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FTC Takes Out Porn- and Botnet-Spewing ISP

Posted by timothy on from the ayn-rand-would-approve dept.

coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today got a judge to effectively kill off the Internet service provider 3FN, which the agency said specialized in spam, porn, botnets, phishing, and all manner of malicious web content. The ISP's computer servers and other assets have been seized and will be sold by a court and the operation has been ordered give back $1.08 million to the FTC."

31 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. Break out the champagne! by peterb · · Score: 5, Funny

    My heart overflows for this poor oppressed Botnet operator.

    1. Re:Break out the champagne! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      You should apply bound checking, otherwise someone could exploit it.

  2. How is the porn part relevant? by rbanzai · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Supporting/controlling botnets I can understand, but where does serving up porn figure in the shutdown? I can't see how it did.

    1. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by daveime · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because it gets the religious types in a frenzy, and all those anonymous letters and leaflet campaigns carry a lot of weight around the FTC.

      Botnets, spams and malware aren't good headlines, PORN (36 point Verdana Bold Italic) is !

      Because Americans are a bunch of sexually-repressed prudes in public, but just as perverted and fucked up behind closed doors as the rest of us ?

      Take your pick.

    2. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      RTFA - "pornography featuring children, violence, bestiality, and incest"

      Not necessarily the most legal porn. Sorry if I'm a sexually-repressed prude for not thinking kiddie porn and bestiality is OK.

    3. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by The+Wild+Norseman · · Score: 5, Funny

      No more sex in marriage either.

      Way ahead of ya, pal.

      --
      "A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
    4. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by Locke2005 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Free porn: good. Porn spam: very bad (my daughter has an email address too.)

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    5. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by by+(1706743) · · Score: 3, Insightful
      From TFA:

      ...harmful electronic content including...pornography featuring children, violence, bestiality, and incest.

      The "children" part seems relevant...

    6. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by oldspewey · · Score: 5, Funny

      This was one of those comments that made me laugh, then immediately made me cry.

      --
      If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
    7. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by mrsteveman1 · · Score: 5, Funny

      RTFA--they were hosting child pornography sites. That's a whole different animal from the usual porn.

      Which animal is in your usual porn?

    8. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by kalirion · · Score: 3, Funny

      Because it gets the religious types in a frenzy, and all those anonymous letters and leaflet campaigns carry a lot of weight around the FTC.

      Of course. You know that 1 complaint = 1 billion people, right?

    9. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by commodore64_love · · Score: 3, Informative

      I was watching a German TV show the other day, when suddenly a young woman came strolling across the screen topless. Oooops. That's not allowed on U.S. broadcast television (although I wish it was). I'd say we're prudish, or at least the FCC is.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    10. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Informative

      You think child porn is protected by freedom of expression?

      Tell me, whose freedom are you thinking should be protected? The adult or the child? Is it OK if the adult's freedoms infringe on those of the child?

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    11. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by Akido37 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You think child porn is protected by freedom of expression?

      Tell me, whose freedom are you thinking should be protected? The adult or the child? Is it OK if the adult's freedoms infringe on those of the child?

      You're protecting the freedom of the poor bastard who downloaded it by mistake and didn't nuke his hard drive from orbit.

    12. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by LordNimon · · Score: 5, Informative

      Did somebody actually do it?

      Yes.

      --
      And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
      To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
    13. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by IdolizingStewie · · Score: 3, Informative

      It is a slight misquote of an example used by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr in the majority decision in Schenck vs the United States. The proper quote is falsely yelling "fire" in a theater.

    14. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 3, Insightful

      From what I understand about group dynamics, shouting, "FIRE" in a crowded theater even if there is a fire will result in similar outcomes.

      (People telling you "SSSSH this is the scene where Cody Rhodes gets the WarMachine armor!" in hushed tones.)

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    15. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by clone53421 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      -CP is produced. Someone purchases it and shares it online via file sharing. Other people download it from them, making the person that produced it happier as others find out to come to "jasonXXX8yrold" for more files. All people that downloaded it are supporting the production, because they are encouraging the distribution of the file.

      You obviously do not know how this sort of thing works. The people who produce it do not want it widely distributed... as soon as it’s found by law enforcement, it’s a piece of potential evidence to find them and catch them. Hell, anonymous people on the internet tracked down a woman who stomped on a kitten with spike heels... do not underestimate the power of benign things.

      -CP is produced. Someone purchases it, thereby supporting the person they got it from directly.

      Those sort of things are carefully designed trades. They don’t deal with people they don’t trust, and they don’t trust people unless those people also abuse kids. There’s too much risk of being caught in a sting... and the imprudent ones who do stupid stuff like you described do get caught... which is why you think that they’re all like that, I suppose. It’s only the really clever ones who get away with it... and you don’t even know most of them exist.

      -CP is produced. The producer places it online in a cloud-style system, and then monitors to see how many times it's been downloaded. Nobody pays for it, ever. But the producer gets a "good feeling" from being popular, so he continues to produce it.

