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Three ISPs Agree To Block Child Porn
Goobergunch and other readers sent in word that Sprint, Time Warner, and Verizon have agreed to block websites and newsgroups containing child pornography. The deal, brokered by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, occurred after Cuomo's office threatened the ISPs with fraud charges. It's of some concern that the blacklist of sites and newsgroups is to be maintained by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an NGO with no legal requirement for transparency. Here are two further cautions, the first from Lauren Weinstein: "Of broader interest perhaps is how much time will pass before 'other entities' demand that ISPs (attempt to) block access to other materials that one group or another feels subscribers should not be permitted to see or hear." And from Techdirt: "[T]he state of Pennsylvania tried to do pretty much the same thing, back in 2002, but focused on actually passing a law ... And, of course, a federal court tossed out the law as unconstitutional. The goal is certainly noble. Getting rid of child porn would be great — but having ISPs block access to an assigned list isn't going to do a damn thing towards that goal."
What about providing *optional* proxies that does that filtering to their users?
While I can't stand the kiddie pr0n,this simply won't work. it has been tried in the past in other countries and it always ends up getting legit websites along with the bad ones.But that is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Right on the heals of a Boy scouts of America article.
Hmmm
"Yes, truecrypt.org DOES contain child porn, so does wikileaks.org"
"Do you have proof?"
"We don't need it, it's on the list, now move along, nothing to see here."
How will they do it? How can they detect kiddie porn? Because if they can do that at the packet level with 100% accuracy and 0% false positive, I wouldn't mind having this in my router at the hardware level.
So, how?
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
Let's see:
If all of these things come about, the internet will be like cable TV and there will be no free press.
While on the one hand I see no reason whatsoever for child porn-related sites to even exist let alone have anyone visit them, censorship by ISPs is a very obvious slippery slope. Unfair and damaging compromises without number have already been made "for the sake of the children"; it's as obvious a ploy as "..or the terrorists win", and I for one feel my intelligence is insulted whenever those cards are played. In the final analysis, I think this will be found to be a bad idea. Providers of bandwidth should not be allowed to decide what content will traverse their network any more than they should be allowed to interfere with P2P traffic. Determining the appropriateness should be the domain of hosting services, and the legality should be determined by the courts and by law enforcement; ISPs are neither -- which is as it should be.
Time for a new poll, perhaps? What's going to be the first false positive?
ISPs are not common carriers. Thank you for your time.
I have to agree with what has already been said- it won't work. Legit sites will get caught in the net and the lawsuits will ensue.
Anyone who has had to deal with Internet filtering systems like Websense knows they are problematic at-best. I can't imagine using an ISP that runs something like that.
It seems to me that if they know enough about the kiddie pr0n sites to block them- they should have enough information to provide authorities to get them shut down.
Well enjoy the various -chan sites for the few remaining days they'll still be accessible from those ISPs.
It's about preserving an obsolete business model.
What if they make a mistake? Is this the first step of many? Will other pressure groups make them block access to material that is legal in the source or destination jurisdiction but not in the other? Of course any ISPs that block material on their own who dared to claim common-carrier status can kiss that claim goodbye.
I would much prefer them not to block it themselves but rather cooperate with law enforcement. If the cops want it shut down, they can get a warrant to shut it down. On the other hand, the cops may want to keep it up for an hour or two so they can see the logs in real-time and knock on the customers' doors as they are up- or down-loading it.
As for newsgroups, if the KP-suppliers can't post in alt.kiddie-porn-group-de-jour, they may start invading alt.fractals.mandelbrot or some other group that has no tolerance for such material. That would be quite disruptive.
Besides, unless they are just plain stupid, people won't upload or host illegal material without encryption, with the passwords traded through other channels. Good luck to the ISPs telling encrypted kiddie porn from encrypted photographs of CowboyNeal's mother.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
When it comes to tech some people are born stupid and some work at it, politicians are a blend of both. The longer they are in office the dumber they get.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
There are a shitload of proxies out there, even HTTP Proxies (ie: www.dontfilter.us).
While we provide the ability to blacklist websites where I work, users will still find a way around these to get to the sites they want - just look at all the school kids who use HTTP proxies to get through to sites such as MySpace.
I am wondering what fraud charges the Attorney General threatened these ISP's with, that they'd be willing to lose their common carrier status by messing with their users traffic.
or even identify it. RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I use newsgroups quite a bit. Once alt.underage.porn (or whatever) is shut down, that material is just going to be posted somewhere else - and probably end up being seen by more people. If they ban keywords, they'll move onto new euphemisms. No automatic filter will do this job - and the results of the attempt will be worse in every way than if no filter was used.
All it is is scoring political points, and providing the illusion of action while really making the situation worse.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
GET ERROR 500 when clicking on their bookmarked pages...
Isn't that called extortion? "We will bring you up on charges if you do not 'voluntarily' do as we say." Especially when what they say is clearly illegal (per PA ruling).
This is starting to sound like China's Great Firewall (or the "Golden Shield" as they like to call it). I could see joke sites getting caught in this since it's a non-governmental entity keeping the list--not that joke sites should contain child porn, but a joke site (such as Encyclopedia Dramatica) that makes fun of pedos, child abuse, or the organization itself--could be targets for blocking. I am always against arbitrary censorship. Any pedo that wants porn is going to find it underground anyway--newsgroups, VHS and DVD swapping, email, P2P, and anything anonymous. A block list is only going to stop a person who is thinking "Gee, I wonder what child porn looks like."
So does this mean I won't be able to read 4chan anymore?
What happens when Mom sends via email or an online album pictures of Baby's first bath to Grandma, and Grandma's ISP's software classifies the email or album as child porn? Does Grandma get a visit from the FBI/CIA/DEA/NSA/IRS/TSA/DHS in the form of a raid looking for more child porn? News gets out that Grandma was investigated for child porn and her reputation is demolished, even if some people know that it was a case of mistaken intent/identity.
Child porn is a terrible thing, but it's virtually impossible to classify something as child porn unless someone has manually classified an known image and corresponding hash as child porn.
There's also the issue of determining ages of the children in the picture if they're not obviously too young. Who took the pictures? Was it taken by a 15-year-old girl's 17-year-old boyfriend, or did she herself take it for him? This is legal in some states/countries, but a felony in others.
I don't want to get into an argument about these specific cases, but the possible cases are simply too wide and a single government authority cannot effectively press its morals onto its people. Romeo and Juliet will deviate from the norm.
The Chris Hansen approach works much better because it shows provable evidence of intent/motive and catches them in the act, perhaps even literally with their pants down.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
They hire a pedophile!!
Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
People are confusing the Web with Usenet. To prevent people from reading child porn on Usenet is easy - you simply don't allow external news servers (which the big boys probably are already blocking), and then you make the choice to NOT subscribe your internal news servers to the porn channels.
People confuse where responsibility lies.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
They actually have sex with children.
If some innocent website is blacklisted in this system, can they claim libel or slander by the black-lister?
