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Verizon Cutting Access To Entire Alt.* Usenet Hierarchy
modemac writes
"Verizon has declared it will no longer offer access to the entire alt.* hierarchy of Usenet newsgroups to its customers. This stems from last week's agreement for major ISPs to cut off access to 'newsgroups and Web sites' that make child pornography available. The story notes, 'No law requires Verizon to do this. Instead, the company (and, to varying extents, Time Warner Cable and Sprint) agreed to restrictions on Usenet in response to political strong-arming by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat. Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups — out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist.' In response, Verizon will cut its customers off from a large portion of Usenet, as it will only carry newsgroups in the Big 8."
Will Verizon make sure all eat right, bathe occasionally, wipe their ass in the proper direction?
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
What a coincidence that they make an enormous overreaction which frees up countless gigabits of bandwidth!
For now.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...they will kill all adults.
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
Serious newsgroup users have a paid account and you will still be able to access alt.* through those and other means.
Verizon subscribers can still access them through Google Groups, for example.
I think the issue for many people is more about being blocked from accessing the alt.binaries.* groups, of which Google Groups doesn't provide access (well, not to the actual binary files at least).
People still use USENET?
It's nice to know that uploading child pornography to a service is enough to get it shut down.
Then why not cut all access to the Intarwebs and totally ban it. Hell, lets burn all books since playboy is pron and all pron is teh evil. Hell, lets go further than that and ban everything including life itself?
Political stunt for the win!!!
What happened, pissed off because alt.sex.fetish.piss-on-your-customers is already claimed by T-Com?...
I'd block all access to the internet-- much more effective.
-Devin Jeanpierre
Child pornography has also been found on 3,000 of the 100,000,000 sites that form the Worldwide Web. Verizon will be shutting down access to this service immediately.
Child pornography has also been found being shared by approximately 0.5% of users on peer-to-peer networks. Verizon will be shutting down access to this service immediately.
Ahh, nothing like feeling protected. Pretty soon you'll find you can receive the same level of service and "protection" AS Verizon provides by cancelling your internet service entirely and save yourself $40/month in the process.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Wow, what a huge over-generalization on the part of Verizon. I guess that means you would no longer have access to alt.startrek.creative. Gotta keep those dangerous fanfiction writers away from t3h childrens.
An enlightenment painter would paint a grand house on a lawn; A romantic painter would paint it on fire.
Someone upload some child porn to the Verizon billing site.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Has been kissed good bye.
If they are now making active, non court demanded, decisions on filtering, then they should be held to a different standard then a common carrier and lose all the benefits of being one.
Besides, this is just wrong. So what if a handful of usenet groups are 'bad'? This is like stopping every car on the street and searching because one guy had dope in his car in another town.
Not that there is much left of usenet these days worth saving, but still, its the beginning of a really slippery slope.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups--out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist.'"
.088 or greater percentage of sexual predators will they restrict the rest of the state from traveling to that area?
.088 then other states should restrict all travel and communications with NY.
Can we apply the same logic and standard to New York's population. If the state has any areas/counties/towns with a
What about other crimes? After all we are talking about everyone's well being. If NY's overall crime rate is greater than
the same way Republicans are obsessed with Homosexuals.
If you thought GOP was bad in these past 8 years wait until Democrats assume the wheel with supermajority to push whatever nanny-state bullshit they can think of in the name of the "children"
Video games and the internet seem to be the useful idiots for Democrats. Just blame it on violence and child porn to shut things down and generate talking points for the next election cycle. Oh yeah, do that in between paying lip service to net neutrality proponents.
Somehow, I don't think getting you your warez is high up on the agenda of very many ISPs.
is that it now opens up someone else to be sued.
follow me, on this. right now, the network is *mostly* unfiltered and for many users, they do get a clean unfiltered net feed (home, work, whatever). and so if laws are broken (say you illegally download something), the own-ness is on you. the carrier or the authority policing the carrier isn't at fault since its not them who are guaranteeing a '100% legal internet feed'. they clearly can't say that all things you could pull down are legal and they are just a common carrier. I know that CC status is magical and not all real CC's have it but that's just because our laws in this area are not well fine-tuned yet. any reasonable person knows that an ISP is a service provider just like the water department, electric department or the phone company.
but say that they now have the job of regulating the legality of all things you could net-access. then, if you -do- find some song or other 'illegal content' and you do manage to download it, you SHOULD be free and clear. right? afterall, there is now a policing layer (a 'great firewall' if you will) between you, the user, and the ISP or upstream service provider. if they take on the job of filtering and 'ensuring a clean and legal net experience' then ANY bad deeds you do by downloading files is not your problem anymore.
I don't think they want either side, to be honest. they don't want to be in the regulation business because once you do that in an above-board manner, you should be liable for any faults in your so-called filtering algorithms. if you tell some grandma that 'the net is now safe' and she finds something she does not like, she SHOULD be able to sue your damned ass.
its sad to think that the ISPs are not thinking far enough in the future to see where this leads. they must insist on common-carrier status and all that that implies. the net is like a water pipe (cue the infamous senator quote about 'tubes!' here) and it should not be filtered or mangled by some well-meaning (cough!) government moran.
responsibility belongs AFTER the demarc point, so to speak. NEVER EVER before it!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I suppose it is time to create an altt.* newsgroup.
It's pretty common for people to complain about what's being done, but pretty rare that anyone makes a valid suggestion as an alternative. And I find it even more frustrating that in the geek community people are quick to claim that any measures taken to restrict or alter computer activities can and will be circumvented.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
affects decisions based on ignorance/knowledge of what they ARE transporting
.cn hosts" there is no common carrier issue.
it has nothing to do with a refusal to connect two points.
it's a poor analogy- but
i.e. if Mama Bell won't connect you to 900 & 976 numbers it does not affect common carrier status.
if they say- we saw you downloading pro-life material, and won't let it go through any more-- thats one thing.
but they say "no more connecting to
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Suit: So Cocks called.
John: Cocks?
Suit: Yeah, Cocks. The network for the ballsiest.
Anyway, they want to be hooked up to our digital cable service. What's the capacity on our system right now?
John: Well we still have 50% of our bandwidth av--
Suit: Sweet Virgin Mary! Only 50%? Who's eating up all our bandwidth?
John: Well it's mostly HD football channels, and then peer to peer, and then Usenet.
Suit: Well, we sure as hell can't get rid of the football, and you were supposed to block peer to peer anyway! What in God's name is Usenet?
John: It's a bulletin board system where people can share files.
Suit: Well drop it! I'm not going to limit quality programming for some godless file sharing faggots.
John: But how do we explain that we're arbitrarily dropping a significant portion of our service?
Suit: What are you, stupid? Just say what we always say: we found child porn. Why do I pay you if I do all the thinking?
Bullshit! If child pornography were the real target, they could have simply removed the binary groups. Removing alt.folklore.computers and alt.os.linux in order to avoid kiddie porn just makes no sense.
In other news, automobiles were banned from expressways today in an effort to curb alcoholism once and for all. Items also banned today were kitchen knives amid concerns of forced penis removal, horseback riding in an effort to promote the chastity of young ladies, and bedsheets due to fears of beds not being made.
Does / did anyone actually use their usenet service anyhow?
ISP usenet services are 9 times out of 10 either outsourced, or have terrible retention, spotty coverage, and no propogation.
BitNabber has all my usenet needs taken care of.
Verizon is not blocking access to newsgroups in general. They are just no longer providing servers to host newsgroups themselves. You can still connect to other newsgroup services which exist in multitudes. What's the big deal? I see no problem here...
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Every, single day.
It's high up on the agenda of Virgin, actually.
For context, click Parent.
As soon as I read "Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat" I knew there would be some idiot extrapolating this to an entire political party. We hear these doom and gloom predictions about the evil Democrats every election cycle, but they somehow never materialize. What the slashdot summary doesn't tell you is that liberal groups like the ACLU have come out *against* this broad measure. Furthermore, Verizon was not forced to cut access to anything. They apparently decided that it was in their best business interest. The Attorney General just gave them the excuse they needed. Finally, comparing child porn to homosexuality is just plain inappropriate. Child porn is abuse. Homosexuality is a lifestyle choice.