      They do not do it for the notoriety. That is absurd. They do it because they like abusing kids. The ones who do film it do so mostly just to share amongst themselves. If anything, when their materials do leak it just means they should be even more careful in the future because they don’t want law enforcement getting wind of them.

      http://www.google.com/search?q=wikileaks+my+life+in

      --
      Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
    16. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by clone53421 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You can’t sell, consume, promote, or otherwise utilize a movie without inherently promoting its production. That’s why the MPAA encourages piracy of movies.~

      --
      Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
    17. Re:How is the porn part relevant? by HiThere · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sort of depends on the definitions used. I'm against cruelty, unless the target is a masochist, but...

      Child porn has been used to imprison a 15 year old who sent pictures of self to their 16 year old partner. (I'm vague, because of uncertainty, but I think the 15 year old was a boy. And it's possible that he was arrested for possessing nude pictures of his 16 year old girl-friend [that she sent from her cellphone].)

      Since then I've been a bit skeptical of child-porn stories.

      Also, a man having sex with a small dog is clearly wrong. But with a horse...if it objected, the man would never walk again. And women appear to have been "making it" with animals since the stone ages without anyone suffering. (Well, bar a few who didn't choose to do so, but there the wrong is in the coercion.)

      And incest? Do you *believe* everything you read? How do you know whether they are related or not?

      P.S.: Child porn has been stretched to cover cartoons. Explain to me why I should disapprove of those cartoons? I remember seeing similar comic books when I was in high school around 1960, so I'm certain it's nothing new.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  3. Porn? by jspenguin1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "FTC Takes Out Porn, Internet traffic slows to a trickle."

  4. One of These Things.... by Tanuki64 · · Score: 4, Funny

    spam, porn, botnets, phishing

    One of these things is not like the others,
    One of these things just doesn't belong,
    Can you tell which thing is not like the others
    By the time I finish my song?
    Did you guess which thing was not like the others?
    Did you guess which thing just doesn't belong?
    ....

    1. Re:One of These Things.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Phishing doesn't belong because it's a verb.
      The others are nouns.

      Hint for the graduates of Texas:
      nouns=names

    2. Re:One of These Things.... by GaryOlson · · Score: 4, Funny

      Spam does not belong because it is a food item. The others are just ways to waste time.

      --
      Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
    3. Re:One of These Things.... by RJFerret · · Score: 4, Funny

      Botnets doesn't belong because it's the only one without the letter "p" in it.

  5. Came in for the people who didn't RTFA on Soapbox by ICLKennyG · · Score: 3, Informative

    Found 'em.

    Child porn will generally get you in trouble in just about every western jurisdiction. This is not news. This was not just a singular administrative action born in the middle of the night. This started over a year ago and was the culmination of a legal proceeding where they apparently proved that this entity was actively recruiting nefarious clients to host child porn and other illegal activities.

    This one smacks more of sensationalist summary writing than of government censorship or unconstitutional takings.

  6. Re:Today "malicious content" by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Because think about it. If there is already free porn of it, why make even more of it for what is a fetish for a small amount of people. If it was free and unregulated it would fill the internet making it hard for people to turn a profit producing it on their own which would lead to any economic benefit being reduced or eliminated.

    If you have an audience who wants something and there is no where else to get it (because it is illegal and actively destroyed) you can set a rather high price on it and run a business doing it. On the other hand, if there is so much free CP floating around because it isn't actively destroyed the few people with that fetish go to that and don't even bother to purchase CP destroying the economy of it.

    There are lots of really, really strange fetishes out there but none are so financially successful as CP because of the presence of regulation. In order to fill the small number of people who like CP, more CP has to be produced because it isn't out there anymore which leads to more children being abused.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  7. Re:Is 3FN 3FN.NET? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe so, but their uptime graph really sucks.

    --
    "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  8. What about the providers? by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now, GOOD for the FTC, but where are the upstream / downstrem providers in this equasion? These guys where not operating from random DSL lines, SOMEONE sold them connectivity and KNEW what they were up to...

    --
    "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
    1. Re:What about the providers? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Such a move would serve to stifle admittance onto the internet in general.

      Ultimately, that's probably the aim of the FTC, which is little more than a pro-industry group. This has definitely been the aim of the largest telecoms for at least a decade now.

      They let the internet get away from them. They're still mad that the wild, wooly Internet ever came to exist without their guiding hand from day one.

      The Internet was basically an accident. If it had been started by the "Free Market" it would never have looked anything like the way it looks today, with anybody who gets connectivity having the ability to become a content provider with global reach. Job #1 now is to get it completely under corporate control where (they believe) it should be. They're not going to stop until they are once again the gatekeepers for what people see and do, and every single Internet activity is metered and monetized.

      This is why people like me are so anxious to keep the Internet public, using Net Neutrality laws. We remember how it started, what it was like before there was any corporate presence, and how desperately the largest corporations want to turn it into cable television.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  9. Re:Where/When is the Auction? by RobertLTux · · Score: 3, Insightful

    i would hope that the actual drives themselves are locked in some evidence warehouse in crates labeled with a case number since they will needed as evidence for when they hang^imprison these folks post trial.

    so in short if they still have the files on them a number of somebodies need to lose their jobs (or you wont be getting the drives at all).

    --
    Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge