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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."
Rules #5, #6, and #7
Verizon, you are doomed. Pissing off 4chan is probably the worst thing you can do on the Internet.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Seems a tad bit juvenile... although this should speak to their target audience.
So Verizon sold me internet service. Implicit in that is service to all internet hosts.
Has Verizon criminally defrauded me?
Obviously, Verizon is trying to provide better service for their customers.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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.
Didn't some kid just get three years in jail for participating in an anti-Scientology DoS attack which was organized on 4chan?
Will that be enough to keep the users in line?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I'm 12 years old and what is this?
But then I'm behind 7 proxies.
Has the blocking stopped? Because I can't confirm this on Verizon DSL.
I was able to connect to boards.4chan.org from a Verizon FiOS connection.
Sadly, it seems that I have contracted Syphilis.
While I don't agree with Verizon on principal, I can see why they might be tempted to block 4chan. No one wants underage porn on their networks.
Anything you say will be held against you.
..te shitstorm is coming. And as this is 4chan so yes the shit in shitstorm is litteral.
Moot himself said on the 4chan status blog that it's only Verizon Wireless from what they can tell.
It should be interesting to see the fallout from this. 4channers aren't exactly the paragon of maturity.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Granted it's /. so I don't expect anything else.
The block is only in place for Verizon Wireless traffic, not all of Verizon's traffic.
Nobody deserves what is going to happen to them.
Although Verizon kind of does, after its service cancellation shenanigans.
*grabs popcorn*
In unrelated news, anybody know what happened to the Church of Scientology?
There's no such thing as a "slippery slope" for you to fall down; this is to protect ourselves from egregious content. Surely as descent humans we can agree that, at times, you have to make a judgment call that affects other people. Finally, everything in this comment is 9000 times sarcastic.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
You acknowledge and agree that Verizon (a) is not responsible for invalid destinations, transmission errors, or the corruption of your data; and (b) does not guarantee your ability to access all websites, servers or other facilities or that the Service is secure or will meet your needs.
So, the service doesn't meet your needs? FUUU
I just visited 4chan from a FiOS connection without issues. The bold, red text across the top clearly says "Verizon Wireless."
That said, I wonder what the reasoning was for blocking it on VZW, and what the outcome will be.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
You should care becuase 4chan has been the source of all internet humor for several years now.
I suppose next thing you do is run anoter apache in port 81...
-Woof woof woof!
I'm a FIOS customer and I can get to 4chan just fine at the moment.
"VERIZON YUO HAVE MADE POWERFULL ENIMEY
ANONIMOUSE IS LEEGON"
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like yelling. Filter error:
ROFL! Best way to bypass the filter...ever...
Rules 1 and 2, dudes.
On my laptop using a verizon PCMCIA cell card.... I can ping/load 4chan.org, pinging boards.4chan.org resolved DNS (to 204.152.204.174) but will not reply/load.
"Perennially barely legal"
Yep, I just tried it myself (FiOS in the Philadelphia area). No problems. I luv you, FiOS.
andnothingofvaluewaslost
They told me it will be unblocked this evening.
I'm on Verizon Wireless and am surfing 4Chan.org right now... Perhaps it is a highly localized occurance or does /. have that much pull?
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Exactly, AC should be rejoicing that we'll have to go back to actual humor instead of 4chan humor.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
...in effect for at least 72 hours since Saturday, February 7.
(Looks at calendar, sees today is Monday February 8.)
For 25 points, this happened to 4chan in WHICH YEAR?
4Chan is just a community. Sure it is full of immature people who participate in illicit and often illegal activity, but the last time I checked, Verizon is not the enforcers of Federal, State or Local law in any jurisdiction. If Verizon thinks that members of 4Chan are participating in illegal activities on American soil, then they are well within their rights (as far as I know) to present their information to the proper authorities who can then take action. Of course this will raise the usual "Your Rights Online" discussions about whether it is legal or a breech of privacy for Verizon to release that information. Nonetheless, you can't have Net Neutrality and then kick 4Chan off the internet. It just doesn't work that way (except in China).
between your comment and your sig
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Except free speech.
...And I didn't speak up, because I was not a 4chan user.
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
How about a NSFW tag for that site?? Some damn fine ads on that page.
I'm not blocked from going to 4chan on my droid... so whats this all about?
Its more like you have a 2 year locked in contract with an early withdrawal fee and that is your internet access, and it is being censored. Not unlike what China is doing. Its not like you can pick another phone or have the choice to. People are locked into their contracts. They don't tell you when you buy the unlimited Internet contract that well its unlimited time but only on the sites we think you should go to. Bait and switch I say.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
I tried to find you but those roads aren't even within a mile of each other...
Can someone illuminate me on why is 4chan so popular. I tried it a few time and it one of the most messy/unorganized message board.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
My Verizon Droid sees boards.4chan.com w/o any issue...
Reality is prettier inside my head...
Whatever annoyances carrying traffic to/from 4chan may have been causing them, how can that possibly outweigh the stings they're going to get from poking the bees nest with a stick?
I take it you're not an ex-marine, then.
I should hope not, if ALL of the internet humor comes from there I'm going home.
Their site got DDoS'd, for which there were arrests made. There was a video made about them, which can be added to the vast pile, and a few protests by people in Guy Fawkes masks. However the "church" (and I use that term lightly) is still going strong and has even sent people to Hatai to preach under the guise of helping.
All in all, jack and shit happened. Operation Clambake has been far more effective at causing them trouble.
If that's what 4chan can do, I doubt Verizon is scared. Please remember that DDoS's are more or less ineffective against Tier-1 provider. Their bandwidth is just massive, they ARE the Internet in a very real way. You just can't send enough data to effectively overwhelm their network, you'd overwhelm your own before then. Also they can strike back by simply shutting down ISPs that don't disconnect DDoSer's, effectively banning the ISP from a large portion of the net.
So I really doubt much happens to Verizon. A DDoS or the like will be ineffective and should the idiots start taking it in to the real world and trying to throw bricks through windows or the like, well they'll quickly discover that is extremely easy to track and the police WILL bust you, especially when there's a big company pressuring them to do so.
Get it right, you can sue for OVER 9000! dollars.
Or 8000, in the original Japanese...
Bow-ties are cool.
It was just spelled "4chan"....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I don't access 4chan but I am on the phone with their tech support voicing my displeasure with their filtering of my internet. Verizon offers parental access controls that should be more than enough. Unfortunately, their rank and file support guys knows nothing about this and you end up running in circles getting a straight answer.
By coincidence, thousands of parents who use Verizon for their internet access have noticed, for the past several days, that their email downloads and web page visits have inexplicably sped up ten-fold.
#DeleteChrome
You misspelled "eBaum's World". Hope this helps!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
the correct quote is
"First they came for 4chan, and I did not speak out--because I was looking at boobies;
Then they came for fark, and I did not speak out--because I was looking at boobies;
Then they came for slashdot, and I did not speak out--because I was looking at boobies;
Then they came for the boobies-and I started building truckbombs, mailing anthrax, and hijacking airplanes."
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
./s
or something.
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
Except your basic human rights.
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
some anonymous coward says he spoke with someone and the problem will be fixed?
well i just rang up obama and he said we'll have belgian style socialist waffles for every man, woman and child in this country in time for midterm elections
oh, that's absurd?
but you just modded an anonymous yahoo "informative" on the same fucking criteria
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It may fall afoul of network neutrality rules, but probably doesn't violate their terms of service, and they might have picked 4chan just to make the network neutrality rules seem "anti-children".
If your a Verizon customer however, you should cancel their service insisting upon not paying early termination fees, and notifying your bank that Verizon is no longer allowed to deduct money from your account. You may need to threaten to bad mouth them all over the internet and/or sue them in small claims court before they lay off the fees of course.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Why does this surprise anyone? They randomly blocked our mail server from sending SMS messages, even though we are on no blacklists, have SPF & SNDS setup, etc. It's impossible to get through to them (anyone have a good email/phone contact) and we finally got someone at Verizon Wireless to fight through the red-tape and get us restored, even though they swear they didn't change anything it started working after days of complaining, and dozens of angry firefighters calling them (we do text messaging for multiple fire departments) They've done this many times to our email server as well. I still love how Verizon/Comcast block Port 25 thinking that moving to a new port will do anything to truely stop spam.
Ignore all the cries of andnothingofvaluewaslost, 4chan is a valuable part of the Internet culture, like slashdot and hotmail... even geocities.
Also, all the people quoting "At first they came for" are also right, you can't expect freedom to be there free of charge forever.
So this specific event isn't real censorship, it only covers droid users, and will probably only be temporary.
The problem is that this demonstrates how fragile the system has grown. It was supposed to withstand a nuclear holocaust, but corporate AND government interest in controlling it will ultimately harm freedom of speech for everyone.
And you can't expect your ISP and your government to protect your freedom.
The solution? Tor, FreeNET, etc,
E-mail encription has been a reality for years yet few people use it etc,
We are not soldiers, we are developers, sysadmins, Internet users, geeks, husbands, fathers, brothers, sons (wives, mothers, sisters, daughters).
Regardless if you like 4chan or not or whether this turns out to be real censorship or a mistake, take this opportunity to consider if you are educating others about secure options for information transmission/storage, etc.
Cryptography protects you better the more people uses it.
