learn to lead productive lives in ways that help young people rather than harm them.

BoyChat is not a board in which well-meaning social workers firmly guide people the way they think they ought to go. BoyChat is run by boylovers for boylovers. It encourages its posters to work freely through their own issues and questions. Participants will express a wide range of views. No post represents the views of anyone except the poster. No individual post can be considered typical. Occasionally extreme views will be expressed: these do not receive wide support and are usually strongly condemned. Such posts are often deliberately posted by people who wish to discredit the board.

How do boylovers feel about child molestation?

Free Spirits doesn't have official positions because we only exist to provide web sites and foster communication. There is an ethical consensus among the BoyChat community and the keepers of the sites, however, that all forms of non-voluntary sexual contact are to be condemned.

Some participants on BoyChat voice their opinions that men should not have sexual contacts with boys when boys seek it because they don't want to risk society's harmful reaction. Some believe they should never have sex with boys under any circumstances. Others, especially those who sought out relationships with men as boys, say that some boys are harmed when their repeated requests for love and intimacy are rejected without explanation.

Discussions on BoyChat delve deeply into ethical issues. No regular reader could fail to be aware of the ethical issues of his attraction. Victims of sexual abuse find not only support and caring, but also strong condemnation of their abusers. Posters who contemplate anything abusive get very short shrift from the rest.

Participants are also very aware of the legal issues. They understand the extreme penalties for even the slightest physical contact or suspicion of sexual contact between adult and minor. They know about the knock on the door in the middle of the night, the removal of and destruction of property, the planting of evidence and the extraordinary mental and sometimes physical torture of possible victims. They know that boys, even if not already victims, will become so at the hands of the police in the name of child protection. Readers are aware of the bashings and rapes in prison; the informing of neighbours and employers and the sign in the yard, the modern Scarlet Letter. They are aware also of the enforced "therapy" that consists mainly of destroying the offender's sense of self worth with no chance of actually changing sexual orientation.

What does Free Spirits hope to accomplish?

In light of what we know about boylove and the difficulties boylovers face in current society, there must be places where boylovers can communicate positively and find emotional support. BoyChat is safe because it is anonymous. People don't have to show their faces if they don't want to. People who have bottled-up emotions are dangerous to themselves and others. Every once in a while, a non-boylover will read BoyChat and see that boylovers are human beings like all others. We let others watch us interact. This is good.

What kind of people belong to Free Spirits?

Nobody "belongs" to Free Spirits. Free Spirits is just a web site that a bunch of people maintain. The site is accessed by a diverse population from dozens of countries. The pages are used by people who are interested in the issues surrounding boylove. This means not only boylovers, but also many males who have had self-defined positive experiences as boys with men. Other participants include child abuse researchers, internet anti-pedop