Usenet Blocking Intensifies

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The war against the alt.* hierarchy of Usenet continues as NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has convinced two more ISPs to drop access to part of Usenet. They've also set up the website NY Stop Child Porn, and convinced California to join them in the fight. In some sense, this is rather like bulldozing the slums to fight crime; sure, it might get rid of a lot of undesirables, but it also affects many innocent people, and everyone will now start migrating elsewhere in droves. The article notes, 'Cuomo's new web site signifies that he's clearly not done yet. It includes contact information for 20 ISPs that presumably operate in New York, and text of a letter to send to them to urge that they sign on to the campaign.' And you thought the Eternal September was bad..."

Comments

HTTP

[giminy]

Just wait...if Cuomo discovers that child porn is shared via HTTP, he might force ISPs to drop access to the web.

I have dug a lot of Cuomo's recent suits for their customer/consumer-friendliness (recently he settled with Verizon when they advertised unlimited cell phone use and then dropped customers who talked too much, and also sued Dell for failing to deliver support). This is kind of silly, though. I mean, it's essentially declaring war on a protocol. It reminds me strip #2 of Get Your War On.

Re:AGREED

[Anonymous Coward]

this is for you

Little girls running down the beach naked isn't cp either.

Re:Somebody tell that tool that you can *add* grou

[bcrowell]

It's not just the alt.* groups or the binary groups. My ISP (Time Warner) dropped usenet access completely last month. I'm sure that's what the other ISPs will do soon as well. Gawd, I remember calling my ISP when their news server went down, and it was like pulling teeth to get anyone on the phone who had even heard of usenet, or would admit that they (at that time) provided such a service.

Re:Bring Back BBS

[cayenne8]

"So now ISPs may block access to usenet? "

Unless I'm mistaken, they aren't blocking access to USENET, what they are doing, is essentially blocking groups or encouraging ISP's to drop carrying USENET on their own servers. You would still be free to connect to pay or free USENET servers out there...you just won't have one run by your ISP to connect to any longer.

Re:AGREED

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Take a look at all the newsgroups you listed. What do they all have in common besides being in the alt. hierarchy? Here's a hint. Look at the second item in the name.

They aren't just dropping alt.binaries. They are dropping the entire alt. hierarchy. Including the ones where you can't even trade files.

These people have admitted that they only found child porn in 88 of the 100,000 newsgroups.

Re:AGREED

[Nutria]

then we got a bunch of parents out there that are liable to be arrested and taken to jail for taking shots of their little kids bathing or running around nekkid...

You haven't visited Britain lately...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/06/25/noindex/nbaby.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/06/25/noindex/nchild.xml

Re:they should stop chasing ISP's

[corsec67]

They weren't given life sentences in prison, but they were branded as "sex offenders", which in some ways is worse.

That, in certain counties, means that the person can't live in any house in the county that the person is required to live in. (Yes, they are forced to be homeless)

Re:AGREED

[slaker]

Technically speaking, in the US at least, there's no requirement that there be any kind of sexual act or activity, only that there are minors engaged in something that can be described as lewd or lascivious.

What that means is that if some prude thinks the picture where you're giving your infant kid a bath in the bathroom sink... that can be child porn. That sort of thing actually does happen, and it ruins people's lives.

As another example, there are deeply creepy web sites where parents dress up their 12-year-old daughters in bikinis and miniskirts and get them to pose in very adult (think Penthouse) ways. People have gotten in trouble for that, too. I don't have links. I don't really want to go looking for links, but that stuff is out there.

Bye Bye Internet as We Used to Know It

[realperseus]

Folks, I'm flabbergasted at the lack of outcry on Slashdot about the loss of ALT groups, and/or the loss of Usenet access entirely to internet subscribers. I don't know about you but I consider this action censorship. Instead of chasing down the 5,000 or so pervs that use Usenet to spam the entire ALT hirachy with their "come hither" ads, and post to their junk on their own ALT groups, Cuomo instead decides to "carpet bomb" ISP's.

Perhaps Slashdot is filled with users that are just interested in publishing various "workarounds" instead of addressing the real problem. Here I am looking for someone/something to "rally-cry" with, but nobody is home.. .

Re:AGREED

[Mr. Slippery]

There's moderate to severe nudity taboos in Japan and China

Can't speak to China, but Japan had their nudity taboo imposed on them by Westerners. Originally, onsen (hot spring baths) and sento (public baths) were not separated by gender. Out in the countryside, people worked in the fields pretty much naked.

Shinto still has hadaka matsuri - literally, "naked festivals", though these days people usually (but not always) wear fundoshi.

Old Japanese erotic prints usually depict clothed figures, not naked ones!

Re:Dammit...do you not remember?

[STrinity]

That's the first rule of 1337 filesharers who like to pretend Usenet is some cooltastic secret fount of pirated files. Those of us who've been using newsgroups for their intended purpose of completely unmoderated discussion fora think you guys are twits.