Also, if ISPs become censors, don't they lose their Common Carrier status under the DMCA, and put themselves on the hook for any bad stuff that comes over their wires?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
So they're consenting by request rather than by law to remove material (however loathsome)specified by a third party? How can they possibly preserve their status as Common Carriers under this regime? Without that shield in place they'll be held liable for every possibly objectionable (copyright, libel, obscenity) piece of data they move. How can they possibly agree to this?
I love privacy, and i believe what BF said, "Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither."(wikipedia) But come on, anyone arguing that blocking child porn is a slippery slope is like saying we shouldnt have a court system because some people may be found innocent. Wouldnt it make more sense to say, well, such a system would need to be heavily regulated to preserve liberty. Wouldnt such an answer work in this case? The parties working together on this are not criminals, they are public corperations, NY Gov, or NGOs who's sole purpose is to help children; all of them answerable to the people (or a group of people). Wouldnt it be more productive and responsible to steer them in the right direction than to gripe about how they will surely screw it up without giving them a chance.
Seriously, what happens if a group of people (generally young men found living electronically on one of those lovely chan boards) decide to stage a cp raid? Is the attacked site blocked forever or only as long as the cp stays on the servers? Who decides if it is intentional or accidental? Who even gets to decide what constitutes cp? Is there a job where someone has to sort through all the porn on the internet to see what is legal? Are they accepting resumes? Not that I'm applying.
The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of my brain.
Summarized in a phrase: Accept the mantra, just don't think.
Seriously, I can think of lots of priorities higher than keeping our children safe. Keeping our children safe means never letting them outside, never letting them take risks, never exposing them to the dangerous rays of ultraviolet light, never letting them go swimming, never letting them surf the net.
The proper thing to do is to take reasonable measurements to keep everyone, including vulnerable populations such as kids and the elderly, relatively safe without incurring high costs in terms of money, civil liberties, etc. Words like "no higher priority" indicate the speaker is either intentionally lying, or worse, not thinking straight.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I don't get the fight to stop child porn distribution. Doesn't that just make it harder to find the people who engage in this stuff? I guess the implied logic is that this stuff influences people to commit similar acts. Have we really accepted this argument? Violent movies and video games next? This is all so messy. Really don't like seeing USENET get this press either...
If they can create a list of sites that contain this vile shit, wouldn't it make sense to, oh, I don't know, maybe shut them down, prosecute the scumbags that are running the sites, and then use their client records to find and prosecute the people who were paying for it?
wow, it takes real guts to block this. after all, i can't count how many times i was searching for restaurants and all i could find on google was child porn. i know there are a lot of groups out there who are against the blocking of child porn (those damn nazi-commie free speach bastards), and I think it takes real guts standing up to them and saying "no! no more child porn on amazon.com"
...seriously though, this is kind of stupid.
1.) you can't really block it. i'm betting this stuff usally gets passed from one individual to another, not through sites dedicated to spreading it.
2.) it infringes on on the privacy of the consumer
3.) its just a publicity stunt that really doesn't serve anyone.
Great Idea in theory, "lets block all this bad stuff", OK now please define the rules...
Government: It has to block child porn.
Me: OK, how do we define child porn?
Government: An adult and a child in sexual acts.
Me: Right, how do we flag that to block it?
Government: *frusterated* You block it!
Me: We need to define a process or this won't work.
Government: We'll make a list then.
Me: So your going to scour the internets for child Porn and add it to this list. Nothing automatic?
Government: Yes
Me: So what venues will you block, HTTP, SSH, FTP, Torrent, MQ, Skype?
Government: All of those things.
Me: You can't decrypt HTTPS or SSH traffic, how do you know it's child porn?
Government: Because we know those servers have porn since some guy flagged it.
Me: You've heard of dynamic IP's right?
Government: *MAD* DO WHAT WE SAY OR WE KILL THE BUNNY.
Me: Um.... do it.
A story on how the Vatican uses the web site.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo have already blocked email based on political content. We can be sure that ISPs will abuse "porn lists" too.
The right thing to do about kiddie porn is to catch the people who make it.
The right thing to do to censors is to show them out of office.
Impressive how a lot of posters opposing this measure start off saying they abolish child porn. Heaven forfend people should think you're into it! Let's face it people, child porn is a kink, just like any other. We deem putting it in practice illegal, fine. But the demand, which is probably constant, will create its own supply. And if they can't get it on the web, they'll search for it in real life. If anything, this measure will increase child abuse.
http://www.cowboynealdoesnotdokiddieporn.com/
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Doesn't this imply deep packet inspection will be legitimized. I see a pattern here first the British Telecom now ISP's in the US.
By all means bring down the sites with child porn, but this should be a excuse to control "all" traffic.
This problem has to be nipped in the bud, if not there will be no end to what the ISP's will dictate.
What exactly is kiddie porn? Is there even a clear answer to this question? If not, how can you filter it? Or do the ISPs have some quantum filter that concurrently filters across all of time based on the sum of the definitions of child porn?
I guess I am just asking, is there a legal definition of child porn?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Oh wait.
Good to see folks are on thier toes this fine election year.
1) He's not a trained law-enforcement officer.
2) The presence of the camera for other than evidence purposes compromises the investigation.
A much better approach would be to leave the stings to the cops, then, after the trials are over, use the evidence presented to the court to make a TV show.
Plus, it's cheaper.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The problem is the production of child porn which of course involves abuse of children.
The demand comes from perverts who like to watch the abuse of children. So what happens if you simply block their access to child porn produced by other people?
They go off and produce their own. Which means more children abused.
Far better to use the ISPs to track those who produce or regularly seek out child porn and then prosecute them or treat their mental issues as is necessary. Several jurisdictions in Europe have broken up "Child porn rings", arresting as many as 50 people at once.
finally: There is a new category of child porn that has started to pop up lately. Child produced pornography. This means 3 or 4 children, all the same age who take turns operating a cameraphone and performing for it. Then they send out the video to other children via MMS, Bluetooth and Email. The 1st such "work" that came to public attention locally was on the cellphones or computers of thousands of children before the 1st adult saw it.
How do we deal with that? Who do we prosecute? I honestly don't know, suggestions from the Slashdot crowd would be welcome.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/18/finnish_policy_censor_activist/
They tried this in Finland. It was an utter failure for multiple reasons. The Register article states many of them.
Well, technically, they're still trying it in Finland. It's still failing.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
If the NGOs made complains to the police and judges issued "block this site" orders in near-real-time, I don't think you would see the huge backlash.
Take out the judges, and it's a recipe for burning the constitution.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Nice argument except it is a false one. You think that the people looking at this crap aren't partaking in it in real life? Have you seen Dateline lately? And these are just the guys that like 12 - 15 year olds. I think that you are right in that there will be no "end" to the fight. But your argument that we should stop fighting because it will cause *more* harm is crap. The more of these people that we get off the streets the better, the harder we make it for them to get this stuff the better.
What happens when one of them uploads an ASCII-art pixellation of a 17 year old doing something pornographic to /.?
/.
Yeah, it will look funny to see a huge post that starts off:
"Copy this post into NOTEPAD and set your font size to tiny. Caution: NSFW." followed by a mix of spaces and *'s.