Verizon isn't blocking anything, they are just not going to carry anything that isn't from the big 8 ON THEIR OWN SERVERS. That is all they are doing. There is no attempted blocking, no attempted fuck big brotherism, nothing. Anyone who was using the Verizon server can simply use another one (pay or free) and suddenly they have access to all the stuff (legitimate and non) that used to be available from the Verizon server. All that really happened is Cuomo wanted to look good to voters, picked an issue you can't lose (politically) with, started talking to several ISPs, and then they decided that even though what the guy wanted wouldn't solve anything, giving him something to make him happy wouldn't actually hurt anyone, so they said sure. This little bit of theater makes Cuomo look good, it makes the ISPs look good to the (mostly non usenet-using) public, and in actuality doesn't hurt anyone.
If you enjoy paying an extra fee for their access. Since Verizon is going to save all that money in bandwidth and disk space, will the savings be reflected to the customers? Probably not. Remember when the feds finally dropped the FUSF tax? Well verizon tried to introduce some new fee with the same price as the old FUSF. Well they got slapped down in a hurry.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I clicked through to your link to BitNabber. Their cheapest service is $20/mo. I don't think most people want to pay $20/mo for something that their ISP told them was going to be included in their standard service.
Find free books.
Options I heard include: starting your own local NNTP, paid services like gigagnews, writing to Andrew Cuomo (NYS Atty General who started this mess), Switch ISPs to who?
Someone help with action points please? Last thing I want is more censorship in America.
That is not the point.
That old adage comes to mind: "freedom of the press only exists for those with a press".
If we want to have access to all the internet then we have to control our access to the internet. We have to create our own internet service providers. We have to have the demonstrable power to convince politicians (not the loud ones but the ones who actually control things by blocking bills in the early stages) not to interfere with our activities.
Developing the ability to control and/or prevent child pornography distribution through the web would go a long way to convincing loud politicians that we recognize this problem and can control it better than the giant corporations who approach everything with a 'just shut it all down for everyone' approach. This is assuming that the politicians are actually doing this to prevent distribution of child porn. They could be using child porn as a red herring to shut down ALT access to non-teckies because they can't control it.
My point is that if we want to control the access to the web (so that we don't get shut out of parts that are important to us) then we have to be able to do a better job of catching the criminals who use the web than the police or giant corporations can.
Ohh noes meow!
Verizon is a coward in how it caved to the NY AG. This is just the beginning of a government controlled Internet. Unless we stand up and say 'enough!' we are going to end up with an Internet that resemble the government censored versions in Saudi Arabia or China.
The ISP industry should stay out of matters like this or it will be to their own disadvantage in the long run. If they set a precedent of just forwarding the content and not actively deciding what users can get, they will be less liable when somebody does access something. When somebody gets child porn on their network, they can just say "We just provide a gateway to view content. Our industry has never played a role in deciding what gets viewed." It's a slippery slope and this precedent seems dangerous for ISPs.
This is just another inept move designed for PR not actually use since it has no effect on those spreading this kind of material. You would have to ban computers to prevent the electronic spread of such things - and then they would spread it on paper instead.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
My ISP [Free, in France] provides usenet access, but constantly snips off groups according to its whims.
Since I use Usenet+NZBs, BitNabber works for me.
Others that might work for you:
Giganews.com - 200 days retention, from 7.99 p/m [SSL available] - no nzb service
SuperNews.com - from 3.95 p/m - the owner / admin Daniel is very hardline against spam, possibly the cleanest provider out there
Whilst it's frustrating that service should be cut, it seems that Verizon is behind the curve on cutting NG access anyhow.
You know what the usenet is full of? It isn't child porn, it's mostly spam. Especially the alt.* groups. Shutting down usenet is shutting down spammers!! This is doubleplusgood slashthink!! Just imagine, a usenet with no spam!
Cause, ya know, I'm just sayin... since nobody here made a peep when these ISPs outright dropped port 25 traffic on home accounts.
"First they came for email servers, and I did not speak because was not an email admin..."
Hell yeah! This is where I get all my new CD's!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The average idiot doesn't know what a newsgroup is let alone uses one so they're going to ruin it for those of us that do simply because some people post cp in some newsgroups.
TBH, I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner since they can't place ads in newsgroup messages.
Child pornography is not - and has never been - protected speech under the 1st amendment. And just so we're clear: child pornographers rape little children in front of a camera for profit.
I have no problem with Verizon's new policy. They own those nntpd servers, they can do anything they want with them. They could blend those machines and post the video to youtube for all I care.
It is just staggering to me how the bias on slashdot in favor of "free speech" has blinded so many to the terrible horror that children face when abused in this manner. Those children have rights, not the least of which is just the simple right to privacy after the fact, such that their pornographic images are removed from public view. A child's right to privacy, especially in this circumstance, trumps your supposed 1st amendment right to "free speech" - particularly given that this "speech" is not the least bit protected under constitutional law.
1) Jam this guys phones and every New York official you can find. Just call up and say because of this technically ignorant decision "I will not vote for you again. Since this is an invasion of my freedoms I consider you incompetent if you cannot defeat this.' 2) Include opposite party. this guy dem or rep? 3) ask how much money he got - since he took a service away from you and did not reduce your rates for reduction in service 4) 100,000,000 to 88 groups is 0.000088 % - I am sure news stands in the city have more kiddie porn so close all of them. 5) get emails I can't find them on website just fax. basically you exercise amendment 1 and 'the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.' MAKE A NOISE
Perhaps Andrew Cuomo should go to jail for possessing child pornography, after all, he found and looked at over 80 pictures on the usenet.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
after alt.* is gone, how much usenet traffic will verizon customers generate? How many of them will care when they drop it entirely? usenet is dead! long live usenet! from wikipedia: Usenet was the initial Internet community and the place for many of the most important public developments in the commercial Internet. It was the place where Tim Berners-Lee announced the launch of the World Wide Web, where Linus Torvalds announced the Linux project, and where Marc Andreesen announced the creation of the Mosaic browser and the introduction of the image tag, which revolutionized the World Wide Web by turning it into a graphical medium.
Functionally, it's a completely unregulated public forum. Free speech taken to its extreme, where you CAN yell "fire" in a crowded theatre and suffer no legal retribution. While I can see how some folks would oppose such unregulated behaviour, it's pertinent to note that society has not crumbled into chaos because of this "anyone can say anything" freedom.
Frankly, I'm amazed this has been allowed to last for as long as it has, but maybe we're finally seeing the death of usenet.
It will be missed.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Now you pale, bloated, pimply pseudo-intellectuals living in your mothers' basements will have nothing to wank to except goatse and tubgirl! :-)
For sanitary reasons, the female of the species should always wipe front to back. (It also seems awkward for the male to do it any other way, but it's not something that's 'required')
Thats what I was going to ask. Its still the best place to get art (porn), movies (porn), and er reading.
All seriousness though. I never did like the alt line however. Your lucky to get a good mod and most people who post there are idiots. Oh lets don't forget about the spam.
There is good content though, but I just never see it under alt. Its all moot anyway, ISP's always gave newsgroups the shaft so I go with Giganews anyway. Gives you SSL and multiple ports to use.
April fools was a few months ago, guys.. ...right?
All 25 people who still read groups in the USENET alt.* hierarchy plan to wage a protest soon, possibly in Star Trek uniforms.
I really want to say that Verizon are bad and mean and nasty for doing this... But lets face reality:
The only binary files transferred on Usenet are warez, movies, copyrighted non-porn images and porn (including the underage variety).
It has mostly boggled for me quite a few years why ISP's even bothered to keep supporting Usenet with their own servers.
Besides, it's not like many (any?) ISP's even advertise Usenet as one of the services they provide. You usually have to dig pretty deep to find their Usenet server settings.
i'm trying to find some child porn and this page keeps coming up as a search result
damn you verizon!!
We're talking about felony distribution of child pornography. Such material is not "protected free speech" and it never has been. Unprotected speech has a long history of censorship in this country, the court case in the link being just one of many examples. That case is what brought forth and confirmed the argument that "yelling fire in a crowded theater" is not protected speech due to the risk of unintended mob violence. Threats of violence is another example of unprotected speech.
Thus, while many on slashdot might not like this fact, it is legal and justified to censor material that causes great harm to another person. And in this case, it is great harm done to a child, for profit. To censor this material is to uphold the right of privacy for those children who have been sexually abused in front of a camera for profit. The distribution of that material is assumed to cause those children involved great personal harm. That harm is far worse than the harm to society in general due to a policy of censorship. Particularly since we're not censoring political speech, but are censoring the commercial product of a criminal conspiracy.
