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

[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: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!