It may become the 2nd time a comment is deleted from
As I recall, the first was also over some legal issue.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Child porn and other, worse things, are the price we pay for freedom of speech.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
My favorite :
""It's going to make a significant difference, Mr. Cuomo said. It's like the issue of drugs. You can attack the users or the suppliers. This is turning off the faucet. Does it solve the problem? No. But is it a major step forward? Yes. And it's ongoing.""
so we are going to spend untold millions to do nothing (war on drugs) ?
and
""You can't help but look at this material and not be disturbed," said Mr. Cuomo, who promised to take up the issue during his 2006 campaign""
Elections soon or did it fail in 2k6?
IOW, if your innocent website gets on such a blacklist, you certainly can sue them AND the blacklist-keeping organization for libel, provided the ISP(s) doesn't take steps (or takes way too long) to remove you from it.
'course, can't guarantee that you'd win, but you certainly could sue them and stand at least a snowball's chance in hell.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
When the spammers hit, that was the beginning of the end.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Sounds good on the news and during re-election campaigns but does nothing to stop the overall problem.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
ISPs don't have Common Carrier status. They instead have Safe Harbor provisions, which basically amount to the same thing except that with common carrier status, copyright holders can't force the phone company to have your phone number disconnected.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The likelihood of things like "Oh, of COURSE has kiddy porn on it!" is high.
Even scarier is the inevitable:
"No, we can't show you the list of sites you can't visit because then you might use it to go to the site on another ISP That's not blocking it".
The transparency issue here is incredibly frightening.
The idea is that we prevent the trading of child porn images over the Internet in order to protect children from abuse.
But this doesn't make sense. The laws making it illegal to produce child porn are completely disconnected from the laws that make it illegal to distribute child porn over the internet. If someone publishes indecent images of children over the Internet they are incriminating themselves for the former crime, making the latter one superfluous.
The real purpose is clearly not the stated one. It probably isn't just a naked power grab, rather a callous bit of populism ("Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!?")
When such laws fail, as the nature of the Internet makes them bound to, the same motives that caused them to be created causes the laws to be 'toughened'. If you had stuff like the DMCA that would make it illegal to provide any service that might conceivable allow a person to trade child porn over the internet, then you would have a law usable against any proxy server, encryption, and a host of other technologies that can protect your privacy.
I am not saying that this is a deliberate attempt to crush peoples freedom - more like a hamfisted populist attempt to crush peoples freedom.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Who the fuck is being defrauded?
I Denmark, where I happen to live, the largest ISP created a child pornography filter at DNS level a long time ago...
Later it was determined by law that all ISP should obey a common filter... I think it's the police who decides which sites to block.
I don't mind the idea of block child-porn, it's already a crime to possess and distribute it... And for good reason...
However I don't like that the police gets the block sites as an administrative task. In perfect world we should prosecute the distributors, but because of their geographical location that's not possible.
So all we can do is to block them, but the determination of whether or not a site should be blocked should not be an administrative task for the police or bot written by the police. I think every single site should become a court case, then you could prosecute the owners, if the don't show up at the court you could condemn them in absence of court...
That would be a pretty simple way to make it right... Having a NGO or a police officer administratively decide what to block and what's not is way to dangerous.
Doing ANYTHING harmful to children is pretty much at the top of my list of things that could earn me a jail sentence someday. Porn involving kids...I'm sorry, your ticket needs to be punched.
But, since we can't to seem to advance mental health care beyond "here, take the red pill...it might help" and public floggings are no longer in style, we do fruitless crap like TFA describes.
I see child porn folks as either mentally ill or just sick, selfish slime looking to make a buck off of the truly ill. The first group needs help and isolation from society until they are well. The second group needs to be publicly horsewhipped.
Censoring and controlling the Internet does little to no good.
I am my own gestalt.
I'm on Comcast!
Your post advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based (X) vigilante
approach to fighting illegal porn. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Perverts can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Other legitimate Internet uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(X) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop porn for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from pornographers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for the web
(X) Open proxies in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in HTTP
(X) Use of protocols other than HTTP to distribute
(X) P2P Applications
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of pornographers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
(X) Getting sued for damages due to false positives
(X) Getting sued for damages due to false negatives
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
(X) Blacklists suck
(X) Whitelists suck
(X) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(X) I don't want ISPs reading my traffic
(X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Will they ever find out? And even if they do, how will they prove it? The list is secret.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
...how soon until it gets ISP permabanned for child pr0n?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I don't really think you know what you're talking about. An image file is nothing but a number. The hash values for 2 numbers that differ even by only a single bit can be - and usually are - wildly different. There is no 'fuzzines' to look for. Try it for yourself and see. Take some image and gen a md5 checksum for it. Then load the image up in your favorite editor and change a single pixel. Now, gen a new checksum and compare to the old. Those 2 checksums are almost certain to be radically different. Checksum matching is entirely hit or miss. With the exception of hash collisions there are no false positives and certainly no 'fuzzy' matches.
So did the phone companies when the wire-tapped the nation but nobody is going to jail.
Until the controlled media reports different, it never happened.
Enjoy your stay in the Corporate Republic of America.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MnXR5Baq0X8
Time Warner is going to block Usenet completely, but NOT web sites. Why? Because it's a lot harder to monetize newsgroup traffic (spam-filled groups notwithstanding). From their point of view, all that NNTP traffic uses bandwidth that they can't sell advertising over. So this is just a good excuse to dump the whole thing, and anyone complaining will be labeled a pervert.
Anyway, who cares if a bunch of geeks can't hold discussions about their favorite TV shows? The Internet is not about common people communicating amongst themselves - it's a delivery system for fully-monetized product. One way, period.
Either Usenet will adapt some of the stealth mechanisms that P2P has had to, or the predictions will come true.
Scientology blinds your brain.
Child porn just makes you wish you were blind.
Either way: IT BURNS! MAKE IT STOP!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Oh, come now - more than half the readers of /. look at pictures and videos of stuff they couldn't get in real life if their lives depended on it...
I'm reading all the posts here and for the first time I'm seeing a total consensus that this is a bad idea.
Now I can just picture showing this article to my girlfriend. She would say of course they should block it. And I would give her A B and C of why it is a bad thing and she wouldn't understand.... sighhhhh.
Why is there so much concern for censoring child porn from the internet when there is so little concern for getting children who have been sexually abused the proper mental health care they will need to deal with what happened to them?
Oh for crying out loud, Slashdotters always leap gracefully to civil liberties infringements where there are none. Child porn is not only illegal, it's a breach of trust against someone not only unable to defend themselves, but possibly legally unable to understand what has happened to them.* ISPs have helped to break up porn rings, including one in my local hospital's paediatrics department. Preventing breaches of the law is not a civil liberties concern. Disagree with the law, not reasonable enforcement of it. Though if you disagree with the prevention of child abuse, I'm not entirely sure I want to hear from you...
*Here in the UK we have a rather nice measure for this kind of thing known as Gillick competence, which allows a child to accept treatment such as contraception, even if below the age of consent, if they show full understanding of their actions to the doctor prescribing.
Remove the cancer(pedophiles), without killing off the patient(internet).
Censoring is not the answer, culling the pedophiles (one shotgun shell to the base of the skull) will work.
I know others would like to hug them and cuddle them, make them feel better... so they won't molest kids...guess we can have those people hire the pedophile to babysit their kids...
so the guy is catching pedophiles, in the act, and you are disgusted that he gets paid, as a reporter, to report on something interesting to the public
!?
even more amazing, as of this quote, you have been rated as 4, interesting
trying to understand how you or those who voted you up think is something i cannot begin to fathom
you were joking, right?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why?
1) It's a blacklist vs. whitelist problem (like the one i mentioned about blocking pirated videos uploaded in youtube). It has no solution unless the actual content is monitored.
2) If the actual content is monitored, we're dealing with indiscriminate wiretapping - invation of privacy and constitutional rights.
3) It opens the door to outright censorship of subversive content. Good morning, 1984!
4) It still won't work. The bad guys (i'm talking about the pedophiles here, not the OTHER bad guys - the draconian govt and isps) only need to open a new unmonitored (i.e. encrypted) channel to do their filthy stuff.
5) If the govt. outlaws privacy, read item # 2.
In other words, this is, in the best case, just a publicity stunt to look good to the general public while not really doing anything to prevent and fight the actual crimes. In the worst case, it's just a lame excuse to monitor the citizens in favor of Dubya and the *AA.
This is JUST like the "war on terror". No terrorists are caught, but the whole public suffers from the decision.
If you don't agree with the parent's post, by all means, reply and state your position. But this looks like a well-reasoned post, and I don't see anything in it that could be considered trolling.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
What does this mean?
IS's like other telcos do have common carrier status which predates the DMCA. They have been classified as such for all traffic otherwise any e-mail that is sent over their system discussing a crime of any sort would make them liable as an accomplice.
Common Carrier status predates the internet and applies to anyone who ferries data (e.g. phone calls) but takes no responsibility for the content itself on the grounds that they cannot and should not monitor it. Basically that the privacy of our phone conversations, or e-mails, outweighs what little phyric benefit might arise from having an omnipresent monitoring agency.
trying to stop child pornographers, or, in another recent slashdot article, terrorists, with bullshit tactics, is of course absurd
however, a lot of the responses here amount to attacking the RATIONALE for fighting terorrists and child pornographers
no: child pornographers and terrorists are real. furthermore, the desire to stop them is valid. both observations are 100% true
therefore, if you want to stop the implementation of bullshit moronic tactics, think up some SUPERIOR, EFFECTIVE tactics on your own. and watch bullshti tactics fade away
but if you think attacking the RATIONALE for doing works, you are just as dumb and out of touch with reality as the government bureacrats you are heckling. because the rationale for doing what they do is 100% sound. and is not going away. nor should it go away
you want to stop bullshit tactics? good for you. so propose some effective tactics. but attacking the rationale for these bad implementations is a failure on your part to understand reality just as much as the stupid government bureacrats fail to understand reality
people have a valid right to desire to stop child pornographers and terrorists. so put on your thinking caps and think up some good tactics. this is far more effective than being derisive to the rationale for doing what dumb bureacrats do
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If all of these things come about, the internet will be like cable TV and there will be no free press.
You're forgetting the millions of wifi radios embedded in personal computing devices in the United States alone. Free software will gradually make these devices more, not less, useful for wireless mesh networking. Access to the "free" internet might be a little bit spotty at first.
Bring it on. I haven't got any idea who paid for the Internet connection I used to post this message, nor do I care. You're still reading it, aren't you? I could just as easily have sent you a copy of any recent movie, or any popular or rare CD, or any book.
This will only get easier. My eeepc can serve a hidden TOR site from my bag while I'm getting a haircut, and keep doing so while I have lunch at Panera.
The censors have no idea what they're up against.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
needs to be tagged "Good Luck With That"
http://foia.fbi.gov/cvip.htm 1. Hash values are of files in the CVIP are compared to any evidence obtained by the field offices. Hash values are non-pictorial, alphanumeric values that are unique to each computer file that can serve as a "fingerprint" of a file for matching purposes and also provide security, because the original image cannot be recreated from the hash value itself. http://pcworld.about.com/news/Jan252005id119434.htm Using hash sets to hasten image comparisons is nothing new. Both the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation already maintain databases of images and hash sets. But the DOD is using newer, highly secure mathematical algorithms, such as the MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm and Secure Hash Algorithm, or "SHA-1," to create hash values that are more accurate and that will provide more reliable evidence in court cases, Zatyko said. You may be able to imagine different ways to catalog and identify these images but that's not what's being done. They're using normal file hashes and there aren't any 'fuzzy' matches to be found with the techniques being used. I don't think that the feds will change the way they're doing things any time soon, either.
today, child porn, tomorrow, file sharing sites, and the next day, "subversive" political sites promoting "terrorism".
This is exactly like the situation in Sweden, where the major ISPs have signed a "volontary" agreement with the national police to redirect DNS requests for alleged child porn sites. This list is maintained by ECPAT, a non-governmental organisation with no requirement for transparency. Also, the list itself is secret. Coincidentally, former minister of justice Thomas Bodstrom is the chair of ECPAT Sweden.
The result? Several sites that had absolutely nothing to do with child pornography were blocked, among others a site about bonsai trees and an art project run by members of the copyright reform think tank Piratbyran. ECPAT/Bodstrom also wanted to add The Pirate Bay to the list, but that was leaked by an ISP employee and the police quickly stated that since TPB had removed the child porn torrents in question they would not be added. Which confused the TPB admins, since they had neither seen or removed any child porn, or received any notice about it from ECPAT or the national police.
PS. Your UTF8 support is broken.
That said, it seems to me that they'd lose their DMCA safe harbor status if they do this, because they are selectively censoring the content they carry.
I don't get it.
The criminal act is the production of the pornography. Whoever produces it has exploited/abused a child and should be punished.
But the media shouldn't be illegal, any more than the photograph of a murder should be illegal. Unseemly, yes, maybe even disturbing .. but illegal? This is the criminalization of desire, nothing more. People who get hardons for underage girls/boys are being targeted with gusto nowadays. And nobody wants to be lumped in with the "perverts." This, at exactly the same time that teenagers are becoming increasing sexually active (well, maybe not on Slashdot) and sexualized in pop culture. This reeks of suppressed desire and transference.
If you want to jerk it to Hannah Montana, I could give a damn. Why anyone would have a problem with that is beyond me. Now, if you run out and rape some kid, that's another thing altogether. That's a violent act, and there's a victim. But looking at a picture?
Pedophile! is quickly becoming the Communist! of America in the 21st century.
They have no lost their common carrier status and should be treated as such.
So is there investigation involved in reports or can we just have fun shutting people down for the hell of it? Also, what gets blocked/shut down tomorrow? "Hate" speech? Anti government speech? Pirate bay? Evil p2p sites? How about sourceforge?
While i'm all for stopping abuse of children, we all know this is not what this is about, unless you are really naive.
As Mike Godwin said: "Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?" Sounds like we are just about there..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The NGO keeps an up-to-date "recommended" list.