Let's be clear: child porn is essentially a snuff-film.
Finally, Verizon owns that hardware. There are no filters in place across the network to block access to the nntpd port or its encrypted counterpart. End users can continue to purchase newsgroup access from a variety of vendors. They can even use free services to read and debate on USENET. The issue here is not about a right to USENET access, but about a private company choosing to heed the request of a district attorney to block access to criminal materials. That they chose to close a large portion of the service down for business reasons is not relevant to the central issue of children's human rights.
I'm sure their tears run like rivers due to this huge loss.
The real surprise is that this happened on the first day in three weeks that a non-pornographic image was posted to the alt.binaries hierarchy . . .
hawk
There was a time, though, that the transmission of binaries was important.
:), and, more importantly, nethack were developed by distributing the source files and patches on usesnet. (OK, these binaries were text files, but the point remains).
Significant amount of the GNU utilities (oops, should that be the BSD/GNU utilities?
hawk
I like to wipe back to front, it makes my balls smell nice.
Awkward would be wiping front to back - sorry.
See, this is the thing: It's in the collective good for creeps and pedophiles to distribute illegal material in what is essentially the public eye. By limiting access (however slightly) they are only encouraging the distribution of child pornography via services that are even more decentralized. If alt.* becomes the great worldwide child porn warehouse it would be a good thing because that way it would be a whole lot easier to find out where the new material is coming from. But a politician is a politician and a corporation is a corporation. Neither of them are even slightly interested in what's reasonable or what's good for society. Ultimately the AG and Verizon want to do the same thing as pedophiles, only somewhat more metaphorically. Next up: IRC.
1) Verizon is only dropping content from THEIR servers. (People act like the govt or evil Democrats want to police everyone, yet if Verizon was FORCED to carry content on their servers, the argument would be the evil govt making them do it.) Pick a side of the fence before you stand up and start yelling.
2) Anyone else think Newsgroups are a bit dated, and should probably go away? Reading above someone described Newsgroups as a bulletin board to share files. WTF? The NNTP goes back far before people were sharing anything but conversations. Additions to drop text based binaries into the system was a hack originally.
We have too many technologies that replace the original USENET, and in all honesty, do people not realize the bandwidth DOES COST by propagating copies all over the place? Shall we just say, it isn't very efficient or effective as it now exists in comparison to other technologies that have grown up on the internet.
Verizon can do what they want with their servers, and the people bitching apparently don't even realize 90% of the ISPs out there don't provide any NNTP servers.
Back to the govt and Democrat argumetns I have read above, are people insane? The Republicans are tapping 100% of the backbone of the internet and archiving as much as possible, and yet people want to call out Democrats for suggesting a company like Verzion that is HOSTING the illegal content, should probably self regulate themselves. (Sounds more like what a freaking libertaring would say, not a social democrat).
I guess when something is bad or goes wrong, whatever you don't like, your mind finds a way to blame it.
South Park should do a 'Blame Microsoft' or 'Blame Democrats' song, so this type of mentality gets made fun of a bit more and people will stop this crazy shit.
Verizon, Comcast, and other large ISPs cut USENET services from their lineup for their own business reasons. That discussion is one you should have with your ISP.
I do not understand how you could even assert what you stated. By implying that abused kids are in any way involved with these policy debates - they're not. Those kids are the only true victims here. And while I'm no fan of "victim politics" let's be clear, a pre-teen child is in no way able to defend him or herself against the actions of criminal adults acting in conspiracy to thwart the law.
do you really think so?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Before the Internet, how did they track it down? Huh? How did pervs get their porn? Most likely, they got it through the mail or stores, via porn distributors that put up a legal front, but did some percentage of their biz in illegal material. To bust guys like that, back then, must have taken some effort. You can't just open mail willy-nilly or search store inventory looking for the needle in a haystack.
Now, I'm as much against warrantless search as the next guy, but with kiddie porn on the 'net, you can quietly ask Verizon to monitor a suspect's traffic. They don't have to comply, but if they don't you just get a warrant and then they have to comply. Then, getting all the guy's traffic is as easy as adding him to a list in a file. You don't have to tamper with his mail, which might give him telltale clues he is being watched.
Remove kiddie porn from the Internet, and you remove an electronic audit-trail that might even bring us all the way back to the original source, all in the comfort of the agent's office. Remove it from the 'net and you drive it into a new underground. Most likely it would be retro to whatever was used before. Agents would have to go back "pounding the pavement" more, and with the cost of ga$ going through the roof that's not likely to happen.
In other words, it will just go further and further underground. Pervs are as lazy as anybody else. If it's easy to find on the 'net, they'll find it.
Taking it off the 'net only makes sense if you believe that having it there is likely to "convert" normal users into pedophiles. That's probably as bogus an argument as the idea that having gays in your neighborhood is going to convert people. I don't have a study to back it up though. Do they?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Then what are you complaining about?
You've got to be kidding me. Stand up for what you believe in and make your case. I won't make it for you, I disagree with you vehemently.
I live in Manhattan.
I am sure you are aware that some cars coming from New Jersey contain drugs.
Please block these New Jersey drug smugglers by shutting down the George Washington Bridge and Lincoln Tunnel.
It will help your future political career to show that you are also strong on Drugs.
I'm surprised it took until 2008 for this to happen. I don't believe it's the first time someone has TRIED, just for a different announced reason.
What percent of all internet users even know (or care) Usenet exists? 7%? 3%?
(And no you can't factor in the egos of group-hogs for extra weighting.)
I don't think the question is, does your balls smell nice; the question is how did check?
alt.sci.physics was one of my favorite newgroups -- a few real scientists, but mostly armchair physicists trading crackpot ideas. Always made for an interesting read.
Here is what I read from your two posts:
A) Restricting access to child-pornography is not the goal, regardless of what the NY district attorney and those company spokespeople actually said;
B) Broadband ISPs have a conflict of business interest in this action, because some individuals are also engaged in criminal conspiracy to trade copyrighted works - a felony. Thus, it is a conflict of interest for those ISPs who also create and sell copyrighted content to also thwart the activities of copyright criminals.
C) These ISPs have no interest in protecting or helping molested children, beyond the positive public relations such an action might provide.
I think your arguments for A) and C) are based on absolutely no personal involvement in the activities of those who are engaged in enacting this policy. That is, you haven't spoken with the DA in question. You haven't spoken with any of the executives at those ISPs. Thus, that portion of your post is based entirely on bias and not fact.
RE B) you're absolutely right. Those companies have a business interest in protecting their copyrights. nntpd servers are expensive to maintain, they consume vast amounts of bandwidth, and some of the content hosted is criminal and does not serve the interest of that corporate head. Once again, these companies have made a business decision to protect their assets and rights. They have also agreed to squelch access to some of the most vile material spread across the Internet.
got to throw it out there for easynews, too. They are a mirror for sourceforge (which is really cool of them) and I always peg my cable modem on the limiter 100% of the time using them.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
If I was paranoid: I'd be thinking that Cumo and others are working hand in hand to restrict our internet access to a limited number of points that can then be monitored by the federal government but ya know what?
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Please go back to the business argument here. They are not "blocking access" to stuff that isn't child-pornography on the grounds that it is child-pornography. These ISPs have decided to shut off a service that costs them money to maintain. This, after a request by a NY district attorney to censor access to images of abused children.
The two may have occurred at the same time. That doesn't mean both decisions were reached from the same rationale.
Also: it doesn't help your argument to call me names.
Given the choice, I'd much rather fight against censorship than fight against an administration bent on ending the world through wars of aggression, and preventing oversight by overextending the power of the executive branch.
On a purely constitutional level, child pornography is wrong, because the children involved do not have a choice in whether they want to participate, and if they do, they are probably not mature enough to understand what's going on.
It was really nice of Verizon to make this announcement.
They've been sending me FIOS advertisements about one-a-day. I was almost ready to jump from Time Warner to get the faster speeds, but with P2P blocking "bandwidth shaping" and censorship, who needs faster speeds to access nothing?
We're Verizon! We'll give you 20Mb/s of the fastest nothing you ever saw.
