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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.
Next
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
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.
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.
I suppose that depends on the definition of "support".
If by "support" they mean support groups like AA where "minor-attracted adults" seek help in not acting on impulses and addictions, then not really; it bears distinguishing between pedophiles and people who recognize that their attractions aren't healthy, even if they feel natural.
If "support" is more like a NAMBLA textbook for seduction, then a euphemism it is.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Actually, it's a typo. The submitter meant "miner-attracted adults." It's a group of people irresistibly drawn to hard hats and black lung disease. Just goes to show you can find a website for anything on the Internet.
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.
Just like blacks and whites who dated fifty years ago "destroyed their own lives", eh? And like gays getting caught up in stings before the gay rights movement "destroyed their own lives".
-Ella, 16
Depends on the age, and the law now doesn't it?
If the age of consent is lower than that of the age of majority (ie, a minor) you could be referring to a 17 year old potentially.
Here in Canada, the age of consent is 14 as long as you're not in a position of authority over the minor in question, with people making noises about raising it to the age of 16.
If I look at a 17 year old girl, am I a pedophile? I think not. I could legally have sex with her, but since she's half my age, I probably don't stand much chance/wouldn't have much in common with her anyway, so I'm not gonna go out and try. But, it hardly makes one a pedophile to stare at her b00b13z, she's merely a minor, but one who is legally allowed to have sex -- including with a dirty old man like me if she so chooses.
I don't know anything about the sites in question (and TFA seems to be slashdotted already), but there is not an immediate transition from "minor" (not old enough to vote or sign contracts) and "child" which is implied by pedophile. Depending on where you live, there are a few years of late adolescence which is a gray area.
Of course, now that I've tried to point out the distinction between being attracted to a minor and what it means to be a pedophile, I'm sure I'll be accused of being one, or at the very least supporting them. Which I don't. I'm merely trying to point out that "minor-attracted" might, in fact, NOT mean pedophile.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Kind of hard to judge with absolutely no real information, but that has never stopped anybody on Slashdot before.
If the ISP shut anyone down without a court order, regardless of what content they're hosting, then they've forfeited their common carrier status in my mind. If they found the site and thought it was illegal, they should have contacted the authorities. Otherwise, they should have done nothing. With the facts we have, we can answer the question asked in the summary.
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
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!
Age of consent and age of majority are different legal issues.
Whether or not you consider them different moral issues is your issue.
KFG
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.
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
Just goes to show you can find a website for anything on the Internet.
Not if you're on Verizon.
First of all, if you read the article, 2 sites were named as being found objectionable by Verizon:
"The company's clients host a number of websites and chatboards-- such as Boychat.org and Freespirits.org-- with a pederastic slant."
The article also seems to indicate that they would be legal in the US:
"With its transgressive content, Epifora had faced scrutiny before. After a July, 2001 report in Canada's National Post, MCI-Canada approached the Ontario Provincial Police for an opinion, and 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."
Furthermore, I believe you are missing the point:
Weather or not you agree with what is being said, free speech is protected by law in Canada and in the US. The issue here is weather or not Telcos should be able to censor content by refusing to provide access to their backbone. Verizon is refusing a Canadian ISP access to the backbone because they host a few websites that Verizon doesn't like.
The websites are legal in Canada for sure. Should Verizon be allowed to do this? I don't think so. This is a slippery slope that nobody wants to end up at the bottom of.
"Minor-attracted adults" sounds a lot better than "perverts,"
That it does. Why not rename the whole spectrum?
Creepy flasher guy in the park - Genital Display Engineer
Pedophile priest - Faith-based Genital Manipulation Facilitator
Gary Glitter - Overly-Child-Friendly Entertainment Provider
Any others?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
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
I would add that the pages Mark Foley pursued were 17 years old and he has incorrectly been labeled a pedophile.
You are exactly right of course. "Minor-attracted adults" aren't uncommon at all since "minor" is an arbitrary age that is typically older than the age of sexual maturity.
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.
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
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.
Thank you. Finally a voice of reason on here.
People incorrectly toss around the "pedophile" label for anyone doing or thinking something they deem inappropriate with someone a lot younger than them. In reality, a pedophile is someone interested in pre-pubescent children... which is a whole 'nother category than a lot of those who get incorrectly labeled such.
Amazing how many hypocrites on here will cry "burn in hell, pedophiles!" at someone interested in POST-pubescent minors, and then proceed to go jack off to Natalie Portman in Phantom Menace (she was 16-17 during filming), or Keira Knightley in Curse of the Black Pearl (she was 17 at the time)... or even Knightley in The Hole, where she goes topless at age 15.
Truth of it is, we as males are attracted to youthful beauty. While pre-pubescent sexual attraction is a sickness in my opinion, it's natural that once the "girl" starts to become a "woman", our natural biology kicks in and desires/thoughts can't necessarily be helped. This whole "18" and "minor" and "age of consent" thing is an artificial creation of very-recent society. Just because stuffy gray old men in some marble building deem it illegal doesn't make it unnatural, wrong, or worthy of condemnation.
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.
It's the same debate as network neutrality. The telcos do not want to be common carriers any more, and have given up the legal protections in order to be media companies. In August 2005, the FCC gave in:
/ DOC-260435A1.pdf
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch
After lobbying by telcos like Verizon, they reclassified internet connections as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services", and ruled that common carrier principles do not apply.
What Verizon did was completely legal. Common Carriers went away over a year ago.
Paedophiles are a matter for the F.B.I., and H.M.R.M.P, not for some spineless telco. I went over to the site, www.Epifora.com and saw no sexual oriented anything?! I can only wonder if this is some form of extortion, or someone has access to information that only the bad guys have access to. Civilians that know who the bad guys are, but do not inform law enforcement are just as bad as the bad guys, IMHO.
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
Peg Bundy was HOT. The original MILF.
Driving drunk is not an essential liberty, and not having drunken idiots driving around all the time provides a hell of a lot more than temporary security. Since the liberty is not essential and the security is not temporary, Franklin's quote is not even partially applicable.