:)
A night- or evening judge orders new sites blocked "immediately until the next business day" then every day a judge regularly assigned to the case signs off on extending all current orders one more business day. He gives the list strict scrutiny, insisting on reasons why each item on the list should be kept on the list. "KP last seen there less than 24 hours ago" would probably be enough, anything less than that should get raised eyebrows.
As in any court, lying to or misleading the judge should get you put in jail until the next business day.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Actually, it's far worse than anyone thought. They aren't filtering a few minor websites, they are actually blocking major portions of USENET:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9964895-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
Time Warner will now block all of USENET
Sprint will now block all alt.* newsgroups
Verizon will now block large, unnamed sections of USENET.
So, whoever said "USENET will be shut down in the name of 'protect the children'" on the poll last week, you win!
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Then don't waste the time while the child is growing up, before it reaches the adult limit at 13. Instead, during that time, spend the effort to teach the child the proper adult behaviors, and all the knowledge he needs to become a self sufficient adult. Then he won't have problems with "abuse", he will be able to decide for himself, just like you can now, because he was prepared. This should be the job of the parents. Most of this should be obvious.
It's kind of retarded to call them children after 13, when they can have their own children. Child-parents? Makes no sense.
What are we regulating then?
We have the DNS filter in Norway too, implemented by every single commercial ISP as well as our national university and college network provider (which has prompted outrage in at least two of the professors I have discussed it with). Keep in mind that in Norway, child pornography is defined as not only actual photos and video, but also fiction stories and drawings which depict somone under 18 in sexual situations. So the filters can potentially block so much more. However, we haven't had any high-profile snafus the likes of Sweden and Finland, yet.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Do not get me wrong; I am all for hanging child pornographers.
However, the precedents being set by this are terrible.
One precedent being set here is that ISPs are taking responsiblity for Internet content transiting their backbone. This has both short and long term consequences. The short term consequence is a chilling effect on freedom of speech, due to removal of effective common carrier status from these ISPs. They are now subject to various forms of censorship by government agencies. Longer term, I expect that there will be law suits against ISPs that fail to block "objectionable content", be it child pornography, hate speech, screeds against or for select religions, or, eventually, political speech.
The second precedent is far, far more troubling. The article states:
This essentally means that control over Internet content obtainable through these ISPs is being given over to a private watchdog organization, with no public oversight. A Star Chamber. Further, and an even more distressing implication, is that the Center for Missing and Exploited Children knows about these sites, has known about these sites, and is they are not being shut down. I can reach only one of two conclusions from this:
(A) The Center for Missing and Exploited Children is allowing these sites to persist as a political whipping boy, in order to seize editorial control over the content of the Internet, and the children being exploited by these sites are considered "necessary losses" in service of the "greater good"; in other words, the children are being exploited by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as well as the pornographers.
(B) The Center for Missing and Exploited Children can not prove legally that these sites are in fact purveying child pornography, which would get them taken down and their operators prosecuted under existing anti child pornography laws, so instead they are engaging in illegal tactics under the RICO and Sherman Antitrust Acts to get them censored.
Either way, I do not like a private police force obtaining this type of power, no matter how noble their intentions; I'm sure that the Pinkerton agents involved in putting down the Homestead Strike felt that their cause was just and noble as well - and look how that turned out.
-- Terry
>> You think that the people looking at this crap aren't partaking in it in real life?
YOU think that the people looking at that crap are partiking in it in real life. You're the one stating things without backing it up.
>> Have you seen Dateline lately? And these are just the guys that like 12 - 15 year olds.
That doesn't actually tell us anything about the group in question at all. It could be a small minority, they could be FBI baiters.
>> The more of these people that we get off the streets the better, the harder we make it for them to get this stuff the better.
Sounds like something they would've said about homosexuals in the early 20th century.
... pedos launch global encrypted peer-to-peer network with full anonymity.
This snippit from the article (emphasis mine) shows that this is a slippery slope already... The agreements resulted from an eight-month investigation and sting operation in which undercover agents from Mr. Cuomo's office, posing as subscribers, complained to Internet providers that they were allowing child pornography to proliferate online, despite customer service agreements that discouraged such activity. Verizon, for example, warns its users that they risk losing their service if they transmit or disseminate sexually exploitative images of children.
After the companies ignored the investigators' complaints, the attorney general's office surfaced, threatening charges of fraud and deceptive business practices. The companies agreed to cooperate and began weeks of negotiations. Sorry, folks, but you can't have it both ways. Either no one is allowed to deceive, or everyone is. Don't lie to someone and then be pissed when they lie to you. In addition, has anyone thought about whether the "agents" in this situation were actually "under cover"? Perhaps the ISP was merely ignoring a constant stream of abuse from obvious (or known) fake subscribers...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Because censorship is control. Helping children isn't about control so it's not something they will care about.
http://www.al.com/news/press-register/index.ssf?/base/news/1205313362147140.xml&coll=3
Possession laws suck....
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
It didn't work in the 20's with alchohol
... damn, we're going to have to move all the kiddy pr0n to atl* now ... you bastards :-(
It didn't work in the 60's with the hippy's weed
It didn't work in the 80's with cocaine
Why can't you dumb politicians learn that prohibiting ANYTHING just makes if MORE difficult to find the perpetrators, as they simply move underground ? Ooo, let's ban all alt* newsgroups
Mr. Cuomo says, âoeThis literally threatens our children, and there can be no higher priority than keeping our children safe.â
He's wrong. There is one higher priority - keeping our children FREE from TYRANNY, possessing both FREEDOM and LIBERTY.
I'll just beg Mr. Cuomo is enough of a statist to publicly disagree.
I searched the thread. No where in TFA or in this thread do I see mention of other Providers. Especially the ones who advertise ACCESS TO GROUPS UNCENSORED USENET JUST 14.95 A MONTH. Or any of the others.. giganews/newshosting/ and 100 others I'm not remembering. I can upload/download anything I want to a subscription based provider and Verizon isn't going to filter a damn thing."without some DPI going on" I'm only using their pipe. Not their newsgroups. So nice idea guys.. but unless you block the PROTOCOL you haven't done a damn thing. Shall we shut down WWW/FTP/NNTP ? The problem is we have pedo's.. help them, cure them if it's possible. "Change the LAW to allow them to get help without being reported for asking for help!" Quit grandstanding and chest beating just to look like a hero.
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
...and that was the day child porn on the Internet was completely eradicated. It was so simple - why hadn't anyone tried it before? All we needed was an American law telling a few US ISPs to block access to a blacklist of sites, because of course everyone knows where they're all hosted and there are never new ones... And only at the cost of blocking a bunch of legitimate sites, but it's ok, some of them were speaking out against government policies anyway.
Really, are these guys retarded? Yeah, that'll stop it as fast as all the gun bans! Only this time the trafficers are totally anonymous and as distributed as they want to be!
I just want ISP's to pass packets, that is all.
If I want to filter I can choose to on my own (work on my own car), and if I can't or don't want to I can pay the ISP extra cash and have them do it (hire a mechanic). If I "stumble" across kiddie porn that is my fault and I will pay the repercussions.