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/List_of_*chan_boards
Verizon Wireless. I attempted to access it over my VZW phone. No go. On my FiOS connection, there is no problem. People tend to forget that Verizon and Verizon Wireless are separate entities as Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon Communications and Vodafone.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
there would be no modern chemistry if it were not for the foundational inquiries of alchemists
likewise, there would be no modern psychology without the insights and work of sigmund freud
show some respect for your history. what you believe in today is superior to what they believed in the past. but you wouldn't believe in what you do today if they didn't believe in what they believed in the past. likewise, in a thousand years, some arrogant kid will snort at your brutal crude understanding and beliefs as well. apparently, with all the progress we've made in rationality and science, we still haven't cured arrogance and disrespect
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
to the formation of modern psychology
of course they are bullshit and of course some people still erroneously believe them
as if that nullifies my point: freud's ideas were important to the formation of modern psychology
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I thought there was no such thing as an ex-Marine... 'once a Marine, always a Marine'.
Actually, FiOS offers all of phone, internet and TV, though there may areas where TV is not an option.
If you can prove Verizon blocked the site that worked during your 30 day trial period, you can probably use the opportunity to cancel the contract, due to significant modifications to the terms of the service
Maybe it was supposed to be 2 years, but them changing the service makes it end early.
At least that what's up on 4chan now: Verizon Wireless should be unblocking us later today/tomorrow... (message from Moot) Maybe they realized whom they had blocked by reading the comments here?
Verizon FIOS has not blocked 4chan here.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I have Verizon and it isn't blocked for me.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Dude, sorry! Replying here to undo moderation. I'm a fucking asshole. Meant to mod you insightful, clicked on troll.
BTW: I support your post 100%.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
proxy around the stupid ISP - sheesh
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Is this a meme?
It seems that at least two mods think VZW did the right thing here by covering up. Interesting.
I'm also surprised that VZW's end user wireless hardware would remain vulnerable to UDP attacks.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
What do you recommend?
Cantenna, of course. Because free speech can't be anonymous if they have your billing address.
Helpful folks can also assist by hooking up an open WAP to a nice long range antenna.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
4chan is a bunch of bitches compared to Verizon.
Verizon: Nothing to see here. Please move along.
At no time was 4Chan itself blocked. Ongoing network security team monitoring has now determined there is no longer an immediate threat. Connectivity to those sites is being restored later today.
Link stolen from up the thread, so no informative mods for me.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Some Verizon exec finally got sick of being Rickrolled, and he decide to take out his wrath on the closest manifestation of the internet he could find. FWIW, this is also why Youtube is blocked in China.
The sad thing about tyranny is that it's never necessary to submit to the tyrant. It's a voluntary thing often done in little steps for pragmatic reasons.
But this is the Internet and Anonymous does not have to submit to the tyranny of censorship. They don't have to be pragmatic. They don't have to (and can't!) negotiate. They are everywhere and nowhere. Some among them control vast swaths of the network in official and unofficial capacities. They have sympathizers and informants everywhere. They can accidentaly retire your domain, your IP space, your SSL certificate, without fear of consequence.
The corporation and its property employed in censorship is an instrument of tyranny and "in play". Its personnel are uniformed combatants engaged in pressing the fight and the higher in the tree they are the greater their responsibility. Censorship is tyranny and Anonymous is willing to take arms against it - it's that simple. They're not going to hurt anybody but they can wreck some business and they have wrecked some equipment. They've been known to uncover skeletons in the closets of their opposition and they can be quite resourceful in that regard. They are not the mainstream press, which casts its gaze the other way to get continued access to the play.
Anonymous doesn't have to filter their content to play. They're the pimp that supplied the hookers, the pusher that sold the coke to your aide (hell, Anonymous probably is your aide), the concierge that arranged for the gerbil, the maid that cleaned the room. They were the camera men and edit team for your reminiscence porn. They're the crew of the boat, the doctor that prescribed the cocktail, the bartender, the barmaid, all three hookers including the trangender dwarf. They're your accountant, your divorce lawyer, your shrink, your family counselor and your confessor. They sold you the condoms and ordinarily that's no business of theirs - but dick with them and your wife will find out with the rest of the world but the trail will never lead back to anyone in a traceable way unless it's good for a six-figure book deal.
Yes, it's an asymmetric engagement - that's how low intensity conflicts are fought these days. The corporations have their battalions of lawyers, their purchased senators and congressmen. They have their sheriffs and judges, their warrants and seizure laws. The array of legal means is the baton of oppression. Each individual anonymous, however, can rise perhaps only to the level of midemeanor in his civil disobedience and given their bulk bring down the mightiest corporation or its political tool.
