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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.
>Censorship is an ethical cancer. There can be no legitimate justification for it.
Yes, because you still have the unlimited right to yell, "FIRE!" in a crowded theater not on fire. Or incite a riot.
Face it, there is NO such thing as unlimited freedoms, and for good reason.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
That's not censorship.
Censorship would be the gov't throwing you in prison for warning people about the danger of fire. Your example is the gov't throwing you in prison for knowningly and willfully endangering people's lives by shouting something you a) know to be untrue, and b) know will most likely cause a panic-stricken stampede for the exits.
Quite honestly, saying that not being able to yell 'fire' in a croweded theater is like saying that your right to bear arms is infringed by not being able to shoot people at will.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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.