Stupid fucker. The child pornographers will just pick on a non-alt newgroup to invade and post on, but the rest of us will lose alt. Moron politicians -- they know nothing about the Internet and should leave their dirty stinking hands off it.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Either that or I'll start making press releases indicating that I've found bomb making and assassination manuals on 88 web sites and I'll apply some sort of "if he can do it, so can I" logic when I'm indicted. But, no, thinking to the IWF in the UK, it's ok to browse cp as long as you're in cahoots with the government; and it's ok to browse terrorism-related sites as long as you're not an Arab.
OK, here is the first argument of yours. I'll restate it so you know what I have read into your words:
A) Child-pornography is too loosely defined. Are we discussing pre-teen abuse or the abuse of a teenager nearing emancipation? Then you argue that given this ambiguity, it is not always the case that such activity be termed "rape." You then argue about distribution of private adult pornography, specifically in relation to the Paris Hilton sex tape.
B) By the time it has reached the Internet, distribution of child-pornography is a fait accompli. IOW: those horses are long out of the barn and God knows where the hell they went to. Too bad. But would you kill all horses just because some of yours escaped?
Yes, I recognize my analogy in B) is a straw man.
I think the biggest problem with this debate is that the submitted write-up (and every write-up posted to slashdot this issue) has conflated the business interests of these ISPs (to reduce costs and limit unprofitable service) with the legal and appropriate action of censoring criminal child-pornography.
Thus, I dispute your false dichotomy of being forced to choose between either an "open, free internet" vs. a "closed, monitored, filtered internet" by these actions of the state and privately owned ISPs. All places in society are "monitored" by law enforcement, regardless of whether we're discussing bank robberies and protection rackets or criminal conspiracies to distribute what amounts to a child snuff-film.
"Freedom" doesn't mean "Anarchy". "Freedom" also demands "Responsibility".
Let the police do the policing. Corporation should not to police us. Next they will be censoring my jokes about kid fuckers, abortion, jesus, and my phone sex sessions with my girl.
Where does it end?
Stay out of policing us, because in the case of a corporation policing us, they assume everyone is guilty rather than innocent.
ET's pissed ...
http://www.netdisaster.com/go.php?mode=ufo&sound=on&url=http://www.verizon.com
In further news, Cuomo's office claims that some "Escort services" were providing underaged prostitutes. Verizon has announced that in future the yellow pages will contain only the "big 25" listings, A through D and F through Z.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
So, if one were to file a FCC complaint for failure to provide service, what would it look like?
That begs the question: so why doesn't Google Groups provide access to them? Who's the bad guy here?
It is not at all surprising that Verizon did what they did. Cuomo is just like Spitzer in overreaching in attacking companies. It is an overreach, and it can be beaten in court -- but at a much greater cost than the issue is worth.
It's the exact same thing with New York State's sleazy lawsuits against out-of-state gun dealers. They can't win by legal arguments, but they can win by harassing into submission.
Make no mistake about it: Verizon does not want to be in the kiddie porn monitoring business. But it would have to be in that business if it had to pick and choose which newsgroups to block. The alt.* hierarchy is particularly difficult since new alt.* groups pop up all the time.
The NY AG's office won't do the monitoring, as in providing a daily list of newsgroups to block. No, they demand that Verizon do it.
Faced with interminable litigation on an issue that is impossible to win in public opinion, it is no wonder that Verizon caved in. Faced with the impossible task of monitoring (and guessing what alt.* groups would meet the NY AG's approval), it is no wonder that Verizon simply exited the business of carrying alt.*
Now...as for why this is the future...
I have been involved in the politics of newsgroup blocking for 20 or so years, and always on the side of newsgroup freedom. Some of you may already have guessed who I am.
I have fought many of these battles. In EVERY single battle, the person who instigated the censorship was an activist Democrat. Whether the purported reason for the censorship was porn, racism, sexism, animal rights, etc. the underlying motivation was the same: to protect the eyeballs of others from something that the instigator felt was offensive. Even such innocuous newsgroups as rec.humor.funny have felt their wrath.
Similarly, the battles against the censorship were always fought by a strange coalition of anti-establishment nerds, Libertarians, and conservative Republicans. When these battles were won, it was because we found some sympathetic high-up who had the power to pull the leash on the censor. 9 times out of 10, that high-up was an ultra conservative who acted because he didn't want a precedent that could be used against conservatives.
This isn't going to work any more.
The conservatives are in their final months of power. Next January, Obama will be president with a filibuster-proof Congress. They have quite a pent-up agenda that they wish to implement, and big government protection of the people (whether or not the people want it) is high on that agenda.
Most of the Libertarians I know are quite alarmed. Many are no great fans of conservativism, but the two groups have been partners in blocking the more extreme antics of the Left. Libertarians don't even have the option of jumping ship and forming a coalition with the Democrats. They're not needed.
Get ready to see a lot more censorship, and a lot more bans, in the next 2 years. Liberties are in for quite a stomping. Don't look for a 1994 type upset in 2010 either. You'll be looking wistfully back to the good old days when Bush was president soon enough.
that sounds hot.
meet me at alt.binaries.fetish.feet.voting
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
. . . the child pornographers will just user other newgroup servers. Ok, so Verizon chops alt.* from *their* server. Is there anything that prevents a user from connecting to a third-party news server over the Internet? What does this accomplish other than pander to the NY AG?
Hmm, natural fertilizer. Is that the secret to penis enlargement?
Those posts of child pornography on Usenet are traceable evidence of crimes exploiting children. The state AGs should be tracing the evidence back to the criminal exploiters and busting them. Instead, they're driving it underground, where it's harder to stop. First use the evidence to find and bust the perps, then remove the evidence from the public where it does further harm. Or the perps will just disappear, then pop up again creating more harm to more kids.
This foolish shortsightedness isn't just prosecutors and cops misunderstanding the newfangled Internet. This is cops and prosecutors failing to understand how free expression is always a benefit, when you understand it enough to use it right. That's a lesson at least 200 years in the making. It's about time Americans forced our "justice" system to get smart about it.
--
make install -not war
I was unaware that anyone still used such a system? Are these the same people who would rather use a Sextant than a GPS? These must be the same people who still use Gopher rather than Google? Perhaps these are the same people who dial in their ham radios to their local net every Friday?
/. and take the same time to send a letter to your congressman. Set up a mail merge so its easy. Imagine how quickly this kind of crap would change if the 300+ comments made on each IP or Net-Neutrality post ended up in the in boxes of congress members.
If you want net neutrality then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!! Quit bitching about it on
People get the government they deserve!!!
This is so blatantly illegal and unconstitutional for Verizon. I can't wait to sue their asses into bankruptcy. This is gonna be fun.
There was stuff in the alt. hierarchy back then that made goatse look tame.
If anything it's self policed and gotten better as more and more people realized there was weird sh*t and free stuff to be had through USENET and the hardcore pervs moved on to more (supposedly) secure methods of distribution.
Now Verizon, Time Warner and Sprint make politically palatable noises ("It's for the children!"), while what they've really done is free up network resources they can better use to push pablum to the clueless, while gaining bargaining points with government regulators.
Ultimately this about money and media exposure, anything else is strictly secondary.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Doesn't google provide access to newsgroups via a web interface?
blog & fiction: jd87
Censorship, as defined in the constitution, is when the government suppresses speech against the government because it is negative. This is not censorship in any way. You can disagree with Verizon's decision, and voice opposition to it, even fight them in court if you want to, based on your contract or something.
When the majority of people oppose some particular form of expression and pass laws against it, it's not censorship as the minority who want this form of expression are still free to oppose the law and fight it in court, etc. Freedom really is the right to oppose something without fear of mortal repercussions.
To put it in perspective we need look no further than Zimbabwe for an example of what censorship really is. Let's get some perspective here.
I do.
As of 2008 Jun 15 17:55 UTC, news.verizon.net is still hosting alt.*
As soon as that vanishes, I'll be back up on GigaNews.
I've set up and managed very large USENET news sites, with experience in that going back to the early 1990s. I know exactly what I'm talking about WRT the technology that delivers USENET. I also have a history of posting to USENET that goes back to 1984.
So, I do have some idea about usenet newsgroups and the history of the alt.* hierarchy.
"Verizon Communications confirmed on Thursday that it will stop offering its customers access to tens of thousands of Usenet discussion areas, including the alt.* groups that have been a free-flowing area for discussions for over two decades"
Just because pedo friendly use groups exist, is that a reason to ALLOW them?
