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Verizon Blocking 4chan
An anonymous reader writes "According to 4chan's owner and administrator 'moot,' Verizon has explicitly blocked all traffic on their network from boards.4chan.org, where all of 4chan's boards are located. Moot explains that only traffic to and from port 80 is being dropped and they were able to confirm that it was intentional. 4chan's downtime for Verizon users has been in effect for at least 72 hours since Saturday, February 7."
On hand hand this is malignant censorship, the forebode to a society with no free information. On the other hand, this is 4chan.....
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Oh yes, Verizon is sooo screwed, one of the largest ISPs in the world might get DDoSed by a hundred retarded people who will actually have the knowhow to DDoS, while thousands of others will wind up downloading trojans that spam 4chan.
~The roAm
Are they also going to block email, then? How about filefront and megaupload?
Because otherwise it's a hollow reason.
Not that any reason for censorship isn't hollow.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
is it actually necessary, though, that the be a 'neutral data routing service'? Say I own a restaurant. Let's get fancy, call it a Food Routing Service. If I feel that it's immoral to serve veal, or dogmeat, or endangered animal flesh, or something possibly dangerous like pufferfish, then I can do that. People get to know me as the restaurant with that kind of menu and if someone needs something off my menu, they're welcome to go somewhere else to get it but I just wont serve it.. or is my analogy lacking something? Seems solid to me... There's got to be a hundred-thousand other web pages where a person can get images of -*ahem*, that sort, if it's really that important.
Your analogy works as long as people have a choice. In some areas, people only have one ISP available to them as a reasonable source of Internet access. If Verizon was someone's only choice, then they can't really go anywhere else. Or, to go along with your analogy, if you owned the only restaurant in town and there were no supermarkets, convenience stores, etc...
You are bound to get replies that basically amount to "What can Anonymous possibly do to freaking Verizon?!"
They have no idea what they've done. 4chan isn't your average bastion of internet malcontents. DDOS? Please. Kevin Mitnick could be called a precursor, and we know with the Scientology war, they're more than willing to hack meatspace. If 4chan as a group takes issue with this, everyone down to the CEO of Verizon will be essentially fair game for various levels of harassment. They'll have the address and private phone number of anyone who matters within days, and they, probably more than anyone, know how to abuse such information.
I really, really don't envy Verizon right now. This of course hinges on whether or not 4chan will actually care, and that's anybody's guess. It's not a good precedent, though.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
It doesn't matter how difficult it is to do it, by filtering ONE thing, they're saying "Yeah, we can filter stuff." So, now they have demonstrated that they CAN and WILL filter content, meaning anything not filtered is stuff that Verizon is okay with.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
4chan is the mindless id, verizon is the superego of executive function control. the superego attempts to suppress the id. but it will just comes out anyways, in some subconscious way, it always does. you can't kill something 4chan, it's immortal and undead. the mindless id always finds a way
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's not the point. The point is to retain common carrier status, you have certain rules to abide by. The only thing saving Verizon (and other companies) from being responsible (by law) for every last bit of copyright infringement occuring on their networks is that they are simply providing the pipes. The moment they start blocking any of it, they have to block all of it.
I'm not saying it is necessarily what the creators of the law intended, or even what is right (or that it isn't right), just that that's the way it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
One has an army of juveniles the other has an army of congressmen. Which one do you think will win?
It depends on your definition of victory; however in most cases I would bet on juveniles - many are vicious and unrestrained by social norms, while politicians are just greedy and power-hungry.
To put it differently: who would you prefer to meet in a dark alley in a bad part of town - a group of juveniles or a group of congressmen?
"Besides who needs to access 4chan from their phone anyway"
I don't, but I'd prefer to nip this little urge for some dipshit who takes my money to decide what websites I should be accessing before they go blocking access to something that I do have interest in accessing from my phone.
ISPs do not have common carrier status.
That's a myth you need to drop belief in.
Why do you think net neutrality is such a big issue? If they had common carrier status, it would be a moot point.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
In this case they are not filtering content, they are censoring a particular web site by blocking it's IP address range. This represents an infringement of trade designed to favour Verizon's other business interests. First 4chan than others to follow.
I smell a trap though, instigate internet digital 'terrorism' sic, then claim justification for the commercial disruption because of the resultant attacks, meanwhile your friendly professionally paranoids are monitoring (they are short on their quota of harsh interrogation, isolation and imprisonment of children). In this case better to stick it to them in court, it is a slam dunk freedom of speech thing, one case by 4 chan and a class action by it's users.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
See, I'm not so sure about that. This is more akin to kicking a nest of fire ants. Generally—but not always—they'll leave you alone if you leave them alone, but deliberately provoking them is hardly recommended behavior.
4chan is absolutely not a den of terrorists. They're like a microcosm of society, reflecting all the dirty little things we don't like to acknowledge, but exist anyway. It's something most people would not like to confront in any manner, and certainly wouldn't want all those unrelated agendas focused upon them.
Let's get this straight: there is no unified 4chan. It's just a group of loosely associated contributors. But I guarantee if enough of them feel offended, retaliation will seem like a unified force; that's an illusion. 4chan isn't a terrorist organization. It's not even an organization. But humans trend toward common ground, and threatening that is an "at your own risk" proposition.
Like I said in my post, it's yet to be determined whether or not a critical mass of 4chan members will care enough about this to take action, but Verizon is playing Russian Roulette regardless of the outcome, or where any of this stand on the issue.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
People with five-figure uids are expected to be able to look after themselves ;)
[FUCK BETA]
Look at what America has become since 9/11.
When I was a kid it was popular to point to various things in the USSR like the inability to travel freely without "showing your papers" as evidence of totalitarian oppression. Here in 2010 "showing your papers" is as American as apple pie! Fuck, kids can't even bring techie looking projects to school without triggering a terror scare and being in danger of prosecution under insane laws that make it a crime to do anything that some uneducated moron might confuse with a terrorist act.
They terrorists HAVE ALREADY WON, no doubt about it.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
I don't agree with "nothing of value will be lost". We have all heard "first they came for... then they came for... then no one was left to help me." As far as the internet goes, 4chan is the "first they came for".
My webcomic
How is that a troll?
You just learned the difference between throwing out an insult and presenting a well-formulated argument. Being convincing and polite is all about format. tone and attitude.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.