Better yet, this is like driving on the freeway, there is a known speed limit and people are free to choose to obey or break the law. Law abiding citizens will choose to obey the limit. Speeders take the chance of getting caught. Now the ISPs (by direction of quasi govt agency) are putting governors on our vehicles.
This seems to be where our society is headed...we are no longer allowing ourselves the freedom to obey or break the laws we have set for ourselves. Free will be damned.
OK, I must have missed this as I was reading through all the comments, so I'm going to risk it and ask the obvious. If we know who is serving up this illegal material (you have to know who you are blocking), why are they not brought up on charges? If it's not against the law, why are the ISPs blocking the content?
"Does this wine taste funny to you?" -- Socrates
In a way I want to say good, since this was not forced on these companies via a law, they're going to be violating their agreements with their subscribers! Time Warner might get away with it since they're just dropping Usenet entirely, but since that's part of the service their users paid for and they're doing it so suddenly I could see some lawsuits about deceptive business practices. Sprint blocking all of alt.* is asking for trouble since there are lots of groups that have very legitimate uses, non-binary groups even, so I foresee some lawsuits about that. And Verizon may or may not be in trouble depending on what they block.
I have hope that lawsuits against the companies in this case will work because they can focus on the removal of access to non-pornographic materials. That way they can completely avoid being labeled as pedophiles/supporting child pornography. And since Cuomo's office themselves say they only found 88 newsgroups with child porn in them the companies are going to have trouble justifying this. It is possible to not carry specific groups, all three companies could easily block the 88 groups only and have not risked any legal troubles.
People are afraid. That's why they feel the need to profess their innocence. The child porn shriekers have succeeded in fostering a climate of fear that has silenced their opponents. They've changed society, in the anglosphere at least. People know that to be accused of being in any way associated with pedophilia is to lose ones future forever. No one takes risks in such a situation.
I will profess one thing though. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of the power that we've given to the accusers and their supports. I would never do something as stupid as look after someone's child for any period of time. Working with children, including teenagers, is also completely out of the question. I'm not the only one. People in general become very nervous if a child walks into the room. No one gets friendly or playful unless they're fairly gregarious, and female. People will let a child die rather than stop to help them, and I can't say I blame them. I can personally say that if a child was drowning or dying right in front of me, then I most likely wouldn't move one step towards them, let alone help them. I'm not a monster, I just live in these times.
Child pornography scandals are put on the front page by editors to titillate readers and sell newspapers. No one stands up to this hysteria fueled by profit mongering and voyeurism. It's eroding our media, our legal system, our social system and ultimately our entire way of life. By itself it won't bring the whole structure crashing down, but it will rot a few more timbers.
I'm afraid. But every poster who includes the ritual "I abhor child pornography..." disclaimer in their messages is a far greater coward than I.
May the Maths Be with you!
The problem with this is once you allow one thing to be blocked, it opens up the floodgates for other "objectionable" things to be blocked, which could even mean things are legal but considered objectionable. I think we can all agree (minus Eric Moeller from Wiki Media http://mashable.com/2008/05/08/erik-moeller-pedophilia/) that child porn isn't a good thing but it's the censorship that sucks.
It's one step closer to China.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Until now, those services hosted their own USENET servers and carried at least some of alt.*.
Now, T-W will just stop carrying USENET, and leave it to end-users to get their USENET fix from third parties such as their school, a subscription service, or a web/usenet gateway.
This is the moral equivalent of turning off your hosted IRC server or your mail server.
Now, if they block third-party USENET services that aren't specifically catering to child porn, that would be bad. If they only block port 199 to news.getyourchildpornhereport199iswideopen-alt-kiddies-cuties.com then that's no worse than blocking http://www.getyourchildpornhereport199iswideopen-alt-kiddies-cuties.com/.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This will drive more customers to services like EasyNews. No way is anyone going to take away my alt.politics The problem arrives when every ISP uses such a poorly-conceived filter, then where do you go for unfettered access?
Infant and toddler porn: OMFG! SICK SICK SICK! BARF! Get my shotgun, I'm gonna shoot the bastard who did this to her!
Elementary school age porn: OMFG! That will scar her forever! Someone call the cops!
Tween porn: My god that's sick! I hope she tells her parents or someone.
Teen porn, up to legal age minus 1 day: You are sick for looking at that. Get your head examined before you get busted.
Teen porn, legal age and above: Wouldn't you just love to have a piece of her *wink* ?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As of 8:30 pm Eastern on June 10th my TW newsgroup server was still serving the usual alt.binaries.... groups
And I'm in NY State.
I would guess that it just depends on whether the local office has decided to pull the plug.
Any other TW suscribers actually seeing evidence of them puling the plug?
AC, because my newsgroups are my business....
Ahh yeah, I want me one of these. Thankfully other /. readers educated me about another shiny thing that I won't get to play with, even if my life depended on it.
It'd be even nicer if I could look at them in a billion colors
How does the elimination (or, to be more precise, the hiding) of free child porn do anything to protect children?
This is like saying that banning pictures of dead people will lower the murder rate, or that banning all images of the Iraq war will make it end sooner.
Sure, if someone is paying for those pictures, that might lead to an increase in child exploitation, but doesn't freely available material actually help reduce the demand for a commercial alternative? War on drugs, anyone?
And how many child molesters have been caught precisely because they were stupid enough to post pictures of themselves, and were recognized? Hiding something from the public doesn't make it go away; on the contrary, it makes people less aware of the real problem and less likely to do something to fix it.
Besides, the whole criminalization of child porn "in abstract" (possession, CG, self-photos, etc.) reeks of thought crime. Unless there is a clear link between looking at a photo of something and an actual crime, with an actual victim, the state has no business telling people what they can or cannot look at.
Ever since my ISP started throttling my Linux distro torrents, I have to get them from somewhere.
By the way, am I the only one that wonders why Linux distros are named after popular songs?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I recommend all newsgroup denizens with TW, Sprint, and Verizon sign up for news.individual.net. It's 10 euros per year (about $15) and there are no binary groups, but they do a better job of spam and sporge filtering than any ISP I've seen.
Who would've thought the day would come when you'd have to use a German news server to ensure freedom of speech.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
They're just using it as an excuse to further cripple their own useless NNTP services, aren't they? It's not like they're preventing you from using third party ones. Right?
A veritable rogue's gallery of evil corporations I already refuse to do business with, for various other reasons. Now I can add another reason to the list.
The only thing surprising here is that Comcast isn't one of them.
Liberty in your lifetime
How long will it take for that list to get published as a list of places to go?
Excellent news
So let me get this straight... the child exploiters/consumers are committing atrocious crimes, so the NY Attorney General's solution is to extort private companies into policing the Internet. And for a million dollars that, one way or another, will all get passed on to ISP customers. Thanks a million, Cuomo. You tyrannical ass.
From their help page.
Why is Road Runner discontinuing their own Newsgroups service?
Due to low subscriber usage Road Runner has decided to discontinue Newsgroups service as of June 23, 2008.
Amazing.. Its so underutilized, they got sued over it.