Should I be allowed to want pictures of your eight year old daughter, I should be?
I think the 'think of the children' people SHOULD be heeded and listened to. Are you
a part of the problem? Or are you part of the solution? It is an EASY choice, even if
you fail to see the choice.
IF I was a pervert and desired to have free and open access to pictures and information to
YOUR kids, I should think YOU would want to know and PROTECT your children. Failing that,
I should expect you to be KILLED by society at large. There is NO EXCUSE for pedophillia.
Never has been, never will be ! Your choice!!!
ummm Giganews?
Another thought... Usenet allows the free exchange of commercially produced child porn. It's child porn piracy.
Now if music piracy is supposed to hurt the music industry, and movie piracy is supposed to hurt the movie industry, then shouldn't child porn piracy hurt the child porn industry? By shutting down child porn piracy, aren't the feds and the ISPs helping the commercial producers of child porn by protecting their business model and intellectual property rights?
(Hee hee, I figure a post that equates the RIAA/MPAA with pedophiles has to get a +5)
I've been using Internet since roughly 1991. Before that I used X.25 a lot. Obviously, I make my living by working in network/internet related areas, and spend half a bloody day using Internet in one way or another.
I have never, ever, in my life, found a child porn, nor seen it.
It is pretty simple, I think. I have never looked for it, so I never found it.
If a dumb politician thinks that him looking for something and then finding it (and he was looking for nothing less than child porn) is a reason to be upset, well... I feel sorry for the people he represents.
1.5TB a day as a huge commitment? You really think that? This is a major corporation, 1.5TB/day*14days = 21TB. That is nothing to a company of their size. Assuming triple redundancy, you could still fit all the rackmount hardware into something smaller than the average linen closet.
They probably spent more on the press release for this than it costs to maintain that hardware for a year.
So what, not like anyone is going to stop them.
Just stand and whine, because that'll work
(At the risk of stating the obvious, "intensive purposes" makes no sense and is probably intended to read "intents and purposes", and "begging the question" is a logical fallacy not employed in your paragraph.)
For some reason, my browser/slashdot would not let me alter the subject line of my reply to say "[OT]" or anything. hm.
myselfmusic
It's one thing if Verizon had said that the costs of maintaining Usenet versus the number of subscribers actually using it made it an undesirable business, and were cutting it entirely.
I could understand that. That would be a pure business decision. As a subscriber, I may or may not complain, but it's just business.
Instead, this is "censorship", though not in the strictest definition. This is Andrew Cuomo, as NY AG, strong arming Verizon and other ISPs into closing down virtual areas where people went to exchange communication and information.
THAT is seriously messed up.
When you're in government, and you have the power to do something that you couldn't do by passing a law because it would clearly be unconstitutional, then you've achieved "corrupt power" status.
It's too bad that it's such a baby step...just go to the other groups or a pay Usenet service...or move on as you say.
Sure, first the Jews had to identify themselves, and I did nothing because I was not a Jew.
Again, the government, and no person in the government, should not be doing anything which restricts or inhibits free speech, communication of exchange of information as long as it's all legal.
The whole child porn thing is retarded. I personally believe people who exchange child porn should receive maximum punishment and the law should aggressively go after *catching* them. If they found 88 groups with child porn, subpoena Verizon and track down the logs showing the accounts where the files were upload and throw the book at them.
But this is whack a mole. These criminals will just post files elsewhere. Meanwhile, what happens to those wanting to post in alt.childsafety.kidprotection-network, or alt.child-support, or any of the other 100,000 Alt.* groups without child porn?
s/Who's eating up all our bandwidth?/Who authorised the spending on the 50% we're not using?/
We found suspiciously planted child porn in unusual newsgroups like alt.gardening or such.
See here. It is discontinued on 6/23/2008. :(
:)
Does anyone know of a good binary news server? Currently, I am looking at EasyNews (rollover idea sounds neat), GigaNews, and Power Usenet news/usenet services since Time Warner Cable RoadRunner is discontinuing its free unlimited (no caps!) news/usenet service on 6/23/2008. Now, I need a third party that is similiar to it. I am still researching on what the best usenet/news server to get.
The two listed ones are a bit pricey for what I want:
1. Binary retentions (doesn't need crazy amounts of days like 100!).
2. Download speed during low usage hours (peak hours I can usually avoid). Posting is very rare and usually text posts in non-binary newgroups.
3. Good support from providers if problems occur.
4. Cheap prices (doubt free exists with third parties).
5. No limits especially caps! Sometimes I download 1 GB and sometimes I do 30 (rarely). EasyNews' rollover sounds good so I can carry over my unused datas.
6. Nice to have but not required: Security/Encryptions (will need to figure how to set this in Linux for Pan and Tin).
Thank you in advance.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
All true. It's not about bandwidth. It's about politics.
What Verizon has accomplished here is getting this stuff off it's servers, thereby reducing the heat from a local New York politician, who still has no handle on third-party usenet services not located in New York.
Drug dealing has been found in 12% of the city's alleys. The municipal government will be walling off all alleyways starting next month.
DUI has been found in 8% of the city's streets. All streets will be closed to automobiles starting in August.
Child abuse has been found in 1% of the city's homes. The use of homes for residential purposes will be discontinued later this year.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
I've tried a few usenet servers in the past (giganews, easynews and usenetserver.com). They were all pretty nice overall, but for the price, usenetserver was the best. They had unlimited service for $10/month with SSL. Most places wont allow unlimited period or SSL for that cheap. One gripe I had about them was their search feature wasn't as great as say Easynews, but it's not overly bad. If you don't like it, then you can always sign up for newzbin for searching posts and such
I don't have time to call Verizon today (will do it sometime next week), but since they are cutting back their features/services, how much are our bills being discounted?
Maybe you mean "onus".
If they had decided to do this for any other reason I wouldn't be pissed, but they're doing this to cave to the overly invasive requests of a special interest group and it's government sock puppet, which also happen to be diametrically opposed to loudly expressed public desire for a neutral and uncensored internet.
They are expressing a very deep contempt for the entire citizenry of america, and for their customers in particular.
I will never buy their service as long as I live, and will be sending them letters to that effect.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Because for any other reason this might be called something else. What was that word again, for limiting access to information? Anyway, it's clearly for the children. They said so.
-- Wondering how long until the internet becomes fully corporatist, like television.
You raise a scary scenario, one which I can unfortunately agree, is plausible and *may* come to pass.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
In a hastily called press conference to discuss this issue, Joliet resident Vladinator called this decision "complete bullshit" and "prejudice against Catholics". He then farted loudly into the microphone and left.
Yes, we already know people are fighting to stop children from being abused, but who stops the ISP's and governments from abusing child pornography?
It's only awkward if you're too fat to stick your hand between your legs from the front. Which I guess makes your statement truth on /.
88 newsgroups out of 100,000 and they cut all alt.* access? could the real motivator here be to block access to the alt.binaries.* tree's ? I find it disturbing that his office is looking for porn, they should be dealing with direct complaints rather than drumming up business, the act of downloading and possessing this stuff with intent is illegal already. That being said, if Time Warner's newsgroup service is going to be censored, stop using it; Comcast dropped the feeds access for the @home customers shortly after taking over (and don't tell me a 2GB per month giganews account is the same as having ISP provided) For anyone affected and still in the need of usenet access, get a giganews platinum (diamond?) account, the transactions are done via SSL and they're retention is 200 days. I pay an additional $30 USD monthly but its one of the few ISP services I have subscribed to where I feel I might be getting my money's worth.
I find it curious that when its paper and cloth burning it's an outrage but when its 0's and 1's filtering it is ok.
Censorship has taken on a new look but the intent is the same.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Their website allows you to email them as a non-customer and to indicate whichever geographic area you choose.
email them and express your displeasure.
if enough do so they will most definitely rethink this course of action.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
the one that optimum online provides is ok 128kb/s speed limit but good retention and group availability
You know.. it's not like the old days when usenet was this big-little thing that ISPs usually provided in some fashion for free to their customers. the amount of traffic on usenet is absurdly large these days.. and if 99% of my customers didn't care, I wouldn't run it either.
There are excellent, affordable, top-quality usenet providers out there.. it's something big enough that a dedicated provider that can focus on doing *just that* makes good sense.
