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Verizon Cutting Access To Entire Alt.* Usenet Hierarchy

Posted by Soulskill on from the surgical-precision dept.

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."

27 of 579 comments (clear)

  1. Nanny Verizon by sciop101 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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]
    1. Re:Nanny Verizon by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Funny

      Bidet? Barbarians...

      Real men get a rimjob from their toilet slave.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  2. alt.binaries.* by Dr.+Cody · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What a coincidence that they make an enormous overreaction which frees up countless gigabits of bandwidth!

    1. Re:alt.binaries.* by couchslug · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ISPs see usenet as a niche market they can dump, so they will.
      Who isn't surprised it's lasted this long?

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
    2. Re: alt.binaries.* by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What a coincidence that they make an enormous overreaction which frees up countless gigabits of bandwidth! Perhaps not. Isn't the whole point of carrying newsgroups for a provider to have a local copy (local to the ISP, that is)? Bandwidth from that local copy to users is cheap for an ISP.

      Ditch that local copy and what happens? Some users will stop downloading these things. But many users would just find another way. For example: other provider's usenet servers, sites elsewhere on the web, P2P programs, etc. I reckon most of these forms would mean traffic from users to random places on the internet, read: much more expensive/troublesome for the ISP than if traffic came from their own servers.

      Personally, I would vote with my feet ASAP if my ISP stopped passing on data for anything other than technical or legal reasons.
    3. Re: alt.binaries.* by v1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My previous ISP did not offer local newsgroup support, so I was left to go looking elsewhere for it. What I encountered was frustrating, because ALL the free usenet services on the network were not complete. Most for example, did NOT cache the entire alt.binaries tree, or any other group that hosted large amounts of data. The few that did were very selective as to which groups they carried, had a low retention (some as little as 4 days) and were god-awful slow.

      The free services came and went on a weekly basis, and every couple months I'd have to blow another afternoon looking for another service.

      So I ended up ponying up for a pay newsgroup service that carried all the groups, for an extra $20/month I felt my ISP should already be giving me. The service was metered, and once you'd downloaded your monthly limit, you were done until next month. But they did have good speeds and almost 100% of the available groups with at least 2 weeks retention.

      Although cost-cutting and censorship are both being blamed here, I don't think that's it. It looks more like a company taking the path of least resistance. The ThinkOfTheChildren tag seems most appropriate. People exercising extremely poor judgement and foresight that result in a massive net-loss in public benefit, under the guise of some holy cause, the only real purpose of which is to shut up a few whiners.

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    4. Re:alt.binaries.* by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Newsgroup feeds use up about 1.5TB a day. Do the math for 14 days retention. It's a heck of a committment.

      Dropping the entire alt tree is an overreaction but it will save them money in server administration and bandwidth - I'm willing to bet 95% of their users have never even heard of usenet (and half of the remainder call it 'google groups').

    5. Re:alt.binaries.* by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Who isn't surprised it's lasted this long?
      Be clear on this: The telecommunications industry sees the entire Internet as we know it as a "niche market" because there is stuff going on from which they are not making money.

      Little by little, in steps of increasing size, the Internet is becoming television. We all agreed that the spam video that came out a few weeks ago of the woman talking about how the "internet will disappear by 2012" was an overreaction and it really wasn't all that bad.

      Unfortunately it is exactly that bad. Do you think Slashdot will be part of the Internet if they have their way? I'm betting that if each of us were to list our 10 favorite websites, that 8 out of 10 of them would cease to exist unless strict net neutrality laws are put into effect immediately. What will it take for you to see that the "free market" effects are going to make the Internet just a memory for those of us who lived through the 80's and 90's and saw the birth of such a remarkable phenomenon.
      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    6. Re:alt.binaries.* by Fez · · Score: 5, Interesting

      We dropped usenet several years ago when the cost kept going up from our provider.

      When we dropped it, we had exactly two calls to complain. Neither of them canceled because of it. This is out of a couple thousand subscribers.

      I was probably the only one who actually cared, and it wasn't that big of a deal for me; Because I work there, I still had access to our upstream provider's news servers which weren't open to our subscribers.

      I doubt Verizon will hurt much because of this. If they lose anyone, it may only number in the hundreds, if that. The cost of the bandwidth saved by dumping Usenet will more than make up for the subscribers lost.

      There are always independent Usenet providers, too, for a few bucks per month.

    7. Re:alt.binaries.* by michrech · · Score: 5, Funny
      Next, we'll need a name.

      I have a few ideas..