Time Warner is not doing this out of concern for "the children." It looks like they've finally found an excuse to get rid of their top-notch Usenet service. This is a red herring.
Time Warner Cable has, up until now, offered Usenet service that is outsourced to Newshosting. All TWC customers have had access to 110-day retention, unlimited bandwidth binary newsgroups. This has been a fairly well kept secret. It doesn't surprise me that they have now found an excuse to get rid of this surprising value (this kind of service is around $20/month from a third party Usenet provider, normally). Time Warner Cable has long been a top ISP in the United States for this, liberal bandwidth policies, and good speeds compared the competition. This is but another step in many that Time Warner is taking to increase their already impressive profits at the expense of the consumer. It seems that Time Warner is joining their Comcast buddies in trying to nickel and dime the consumer, while removing as much value as possible from their product.
Hey, Time Warner: Thanks for getting rid of my Usenet access. Now where the fuck is my $20/month cheaper service, assholes?
I know I'm already gearing up to switch over to the competition. The day Time Warner starts rolling out those ridiculous 40 GB bandwidth caps that they've been trialing in Texas is the day that I cancel my service with them. Why, when they are faced with increasing competition from Verizon's FIOS and AT&T's U-Verse, they are pulling this shit is beyond me.
Now, I don't know about Sprint and Verizon, but I suspect they are also doing this to save themselves some dough, and latching onto the pathetic "child porn" reason as an excuse as well.
A troll thread (by "smogmonster" no less) from 2003 is supposed to justify a 3 way major ISP block of Truthout in 2007? What a great, speedy service from your corporate overlords that is. Only a 4 year lag time between spam and block. Nice work, it's faster than Vista.
Usenet is older than the web, it's older than the Internet proper, it's arguably older than any implementation of the Internet protocol (it started in 1981, the same year IP was defined), and well into the '90s it was bigger than the whole Internet.
There's no "only" about this.
Yes, it *IS* a threat. Threatening to intentionally bring someone up on charges for doing something illegal, when they did not do anything illegal, is illegal! :o) That is called "extortion"! In fact it is one of the worst kinds of extortion.
You seem to be one of those people who think "if you are doing nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear". Especially when it has come to individual citizens versus corporate interests, history shows that view to be complete bullshit. Being brought up on charges (or even sued) falsely can cost people tremendously, even if exonerated. In the worst cases, it has cost people their homes, their jobs... it has even caused the breakup of families. So, even if you did not do anything wrong, there is A LOT of cause for concern, or even fear if , of course you are the fearing sort...
Who would've thought the day would come when you'd have to use a German news server to ensure freedom of speech. Er, you pay for access to nonbinary newsgroups? That's
On the other hand, if you want access to binary newsgroups, I'd highly advise against any kind of usenet provider that charges any kind of periodic fees (I use usenet-news.net when I need to, and the $10 I put in years ago still gives me enough transfers to play around with).
No sites? No Problem, those who are looking for the CP will go after the real thing or back to what it used to be before internet... ...as in those step-daughter fantazies wont go away eh Mr. Humbert?
Those sites keep those looking for CP at Home *not your home* their home. they find photos, jerk off and go back to their own business...
if less CP sites will there be less child sex?
Dont Judge The situation by the Misfortunate. Goga.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but Google Groups sucks. The UI has steadily deteriorated, making it harder and harder to find messages in the archive, it messes up the formatting of quoted messages, and it encourages n00bs to wander into Usenet groups thinking they're message boards provided by Google.
Any long term Usenet poster will gladly pay for a decent news server, even if they don't muck about with binaries.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
The first false positive is Usenet.
ALL of Usenet, for Time Warner at least.
I was hoping to see more about this - It's not clear from the article if they are blocking access to usenet, or if the ISP is turning off their usenet servers.
If the latter, it's honestly no great loss. ISP hosted usenet has been effectively dead for at least a year, as retention and article completion has gone to shit in recent penny pinching.
I'm sure the ISPs are thrilled to have a excuse to finally kill it.
That said, welcome to the magical world of internet censorship in America. I wonder what's next on the kill lists.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Person gets raped and goes to hospital they perform free rape kit everything else medically the victim has to pay for in most states
Rapist goes to court if they catch him and actually prosecute instead of pleaing him out for minimum jail time
Rapist spends 5-7 years getting a degree and getting free counseling and medical care
Victim gets 1-2 years of free counseling "if" they have victim rights laws in that state, than must rely on charity if they can't pony up the money
Rapist is released into the community and gets free counseling and therapy in most states
If we are going to spend 100's of thousands of dollars on anyone after a crime it should be the victim and rape sentences need to be in the 10's of years for a first offense. I should not be meeting people in their mid 20's who are out of prison for rape. They should be old fat diabetic men when they leave those walls.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
(sarcasm in case you didn't notice)
The music mafia now only has to inject a few semi-child-porn images into a group or forum and the ISPs will block access to it.
Also, if you want to get rid of some political speech, use the same approach.
Soemtimes people just don't think.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
IOW, if your innocent website gets on such a blacklist, you certainly can sue them AND the blacklist-keeping organization for libel, provided the ISP(s) doesn't take steps (or takes way too long) to remove you from it.
If your website appears to even one other person as "blocked for hosting child pornography" and it is entirely innocent, that is libellous, and it doesn't matter whether you're removed from the blacklist promptly or not.
Publishing material which alleges involvement or complicity in a crime is prima facie libel. Ceasing to publish that information doesn't undo the damage done by the initial publication.
"But everyone should know everything." -markab
They don't care about Child Porn ... its a ruse to block the binaries and save themselves a bunch of bandwidth. They are also using it as an excuse to wiretap your data and do deep packet inspections. Verizon recently sent out new terms of service. Pay particular attention to #4
Effective June 9, 2008 - Important Information Regarding Changes to Your Verizon Online Terms Of Service
The following is an outline of important changes to the Verizon Online Terms of Service which are effective as of June 9, 2008. We have described these changes in general terms below and recommend that you review the complete Terms of Service to determine how these changes, and other routine changes being made simultaneously, apply to you or your use of the Service. The Terms of Service can be accessed by clicking on the "Policies and Terms of Service" link (www2.verizon.net/policies) at the bottom of any page of our Website. The Terms of Service, as revised, will govern your rights and obligations, and ours, with respect to your use of the Services we offer. As set forth in Paragraph 3 of the Terms of Service, your continued use of the Service after the effective date of these changes will constitute your agreement to the changes.
1. Reporting of Actual or Potential Violations of Child Pornography Laws. We have added language to our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) making clear that the Service cannot be used in any fashion for the transmission or dissemination of images containing child pornography. In addition, in Section 5, Privacy Policy; Legal Compliance, we have added language making clear that (a) we are required by law to report any facts or circumstances reported to us or which we discover from which it appears there may be a violation of the child pornography laws; and (b) that we reserve the right to report any such information, including the identity of users, account information, images and other facts to law enforcement personnel.
2. Billing Start Date for Additional Services. In Section 8.1, Prices and Fees; Billing, we have added language stating that, unless otherwise noted at the time of purchase, billing for the Additional Services set forth on Exhibit B will begin either on your Service Ready Date if you are also ordering new Broadband Service or upon submission of your order if you are ordering only an Additional Service. .