Giganews still carries all the groups, and they won't roll over for any little half-legit handwritten MPAA subpoena either. You pay for the privilege, but I think Usenet won't miss Verizon's more cheapass customers. The ones who pay for non-crap service are obviously unaffected.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
The kiddie porn is just an excuse. They want to get rid of the expense and liability of carrying the newsgroups. It's that simple.
Free public news groups:
http://www.disenter.com/
http://www.livinginternet.com/u/ua_pub.htm
Plus - if you have a tangible way to make that happen, what are you doing posting on /.?
How can Verizon, or any other 'carrier' or ISP presume to be 'responsible' or 'liable' for what they carry?
The concept is nuts, as is clear from the apparent intention to block 100,000 news groups because somebody found 'porn' on 88 (or other small number) of them. (88 out of 100,000 is 0.00088 -- 0.088 percent)
In addition, who is to say that the 'somebody's' idea of what is 'porn' (or anything else, for that matter) equates to my own, or to the 'norm'?
Is it not clear to everyone this is an attempt to establish a precedent for censoring the Internet?
Much better is to NOT make 'porn', or anything else, 'forbidden' on the Internet or anywhere else, because by doing so, it is made universally fascinating. We have seen this demonstrated every single time anything has been 'forbidden'.
Much better is to not make a big deal of what some think should be 'forbidden', for then such things will soon become uninteresting.
Further, the fascination with what has been or is intended to be 'forbidden' simply points to the failure of our public 'education' system -- which strives to make it impossible for its 'students' to learn much of anything -- in particular, to learn things such as how utterly boring are those things as what those among us think must be 'forbidden'.
The sig is indeed there to tease the grammar nazis. What's really fun is when somebody points out one "mistake", but not the other.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Bravo!
Do you have a log of such replies? It might be somewhat interesting to read.
When I was younger for the longest time I thought "intensive purposes" was the correct phrase. Once I sorted it out, I was surprised to realise I didn't seem to be the only one.
myselfmusic
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/civilrights/statutes.htm
Fortunately, pedophiles aren't able to simply pick another group within the big 8. Good thing, or that would ruin everything.
Ahhh yes... Once again... If guns aren't the problem than I guess the internet is. Until society realizes and wants to confront that people's behavior is the underlying issue, all you law abiding citizens - be prepared to have your freedoms stripped away.
Didn't pretty much every college and university with internet access do exactly this in the early/mid-'90s? All this wailing and gnashing of teeth and huffy posts about Internet Freedoms and stuff sounds really familiar, I think I myself wrote a long and pompous forum post on the subject while procrastinating my problem sets.
Only difference now is we've got a slightly larger private entity controlling its content delivery, and an exciting new buzzword "common carrier" to justify our outrage.
Yawn.
Oh no, I don't want to imagine the junk mail I'm going to get if spammers read that...
Depending on the number of people that are actually using usenet on any given network, it could still be less bandwidth to have those people use external servers. If Verizon was hosting most of the news groups out there then they are having to transfer a huge amount of data. Wikipedia lists it as >3TB of data per DAY. Verizon is big but I don't believe they could have enough people using usenet to pull that much traffic every day, thus it's probably less traffic for them to have the people that want it to download it from some external server.
You think no one knows about it? It's not exactly a secret.
I'm afraid to say: No. You must pay to access those sites regardless of indecency and obscenity laws. It has been that way since the founding of the United States.
In 1780 you had to buy a newspaper in order to read the news. In 1780 you had to buy a quill and ink in order to write a letter to the editor.
You will continue to have to pay for Internet access. However, to read and respond to USENET posts in the alt.* hierarchy you could still access it for free via Google Groups. Or you could buy the service from an external provider.
The ISP has no obligation to provide USENET service regardless of what content resides there.
Those children, however, do have a human right codified within our constitution which protects them from physical or sexual abuse.
The govt ISPs want you saddled to their absurdly censored outlets so they get the ad dollars.
"You say you want a revolution?"
Andy Out!
"Offtopic" - I disagree. I was perfectly ontopic to the post I replied to.
So you like scooping crap [literally] towards your balls? Hey, whatever does it for you man...
I don't track replies to the sig. FWIW, I periodicly change my sigs. I'm in the process of re-doing my web site, istartedi.org. Some of the older sigs are there in the place-holder now.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I participated in this same debate at two different universities.
So what's different now? Everything.
This isn't just one university. This will soon be most major ISPs. If most U.S. ISPs drop alt.*, the posters will just hammer big 8 groups. With NZB files, the actual group things are posted to doesn't matter very much. Issuing cancels will be a full time job for the few that care to fight the flood.
What's sad is that this really threatens the argument that ISPs are common carriers and aren't responsible for filtering content. Sure, I understand the different between filtering and not providing groups on your NNTP server, but people that wear suits and robes for a living don't. If alt.* falls what's next? All of Usenet.
Usenet is an unusual asynchronous, disconnected, communication model and in a way, is an almost priceless anonymizer. There is (almost) no link between the sender and receiver of a message. I've always wondered how we've let an almost untraceable communication system survive.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I'm afraid to say: No. You must pay to access those sites regardless of indecency and obscenity laws. It has been that way since the founding of the United States.
In 1780 you had to buy a newspaper in order to read the news. and I pay an ISP for access to the internet. In 1780 you had to buy a quill and ink in order to write a letter to the editor. and I paid for my computer Those children, however, do have a human right codified within our constitution which protects them from physical or sexual abuse.
You will continue to have to pay for Internet access. However, to read and respond to USENET posts in the alt.* hierarchy you could still access it for free via Google Groups. Or you could buy the service from an external provider. Ah, so because the ISP's decided to cave to some state attorney's arbitrarily chosen target, I now have to pay a "speech tax" in order to speak on this part of the internet?
Didn't they already vote it unconstitutional to impose a tax on another constitutional right: voting? The ISP has no obligation to provide USENET service regardless of what content resides there. USENET is part of the internet. it's an old protocol but one still actively used. Bit torrent is another protocol. If an ISP can simply dispense with this one, i guess they should be allowed to dispense with others too. No need for that pesky free and neutral internet I pay them for.
Then there's the more disturbing aspect of this. MediaDefender email threads posted in this response column point to the RIAA/MPAA driving this behind the scenes.
Once the ISP's stop providing this free of charge, they can then close the noose on the usenet, using this development as further leverage to overturn the court precedents which have protected it from attack.
Why? because both the MAFIAA and the government are very uncomfortable with a medium that is truly free, with no central authority which can be bullied into pulling content or speech offline.
like amateur ham existence
hahahaha......
make ur own net
I find the newsgroups in alt to be useless duplications of newsgroups in the big 8, except with more spam.
Of course, I personally don't read much outside of comp.* and especially comp.lang.* so I may be a little biased.
I think it's a shame though, how little attention newsgroups get these days, with lots of people starting up mailing lists, which are much more annoying to deal with since everything gets shuffled into your inbox. I've always found moderated usenet groups to be the best way to have technical discussions.
I subscribe to tons of technical mailing lists and newsgroups, and since lots of discussion groups and threads are just so much easier to deal with on usenet clients than email clients (especially gmail), I tend to miss what's going on in mailing lists, whereas it's easy to keep up to date with newsgroups.
It's true that you can use filters to achieve some of the same control on mailing lists, but it's an extra step necessary to subscribe in a group, and mail clients typically just don't handle discussion groups that well. Things like threads that branch off into a number of different subdiscussions tend to be untrackable in most mail clients, especially gmail that offers no tree view.
Also, things like the global hierarchy of newsgroups ensure that there isn't mailing list duplication across topics. For instance, there are numerous java mailing lists out there for various subjects (all of which are fairly low volume), but really only one java newsgroup comp.lang.java.programmer which because it is easy to find and in a standard location, remains high volume and prevents people from accidentally starting up their own java newsgroup because they couldn't find the main one.
I actually saw this article on Friday after someone posted it to alt.tv.tech.hdtv. I guess I should have submitted it to Slashdot so everyone else could worry about it as much as me. I'm a TimeWarner customer. In the article, a TW spokesperson mentions they will be turning off usenet nationwide.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Doesn't this just mean that content will migrate over to the misc groups? They're part of the Big 8. Data finds its own way, like water.
Hold on here. Didn't Verizon just surrender their protection under the safe harbor provisions by taking responsibility for what they serve? Does that only apply to copyright? To websites?
Can someone go class action on their asses?
Just wanted to point out that this seems to portend the very same issues mentioned in the previous net neutrality posting.
At least Verizon users still get the non-alt newsgroups. Rogers in Canada killed all newsgroups late 05 / early 06. http://blog.jmcardle.com/?p=175
I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of usenet memes cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Many great and funny have just been lost forever to the great empty recycling bin. Let us remember these dead memes and maybe propagate them to another generation for their enjoyment. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.07/alt.pave.html
If you knew how to use the three seashells I don't think you'd be laughing anymore. I'm sticking to toilet paper, thanks.
I have Verizon, and I didn't even know they had a news server. I guess they don't bother putting that in the book you get when you sign up that lists all of their services. I use Google Groups for my occasional forays into Usenet. So this event will have no real effect on me. I'll be going off to college in the fall, so I won't even have them that much longer. That notwithstanding, I'm pissed. Both in a "moral outrage" sense because they're suppressing speech that ought to be free and in a "they're taking what's mine" sense because I used to get the whole Internet (public, that is), and now I only get most of it for the same price. Arrrgghh. And they're even doing it so stupidly, blocking one thousand times what they have to, when they don't even really have to do anything. And they were doing so well with not resetting my Bittorrent connections. *Sigh.*
This space reserved for administrative use.
Newsgroup feeds use up about 1.5TB a day. Do the math for 14 days retention. It's a heck of a committment.[sic]
1TB 7200RPM hard disks are currently priced at US$169 on pricewatch.com, with free ground shipping.
1.5TB x $169/TB = $253.50/day of retention.
x 14 days = $3549 per fortnight of retention.
In comparison, Verizon's sales for 2007 were $94.72 billion, that is, over 26 million times as much. Even if you multiply usenet retention costs by a factor of 10 or 100 to account for multiple copies, other hardware, etc., it is nowhere near even the roundoff accuracy of the financial statements in an shareholders' annual report of a company of that size, not really "a heck of a commitment."
Don't be nieve.
While I am against what verizon is doing, it would be nice if it all was under one domain. So I could block it.
Am I afraid my children will see boobies? not really, on the other hand when those boobies are attached to someone being tied up and shat upon is another matter.
We are not talking about playboy here, bucko.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Let kill all humans. All of them are potential criminals!
Seriously, get a grip. If they want my money, the Cable TV company that gives me phone, TV, and whatever-Mbps internet better provide me service. Otherwise, I'll switch to Verizon FiOS for all 3, or one of 20 other service providers. I haven't used the usenet since college, and my college canned the usenet server about 2 years after I graduated. For porn or other questionable material, all you need is Google and bittorrent. Music or music videos? Go search youtube. Information about computer science? Wikipedia and Citeseer. People you know? Facebook (or Myspace, Friendster, or Linkedin depending on your age). Want free email? gmail, yahoo, hotmail. There are lots and lots of useful websites for doing whatever you want to do on the net. Want camera gear reviews? dpreview.com, fredmiranda.com, robgalbraith.com. Buying/shopping for camera gear? bhphotovideo.com. Suspect that the place you're looking at buying that camera might be trying to rip you off? ResellerRatings.com
Large companies and governments can try the whack-a-mole strategy for the supposed kiddie porn to satisfy the preacher constituency, but no matter how we1 filter the internet, some new technology, terminology, or chat room will come along where people who are curious about that kind of thing hang out (or people masquerade as being curious about that thing). Remember that the internet is global, connects hundreds of millions or even billions of people, and its growth is not slowing down. The best and worst of all that humanity has to offer is there. Child porn is tame compared to videos of religious extremists beheading people who are begging for their lives, or people eating disgusting things - bodily waste, etc. You can also watch people eating gross things on Fear Factor on the NBC TV network! There's also butchering cats, bestiality, etc. After you look for the most sensationalist content you can find to see if you can stomach watching it and cross that point, you realize that it's not the internet - it's humanity that is depraved. This stuff really happens. People record videos of it happening, and then they share those videos with complete strangers anonymously over the net.
1-I'd say "they", but the majority of "us" don't vote against "them". After all, you'd be crazy to stand up for free speech rights of child pornographers.
You can still find anything on the internet. It just takes time. If you want stuff which is illegal, immoral, or dangerous enough to someone that they need to put it out there anonymously for fear of persecution, then freenet is your thing. It's probably still overrun by kiddie porn today. The truth is that if depravity is what you seek on the internet, you will find it, and you will find it fast. Insanity is all around us - you don't need to leave
China isn't fooling anyone. Covering anything up over there just makes it that much more tittilating.
Not certain enough to file a police report? Then you're not certain enough to block my alt.*, punks. See you in court.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
http://www.brlug.net/pipermail/newbies_brlug.net/2007-April/001636.html
I think I'm going to join the CCCC just to get access to their mailing list archives.
Not really. If you're scooping noticable amounts of shit, you didn't finish the job/should probably jump into the tub and wash yourself as you are having the runs.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
There is a difference between 'block access to' and 'no longer carry', and this article's title blurs the difference. Since the former isn't feasible, I'm sure this is the latter.
Eg, *Verizon* will no longer carry the alt.* newsgroups on their own Usenet servers that they use to provide Usenet access to their own customers. This is entirely their choice to do so, and in fact they aren't the first. Heck, some ISP's don't even offer Usenet service at all anymore. If you dont like that, choose a different ISP. Or (in response to the whines about broadband monopolies, which have some validity), just a different Usenet provider:
Nothing is stopping someone who wants access to alt.sex.natalie.portman.and.midgets or alt.horses.and.chix from subscribing to one of the many for-pay Usenet services. Supernews is one that springs to mind, but I'm sure you all know how to use Google. These work regardless of who your ISP is.
Yes, but the fact is that Federal law says that Verizon isn't responsible for what goes through their network. Is there a lawyer in the house? If so, does Verizon's censorship give them culpability if you stumble across child porn on their network?
How many millions could I snatch?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Well, for a long time I have suspected the FBI or some other law enforcement body has been posting child porn. I see the same pics posted directly, not cross posted, to many groups clearly intended for other content. Anyone who block loads content will get these same images which are not hard core, just enough to convict you based on the surrounding legal porn.
I would no longer be subject to the evils and possible dangerous things on alt.rec.motorcycles
greed vs freedom, and think of the children
this is disgusting.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Actually, I agree with you. But I wasn't talking about sexual orientation. I was talking about sexual behavior -- a.k.a. the lifestyle. Context is your friend. I've never met anyone who felt that they didn't have control over when they could have sex. Note that the sexual orientation is not a lifestyle. That was your first clue. Should I go off on a rant about how you're a fundamentalist Jesus-nut who thinks that being homosexual implies a certain lifestyle? In fact, there are homosexual Republicans who repress themselves to a frightening degree. Republicans have no problem with these people because it is the LIFESTYLE they despise, not the fact of their sexual orientation. And yes, repressing yourself is a CHOICE.
So, if you had read my post correctly, you would have realized that I was talking about "choice" as is "freedom to adopt your preferred lifestyle". The government should not care whether you're really homosexual or not, as it is your freedom to pretend to be homosexual. The nature vs. nurture debate is purely academic.
I would think anything appearing on the toilet paper is a noticeable amount - you can't believe that the toilet paper catches all of it, and none of it might get pushed forward? Sure, we can clean that which we can see - but until we actually shower and use soap, we ain't clean. My personal preference is to have that invisible bit o' mess near my tailbone, as opposed to my perineum.
(side note: this is an utterly ridiculous conversation...)
It's one thing if Verizon had said that the costs of maintaining Usenet versus the number of subscribers actually using it made it an undesirable business, and were cutting it entirely.
I could understand that. That would be a pure business decision. As a subscriber, I may or may not complain, but it's just business.
So you're ok with the decision, you're just not ok with their (announced, possibly not actual) reason for making the decision?
That makes... sense?
Comment of the year
I used to use Newsguy when I still did the Usenet thing. They have rollover, extra capacity on demand, and an unlimited account option. Some of the account types come with mailboxes and web space.
Heh, I see they heard about this story already. Roadrunner customers get a free month with a new account.
Easynews is excellent. I currently had over 200gb saved (i lost it when my card numbers changed and I failed to update things on their end. Doh!.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This is an issue because they are cutting a service. I've been with Verizon for 8 years and have used Usenet on and off over that time period. Now they are cutting most of that service out for specious reasons.