Anonymous has their technology, their anonymity, their will, their access and their mass. This is a Cyber war. They've embraced Patton's admonition "The point is not to die for your country, the point is to make the other poor bastard die for his." The only way to be captured in a cyber war is to express incompetence, so they have no pity for the fallen. Their enemy is a lifeless, soulless corporation, so they have no pity for it either.
Yes, it's an asymmetric battle, and the outcome is certain. Your moral plea is nothing more than the tears of the wife of a vanquished Caesar: "It's not fair! The slaves don't know their place!" What you don't realize is that the proper place for a corporation that won't serve its customer is the dustbin of history.
"Looking back upon his handling of the incident, Roosevelt thought he 'never saw a bluff carried more resolutely through to the final limit.' And writing to a friend a few days later, he observed: 'I have always been fond of the West African proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." ' "
- Theodore Roosevelt
So it is that from time to time Anonymous must shake their stick at the world to prove they are still vital. It's not wise to volunteer to be the one they shake their stick at.
I don't even like the cha
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Hi, is that Verizon tech support? Yeah. I have a problem. You see, I was just playing Battletoads online and..."
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Helpful folks can also assist by hooking up an open WAP
Lately, it's been hard to find an open WAP in my area. So how do I negotiate with these "helpful folks" to obtain the WPA2 keys for use of their networks? (I have a diagnosed socialization disability.) And what happens once the ISPs of these "helpful folks" start blocking important sites as well?
I'm not yet ready to move to a city in CLEAR's coverage area. Please see my more detailed eply to dwillden.
by it's users
And will all those children be allowed to come to the court by themselves, because I seriously doubt their parents are going to take off of work so they can " get the favorite website unblocked ".
At any rate though, I don't know what they are talking about, I checked and it's up for me, maybe the summary should have specified which leg of their network they are blocking it on.
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
From the 4chan status blog:
Verizon should be unblocking boards.4chan.org later tonight.
I'll post a more detailed explanation tomorrow, but the issue is similar to the one we had with AT&T last year.
I am not devoid of humor.
if history didn't happen the way it did then history wouldn't happen the way it did?
radical insight dude!
as if you can remove the quirky personalities from history and history would be devoid of quirky personalities. some other quirky personality would have influenced history
history is not some static process that happens like clockwork. there is no such thing as "started with the scientific method I'd bet we would have come a lot further than we have". hilarious and laughable
this is arguing after the fact that psychology proved to be an important field of study. no one knew that at the time. like if there was no freud some yahoo would have came along and said "lets invest thousands of minds in strict scientific rigor in this odd subject of inquiry now because this field is going to be important, i know it, and you can all trust me about that." yeah right
no one knows what will be important or not before it is important or not. no one goes "don't let the german economy crash because it will lead to german outrage and sow the seeds for the rise of hitler" or "don't let this weird guy marx write a book, it will introduce this bad idea called communism." people write "important" treatises all the time. a tiny few wind up being the basis for major advances in philosophy, 99% wind up being obscure forgotten and useless. no one knows beforehand. no one sees big important aspects of history coming beforehand
the initial groundwork for psychology became important when another strange austrian made a speculative thought process, that was intriguing to other minds, like jung, and they had friendly chats, and some others followed up on the thinking, however unscientific and bizarre at times, and they grew something more rigorous and even more important, and so was swaned a major field of thought. that's the way it worked, and that's the way it also worked when isaac newton saw an apple fall or darwin stared deeply at galapagos finch beaks: quirky dudes having quirky thoughts opening up massively important fields of inquiry. and no one sees it coming
history very much was, is, and always will be, influenced in jumps and starts by certain unique individuals who impart some of themselves in the initial work, because at the time, it is usually the realm of only a few strange obsessives to pour so much of themselves into a dark corner. then others follow
freud is important to the development of modern psychology. fact. deal with it. why is it so hard for you to accept this?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Cantennas can have a range of over 1 kilometer even if you build one yourself. The engineered commercial model should do better than that. How remote is your area? There should be a friendly person somewhere in that range unless you're way out in the sticks. You do have to spend some time aiming it though. You run the antenna cable through a wall to an exterior mount (grounded!) that holds the cantenna. Scan for networks, turn it a couple degrees and try again and mark the finds on the base. Engineering geeks would of course put the thing on a remote antenna rotator. You can also use an antenna amplifier, a high-gain parabolic directional antenna or high-gain omnidirectional antenna to extend the range to several kilometers. The record is 304 kilometers, but that requires special equipment and cooperation at both ends.
Me, I can get three open WAPs from inside my house with the standard laptop wifi but that's not anonymous enough.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
and ignorance of plain old history
and you have a massive chip on your shoulder about freud for some reason
whatever, the intellectual charity ends here for you
have a good one
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it