      CompuServe
      AOL
      Prodigy

      What?

      Maybe we should change the internet, so that users can't communicate which each other directly.

      Content can be published by companies though. And instead of URLs, we will have a menu system provided with a desktop application.

      We could call this application "Information Manager", and lookup information using keywords.

      That'd rock! And it could be absolutely porn-free.
      --
      bork bork bork!
    8. Re:alt.binaries.* by mrogers · · Score: 5, Funny

      Looks like September is finally coming to an end...

    9. Re:alt.binaries.* by MMMDI · · Score: 5, Insightful

      More importantly, are we expecting these customers to physically move? Because often, the big ISPs have a physical monopoly on an area. Amen, this is the thing that people keep forgetting about. In my little hometown (and the towns immediately surrounding it), we've got four choices:

      1. delaware.net - Can't complain about their service or policies as I was a member for years, but... it's dialup.
      2. Comcast.
      3. Verizon (they aren't available for me, but if I lived a little further to the north and to the east, I could get it).
      4. AOL.

      Those are my choices if I want to get online. I'm not going to be so silly as to pull a number out of my ass, but I doubt that I'm in the extreme minority there.
    10. Re:alt.binaries.* by dissy · · Score: 5, Informative

      If everyone that accessed UseNet just switches to a pay for use news site theres no change in bandwidth... You still download it?
      They just save on hardware. Even worse than that, it costs them MORE bandwidth this way.

      Keep in mind, most ISPs only pay the big bucks for their internet connectivity. The network between them and you (and all their customers) is MUCH cheaper, measured only in maintenance costs. The internet lines have the same maintenance cost, plus bandwidth costs, on top of base charges.

      Before, they transfered all of the news articles Once, using internet bandwidth once, from their upstream new servers to their own.
      Customers could get these all from their news server, which can happen by any number of customers any number of times and there is no extra bandwidth fees to the ISP.

      Now, all of their users will be transferring news articles from the internet to them, each one taking their share of bandwidth from the internet pipes.

  3. Re:so what by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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).

  4. Competition? by getuid() · · Score: 5, Funny

    What happened, pissed off because alt.sex.fetish.piss-on-your-customers is already claimed by T-Com?...

  5. Logical progression: by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  6. quick... by msauve · · Score: 5, Funny

    Someone upload some child porn to the Verizon billing site.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    1. Re:quick... by rubah · · Score: 5, Funny

      well, that's no problem, just log onto usenet and . . .uh never mind.

  7. Where can we go with their logic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups--out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist.'"

    Can we apply the same logic and standard to New York's population. If the state has any areas/counties/towns with a .088 or greater percentage of sexual predators will they restrict the rest of the state from traveling to that area?

    What about other crimes? After all we are talking about everyone's well being. If NY's overall crime rate is greater than .088 then other states should restrict all travel and communications with NY.

  8. Re:so what by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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). HAH! Caught you red-handed, paedophile. It's a well-known fact that alt.binaries.* is a haven for sadists sharing in UNDERAGE EXECUTABLES. Binaries with creation dates less than 3 previous have been found distributed over this network of filth. Hang your head in shame.
  9. Re:That's all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    good luck getting an alt.* nntp feed for any less than $kilobucks$. (also, where are you going to get the OC3 needed to carry the articles to your home server).

  10. Actual Verizon Business Discussion: by WDot · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

  11. Re:obviously thought through by mememe · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because there is obviously no other purpose for alt.*

    alt.verizon-sucks
    alt.verizon-sucks.dick
    alr.verizon-sucks.ass

    --
    -- Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
  12. Re:To protect children... by rhombic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, they'll just do their best to turn all adults back into children, so there's just one group of people and they can all be protected together.

    To my eye, looks like it's been pretty successful so far.

    --
    1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
  13. Re:Wipe their ass in the proper direction? by D'Sphitz · · Score: 5, Funny

    I like to wipe back to front, it makes my balls smell nice.

  14. Re:the problem with filtering by ZorinLynx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MY question is why are we treating the child porn imagery itself as something horrid and evil that anyone who possesses must be arrested for?

    Why not go after the people who MAKE child porn? You know the ones ACTUALLY HURTING kids? Oh wait, that's because this requires actual police work, which is DIFFICULT. The prosecutors and lawmakers need someone to blame, so they blame the people who possess and distribute simply because they are easier to find.

    It's laziness combined with a need to point a finger at someone. And it really stinks.

  15. the last time this came up as an issue by LM741N · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We found suspiciously planted child porn in unusual newsgroups like alt.gardening or such.