That's the reason. It also makes people worry about the "thin edge of the wedge" because they are seeing the continuing erosion of the internet as they've known it.
Within ten years the internet will just be a page with a few big buttons that take you to government and corporate approved content. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Ooh, carry overs like EasyNews. I think this would be useful since my transfers vary each month (1 GB to 25 GB).
... what are the differences between $9.95 for 50 GB per month (Express) and $14.95 for 50 GB per month (Premium)?
:)
On http://newsguy.com/roadrunner.htm
I also read that any left overs per month will be carried over to the next month. Is there a limit on how high I can hold? On EasyNews, I can go up to 500 to 750 GB depending on the packages I purchase.
Thank you in advance.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I mean if 88 out of 10,000 newsgroups had child porn on them, then think of how many freeways are enabling actual child porn crime. Better safe than sorry. Ban all use of freeways. Think of the children!
Please!
If they can connect their cut in service to loss of revenue, it might make them think harder before doing something like this again....
...New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat.Gee - if Cuomo were a Republican, how would that paragraph have gone? Let me, in the interests of fairness, offer a revision of that paragraph had that been the case:
...New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Republican. Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups -- out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist.' After consultations with Cuomo, Verizon will include a $12.99 surcharge on all of its customer's bills to pay for the cost of filtering child pornography.Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Eww. You just managed to give me a whole new meaning to 'junk mail'
which is totally what she said
It is pretty ridiculous. I'm also wondering how anyone needs to wipe so far as to get near their balls. I mean accidents can happen, but o_0
which is totally what she said
As a Verizon customer, I was happy to see the alt.binaries groups represented - AT&T's Usenet service sucked in comparison. The Verizon alt.* groups are still running as I type this... but curiously, there's no alt.verizon-sucks, doesn't seem like it was ever carried.
Well; if Verizon blocks these hierarchies, then the porn pushers will just move to the Big 8. Then those groups will be banned.
Then they will move back to traditional web site advertising. This will include hijacking users web browsers again and forcibly bringing them to these sites to make sure you SEE that 13 year old getting whatever. They will then begin to ban HTTP port 80.
What fun.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Sure. You've heard of the Miracle Bra for women? For men, it's Miracle Gro.
Don't put advice in your sig.
This is /. : we're nerds.
We're the ones that created Internet 1.0, it's time for an upgrade.
2.0 can run over 1.0 with added capability of utilizing wireless access points.
For starters I'd say we need to encrypt the IP layer (marry IP and SSL) and a smarter routing protocol.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Why worry about ISPs dropping USENET when sites like http://www.jlaforums.com (who filter out spam and other crap) offer a convenient web based access to text and binary groups - all free?
Yes, that makes sense. My anger is at Andrew Cuomo, not at Verizon per se. Verizon is no more obligated to offer Usenet groups as part of their business as say Krispy Kreme. If it's not profitable directly or if they don't feel that it's adding value to their subscribers, then as a business decision they can cut it, and that's totally fine.
However when Andrew Cuomo acts like a retard *and* abuses his government power by coercing Verizon to shut down a virtual space where people communicate and exchange information, then I'm mad as hell. I'll hold this against Cuomo, protest him from afar and consider it in all future elections he's involved with.
As for Verizon, had they done this as a business decision, I'd look less favorably upon them in terms of the value they offer their customers. But by not standing up, and not fighting the government's coercive censorship, well, then I'll look at them as both now offering less value to their customers *and* being little more un-American.
My main point here though is you don't mess with Freedom of Speech. We know that. We get that. We've been having government push the limits with laws, and having the courts protect us against laws that went over the line. Now, we have someone in government abusing their power, restricting freedom of speech, and doing it in a way that leave the courts powerless to stop him.
I know I don't come across this way in this thread, but believe me, I'm very moderate and laid back politically. I accept quite a lot without complaint or issue. However, I do believe what Cuomo has done is very, very dangerous.
This wouldn't be the same alt.* that contains, I don't know, alt.binaries?
Yeah, I'm sure it's just for those poor, poor children.
the bush nazi's on the FCC fucked us all
Pls check out this link: http://www.lp.org/issues/internet
Lets also close mayor interstates, as terrorists are prone to using them to get about.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Not to troll, but who'll really miss this? I used to read newsgroups a long time back, but the signal-to-noise ratio has grown so overwhelmingly bad that I haven't found myself wading through the muck there at all within the last few years.
Hell, I really wouldn't miss it if they were to drop all Usenet support entirely. I understand there's people that use it all the time, but 95% of "normal" users don't even know what it is, and the 5% or so that do... a lot of us make sparing use of it at best because of the above-stated insanely high amounts of crap.
There are still independent Usenet providers, and so long as they're not being blocked by Verizon, this doesn't seem all that great a loss to me.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
Actually yeah. Let's just end it now, so there's less chance of this showing up later when we run for public office.. it'd put Swift Boat to shame.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
Here's the e-mail I just got:
-------
Dear Verizon Online Customer,
As a Verizon Newsgroup service user, we wanted to let you know about some important changes that we will soon be making to our Newsgroup service.
On June 24, 2008, we will be modifying our Newsgroup offerings to only offer groups in the Big-8 Newsgroup hierarchies, which are listed below. The 0.verizon.* newsgroup hierarchy will also continue to be available. Users will not be able to post or download from any other newsgroups using our Newsgroup service.
comp.*
humanities.*
misc.*
news.*
rec.*
sci.*
soc.*
talk.*
More details regarding the Big 8 newsgroup hierarchies is available at: http://www.big-8.org/.
This change will not affect your Internet access service. If you would like to subscribe to newsgroups other than those we offer, you will need to subscribe to a separate commercial news service. Please note that your use of any such service is still subject to our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy.
There are no changes required to your software, but you will need to unsubscribe from all Newsgroups other than the Big 8 hierarchies and the 0.verizon.* hierarchy noted above. The following link explains how to subscribe and unsubscribe in Outlook Express:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/171190
IMPORTANT: If you continue to subscribe to unsupported newsgroups, you may experience poor computer performance and slow throughput speeds. Failure to unsubscribe may also interfere with the functioning of the Verizon network or use of the network by other Verizon users, which is a violation of our Acceptable Use Policy.
We appreciate your business and look forward to continuing to serve you in the future.
Sincerely,
Verizon Online
-----
Sounds like if I pay a 3rd party and I d'l too much they'll get rid of me....
This is an excellent point. You're absolutely right. I placed a qualifier on that statement that limits its applicability to a range of children who might not have been abused for profit, but were abused just the same.
Fully agreed.
Huhuhuh.... buhhh....
How dumb can you get? Verizon customers can get Usenet material through REAL news services like GigaNews or a fucking million others. The serious downloaders, and the child porn freaks, already don't use Verizon's token "news service" because it sucks ass (by definition all ISP's free news services suck ass, it's a given).
So, good job Verizon, you made a PR move that actually just moves the problem out of the public eye, which lets the problem grow. BRILLIANT!
This has nothing to do with kiddie porn, Its an excuse to cut down bandwith use. The .alt groups are big with movies,warez and music.
Will the Internet become a walled-garden, where we can only read and post what is approved by our ISPs? I can't stand that idea! I like the Internet as it is now, where we have the freedom to read and post whatever we want. The Internet is our personal playground. We can't let our ISPs and the government take away that freedom. Net Neutrality forever!
I charge forward recklessly, leaving chaos in my wake.
Last night (6/23) I updated my Verizon Newsgroup Directory. It contained 30,205 newsgroups. This morning I did the same thing. It now contains 3,738, 26,467 groups having been deleted. I've moved to Motzarella.
Has anybody else besides Me investigated the possibility of a home based nntp server that receives only the groups wanted and uploades minimal data?
I mean, is that really too much to ask for?
For crying out loud! How many times does this have to be corrected? Repeat after me:
ISP's are not common carriers
ISP's are not common carriers
ISP's are not common carriers
Got it yet?
Here's a funny one - I called FiOS tech support to complain last night and the guy who answered had never heard of usenet newsgroups! Probably not a good sign for our cause.
Has anyone figured out the phone number/email address of the "right" Verizon office(s) to contact in order to protest the decision? If so, post it here for those of us who would actually pick up a phone and bitch at them. If they got enough calls, they might reconsider... It's worth a shot anyway.