3. Refundable Deposits. We have added a new Section 8.8, Refundable Deposits, which permits us, in certain instances, to require a refundable deposit either prior or subsequent to activation of Service. .
4. Modifications to AUP. We have added language to our AUP making clear (a) that we may monitor our subscribersâ(TM) compliance with our Terms of Service and AUP; and (b) that we have the right, but not the obligation, to pre-screen, refuse, move or remove any content available on the Service including, but not limited to, content that violates the law, our Terms of Service or our AUP.
5. Verizon Premium Technical Support (PTS). We have added a new Section 6 to Exhibit B, Additional Terms, which sets forth the terms and conditions governing our provision, and your use, of the PTS service.
Please take time to review the complete Verizon Online Terms of Service. Thank you for being a Verizon Online customer.
Wait, child exploiters/consumers?? **** that's worse than I thought.
The definition of child porn is so slippery that any site/newsgroup where there are images of underage persons could be so defined, even when the people are clothed. If they're considered to be 'posing lewdly' (dancing to a Beyonce number, say) that counts as CP, which includes pix teens take of each other. When I was a teen we took 'lewd' pix of ourselves in photobooths and passed them around - these days teens use phone cams and post pix to mySpace, and indeed some have been arrested for CP for posting 'lewd' pix of themselves and have ended up on the Sex Offender's Register, which is positively Kafkaesque. The problem lies in the central principle of CP, which is that it's not the content of the pic which is at issue but what effect that pic might have in a pedo's mind, which effectively means that what pedos might get turned on by determines what's legal and not. By focussing on intentions rather than consequences CP is effectively a thought crime.
One side-effect (or maybe even primary purpose) of site blocking is that sexual information sites and fora for teens will be caught up in the net. Teens love to talk about sex and sexuality, and are desperate to a) get frank information and b) read other's experiences - the Net is an absolute boon for them. Because CP has such a wide definition, and is based on what a pedo might be turned on by, info and discussion sites will be classed as CP, blocked by ISPs, and the site admins arrested. This would suit many moral conservatives who think that "children" should remain forever innocent, and teens should be shielded from sexuality or penalised if they do actually get up to any 'unpleasantness'. 'For the sake of the children' is just a figleaf for sexual repression, for such moralists, and you can be sure their mucky paws are all over these recent measures.
Karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
The anarchist's cookbook's author has repudiated it.
Experts have said it's crock anyways. If you follow the instructions as written you'll hurt yourself.
It's still good for inspiration though.
By the way some university-level research after 2001 has been censored in the name of national security. Authors and institutions have been "strongly encouraged" not to publish, a few papers have been seized prior to publication and the researchers all but silenced, and non-US citizens without special permits have been barred from doing more work than just the usual nuclear- and defense-research they were previously barred from.
When a school or researcher is told by the government "if you publish this, forget about getting any more funds" it's quite chilling. When they say "Do you want to have to drive instead of fly to professional conferences from now on?" it's even more so.
Is there not a way though to go to a website that offers newsgroup coverage so to speak and
search that to view the ongoing newsgroup issues whether they are blocked by an ISP or not?
Title 18 of the Federal Code classifies distribution (any form) of child pornography as a class 1 felony. Been on the books for decades.
:-/
Many believe that since it's on the internet, it's "freedom of speech" others moan and whine about "slippery slope"
Take any form of pornography to your local school, and start handing it out -- see what happens.
Blocking at ISP level is the most sane way to approach the problem. We've advocated that for nearly a decade. What we can't figure out is why it took them so long -- and why do they have to LIE about it.
> "... as soon as it was brought to our attention"
is just plain bunk. It's been brought to their attention tens-of-thousands of time. They only just discovered that it's not really as big of a revenue stream as they originally thought.
Get over it.
Find something ELSE to look at on the internet to pass your time.
it's so predictable! "Wahhhhh, I might lose my porn! I can't trade pictures of my underaged girlfriends! It's censoooooorship!"
"If we take away their child porn they will start raping real life children" --- most idiotic argument yet. That's the rapist's justification for porn use. "If I don't get all the porn I demand, I will rape you!" (and BTW, the children in child porn are real, as are the women in adult porn. No matter how much you want to pretend it is 'fantasy,' those are real people being hurt for your pleasure).
You left "Technically illiterate politicians" unchecked.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You have an idiot girlfriend and you still haven't dumped her? She must be an animal in the sack!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I originally read "Three ISPs agree to blAck child porn"
Slashdot contains a lot of "Child Porn" -- it ll be blocked soon!
I'm not saying this particular blocking idea is a good one, because it isn't.
Do that and I will start believing that the intention is to stop child porn and not to start introducing complete Internet censorship by "sneaking it in" using a topic about which there is (rightly) considerable public outcry.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
It is possible to not carry specific groups, all three companies could easily block the 88 groups only and have not risked any legal troubles.
But eliminating more lets them free up network capacity for their own content and also allows them to keep giving people more and more bandwidth (got to free up capacity so they can offer people 100 MB which they almost certainly will within 10 years).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Would a lawsuit even work? Did these companies actually guarantee unfiltered access to USENET?
You can't even try to sue over censorship since these are private companies.
About all a lawsuit would accomplish is making a bunch of lawyers a heap of money. Meanwhile, all subscribers will simply get a single "$5 off your bill" type coupon, and then HIGHER rates to help pay for the money they spent on the trial.
No thanks. The company screwed up, so screw the company back by taking your business elsewhere. Yeah, you may only be a few hundred dollars in revenue a year to them, but when hundreds, if not thousands, start leaving in protest, maybe they'll take notice.
So, when do the groups who were suing over bit torrent sue these ISP's for blocking this as well.
It's much broader than bit torrent and more egregious.
I think the whiff of a few class action lawsuits will bring them back into line.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The first question one thinks when some official claims, place X has a lot of hidden child porn is - OK, and how does *HE* know? If I need a file, that's on Usenet, I'll typically locate it in 5 minutes. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (or his counsel) must be a real determined pervert if he can find child porn on Usenet where even I saw no "major source" in my 20 years of normal, non-child-porn-seeking use. What I DO see all over the Usetnet these days is, however, are copies of Hustler's "Gov Love" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-LVfjhCiBE) - the porn movie about discredited ex-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's illegal trysts. So Cuomo's Usenet crusade seems to be less a moral effort, and more of a petty revenge.
Suppose someone sends me child pornography spam?
Suppose someone cracks a non-porn website and inserts child porn, or changes a link to cause me to navigate to a porn site?
When do _I_ get to change _MY_ terms of agreement?
Time for a new ISP.
Why do you have mixed feelings? There isn't even a "think of the children" argument to pull at your heart strings.
Nobody wants to see kids getting sexually abused. This we can all agree on. But unless someone can explain to me how three large ISPs dropping their Usenet feeds is going to protect even one child from sexual abuse, this is nothing more than a publicity stunt.
There is no reason for you to have mixed feelings about this.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock