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Comments on news posted 2008-07-11 09:21:14: In June, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint announced they'd struck a deal with the New York Attorney General, agreeing to block access to newsgroups that contain child porn, as well as quickly delete any child porn from their servers. ..
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  hardflipMindfieldPremium
join:2002-02-28
Andover, MA | Nothing to do with child porn This has only two benefits and neither are for children:
Andrew Cuomo gets to pose for the cameras under the headline "Puts a stop to kiddy porn" and gets the attention of potential voters in the next governor's election. "Child Porn" is right along with "Terrorists" as the modern day boogiemen for everyone to fear and loathe. It used to be communism, but they exposed themselves for the paper tiger that they were and nobody was afraid anymore.
The ISP's get to drop a service that was long considered part of the product of internet access, but made no revenue and ate up tons of resources. They are more than happy to see them go.
Usenet is a den of porn, warez and bootleg material no doubt, but there is also a lot of legal and valuable resources available. A good analogy is the debate over gun ownership; should a responsible adult have the right to own a gun despite the crime and murder associated with firearms? Tossing everything out in lieu of some irredeemable individuals seems to the common response to the fear mongering of today.
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Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics. | |
| | | Cutting cost is the name of the game The child porn will just show up in another group without alt.binaries at the beginning, and all the binary groups that had no porn in them, and took years to build will be lost. Don't kid yourself, they are agreeing to do this so that they can limit the load on their networks from the alt.binary groups, just like they are trying to charge people more for downloading movies over the Internet. They were more that happy to sell you 3, 6, 8 or more meg of download speed until people started using it. Now they are trying to do anything they can to cut their network bandwidth cost, while appearing to be good guys.  | |
| | | Election Year Politics? this is nothing but politics, apparently started by the NCMEC, they are the one's getting the $1 MILLION dollars by the previous 3 ISP's, this is all nonsense, i hope the FBI is investigating this to make SURE this has been done LEGALLY, eliot spitzer tried this 3 years ago, maybe to throw people off the trail of his using prostitutes??.. so why is this happening now?? HMMMM... i wonder if the ISP'S were extorted??.. they SURE caved in and came up with the money REAL fast!!.. i'm NOT accusing anybody of anything, but it SURE seems fishy... | |
| Reviews:
 ·Windstream
| It's about TIME! Read the fine print people...
This isn't about porn it's about CHILD porn.
Either you are part of the solution or you are part of the problem. Anyone who can't agree with putting a stop to CHILD porn is as sick and twisted as the ones who look at it.
It isn't just mommy and daddy's job- it is EVERYONE's job to do the right thing. When what you or someone else wants comes before what is right, even to the point of turning your head so you don't see what it is doing to someone else, then you have justified EVERY selfish crime on the books today.
I have spoken out about this abominable crime for a long time. I not only applaud it, I give it a standing ovation and a grand and sweeping bow.
No one looses any rights or freedom in this. You can still find it if you want it bad enough. The internet all by itself is the single most profound and far reaching global freedom that has ever been conceived of. There is nothing else that even comes close to holding a candle up to it. To filter out the worst of the worst, like child porn, does nothing to take away from that. I does nothing to bring harm to the people. In fact, it tells much about the people who dare to go against the popular to the the noble.
No one would turn a blind eye to someone making porn movies with their own children, or their friends and neighbor's children. No one would even stand by while some monster showed their children such vile filth. I don't think anyone would stand by and let someone proposition their wife or husband, or cuss them out, or slap their children... I could go on and on. I know it's true and everyone else knows it's true.
I am not a lesser person because I want this stuff blocked. Neither is AT&T or AOL. I am a better person. And I will not have lost a single right or freedom. My rights are precious to me. But I do not have the right to step on your rights, in order to protect mine. Well children can not protect their rights in the way that adults can. So we as adults have to protect their rights until they can do so themselves. To insist on the protection of your rights, at the expense of their rights, isn't a right at all- it's anarchy and it is monstrous.
I know that many will see this as the beginning of the erosion of all our rights. But to that I would simply say let the strength of your voice lend argument to issues that are worthy. This one surely is not.
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You're an American. You get a free pass, but nobody rides for free. | |
| |  hhawkmanPremium
join:2001-02-08
Port Hueneme, CA
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: It's about TIME! Mercurybird,
No one is arguing the disgust of child porn. No one here is defending Child Porn, or even your right to see or not see it.
What the problem with all this is, is that it's just political grandstanding, that has no basis in fact, and sets a dangerous precedent. There are no "Child-Porn" Newsgroups to block. For this example (i.e. Child Porn), there is nothing stopping it's posting in practically ANY Newsgroup. So if some Scumbag posts something disgusting in a woodworking newsgroup, do we ban the woodworking newsgroup?
Back in my younger days, I used to download movies from a "movie" newsgroup. Someone started censoring/blocking the posts so they wouldn't be complete, therefore useless. The posters just started posting their movies in a group called "alt.Binaries.monkey-butt"(or something like that). If you were in the know, you would know that, and just go there for the movies. When they closed that group down, the posters just moved to another group. Nothing changed.
It's the same for Child Porn (or anything for that matter). You can't effectively block content, only avenues of content. In the case of usenet, trying to block a specific content is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. there's no way to block one bad thing, without potentially blocking everything good.
And THAT is where the argument lies. THAT is the freedom of speech we are trying to defend. Not kiddie porn. I am in total agreement with you that Child Porn is a blight on existence itself, and should be eradicated (at gunpoint to the perpetrator's gonads, if we had our way), but no applause is warranted for this inaction. It accomplished and will accomplish nothing. It will stop nothing evil. It won't even slow it down. | |
| | KearnstdElf WizardPremium
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ | however rather then banning access to these newsgroups they should be assiting the police in finding who runs and accesses them and arresting them, child porn is a felony.
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports | |
| | Reviews:
·Windstream
| reply to hhawkman and Kearnstd
Thanks to both of you for a reasonable and balanced response.
Kearnstd I think that is already happening. There is a government effort going on right now to track the people who are trafficking in it. They are being identified by their IP address. This effort was started by a representative or senator lady in Florida.
All those IPs are being amassed and at some point be pursued by law enforcement. When the big boot will fall I don't know. But it's easy enough to track by IP addy if I understand correctly. And one of the things that ISPs like AOL and AT&T might be doing is just that.
The immunity bill that just got passed will be the crack in the dam. It's going to get bigger. I don't see this as a loss of freedoms or rights. I just see the kind of law enforcement being slowly implemented on the web that we already see all around us in the real world. I do not see law enforcement in my town, my state, or my country to be a detriment to our rights and freedoms. Quite the contrary, they are as important as any militia in keeping order and protecting us all from anarchy.
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You're an American. You get a free pass, but nobody rides for free. | |
| | | Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO | Re: It's about TIME! Mercurybird
What you have failed to understand is that this has nothing to do with child porn. It does two things:
1. It is a politician getting a sound byte. Effectively doing nothing.
2. The ISPs get to save the money that they paid for outsourcing news severs and the save the bandwidth (for those that do not go to third party news servers).
Anyone who wants those groups (and most contain no child porn) will just use a third party news server. The actual child porn guys will just post in groups other than the ones dropped. The net effect is that nothing (as far a child porn) has been accomplished. | |
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brawneyPremium
join:2002-03-02
Frederick, MD Reviews:
·Verizon Online DSL
·Comcast
 ·Callcentric
| Filtering Options Maybe a good compromise is to default user's connections to be filtered but allow the consumer to ask that the filtering be disabled. I use OpenDNS (»opendns.com) at my house so nobody in the house can get to a questionable site... and its free. I think the ISPs should offer such a service. By defaulting to "on" it will help the parents that are not smart enough to know better.
Think about this like a voice phone line. The phone company would be blocking 1-900 numbers "by default" (when the line is set up) but you could make one call to the phone company and have the filter turned off for good. | |
| | Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO
2 edits | Re: Filtering Options Actually if somebody wants to get old school they can just bypass opendns' filters (unless they have changed). Just manually type in the ip rather than the www.
edit: Goto(below) to convet www to ip.
»network-tools.com/default.asp?pr···rter.net | |
|
 DoctorDoomTroll hunterPremium
join:2006-09-19
Becket, MA | Back on track ... This issue is a few ISPs deciding to limit access to certain types of newsgroups provided by the ISPs on their own servers. It does NOT eliminate the affected newsgroups.
Results 1 - 10 of about 213,000 for newsgroup provider
For a few bucks a month, there are numerous Usenet services that provide unlimited access. Stifle the whining, fetch a program like Agent, and use the services. | |
| | | Deceitful ISPs To censor groups that have nothing to do with the case is a sign that ISPs are taking advantage of this situation in order to reduce costs involved with Usenet. Funny how no statement from any of these ISPs state any type of fee reduction as services that were normally included are no longer offered.
Ive migrated to Newsdemon for my Usenet access as they are offering 15% off every plan FOR LIFE for any subscribers of ATT and AOL
See details here
»www.newsdemon.com/blog/2008/07/1···and-att/ | |
|  netwirePremium
join:2001-04-27
Shelby, NC
kudos:1
·AT&T Southeast
·RoadRunner Cable
| My $0.02 I feel that the ISP's should block the Child Porn, as such content is immoral. However when it comes to legal porn, that is - porn not depicting abuse of children or for that matter anyone, then ISP's should allow the home user to decide where or not to block the content. It seems to me that more and more we see parents taking less responsibility for their children and wanting to push that off on Government and Corporations. When I was younger my parents did not monitor my internet usage, but then again they raised me, and paid attention to me - something most parents don't seem to do these days.
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World of Warcraft - My anti-drug.
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| | | In the Name of the Children? Are you serious? Common people, do you really think that the At&t executives had your children in mind when they blocked Alt.bin? You are only fooling yourself, since I can go to the other 70,000 unblocked news groups and post the most illegal content if I so choose!
But what is really behind At&t's decision to block Alt.bin:
$$$$ Bandwidth $$$$ Bandwidth $$$$ Bandwidth $$$$ Bandwidth$$$$ Nothing More ! Nothing Less....
What I plan to do: 1. I will cancel my At&t Dsl account at the end of the month 2. I will cancel my At&t Local Phone service 3. I will startup Dry Loop At&t Dsl at the end of the month and double my download speed from 3Mbps to 6Mbps for $1 more a month. 4. I will startup a Giganews account with encryption because I no longer trust At&t. and finally 5. I will cancel my At&t cellular service and shut down my 4 cell phones...
And Hell no its not At&t's job to supervise your kids..Thats your Job! And don't ask me to go to Alt.Christian.How.I.Should.Live and I won't invite you to Alt.bin.large.breasts !!!! Good day. | |
| | mworks
join:2006-06-13
Faison, NC | Not the answer Their reasoning for doing this has very little to do with stopping child porn.
The reason they are dropping usenet is because it cost them money to run the servers, and it looks good for the companies PR. "Look we are a wholesome company, we are thinking of the children !"
I have used usenet for over 10 years.
When it was really useful for discussing everything from pc hardware to support groups for various illnesses.
Its true there are a lot of bad groups with questionable content. But who decides what is questionable ?
Once you start on that slippery slope of deciding whole groups of things are bad versus judging each instance by itself, it is going to get out of control.
As for the child porn, do any of you really know anything about how its being combated on the internet ? Or are you just going by the news link every so often to keep you informed ?
I've spent some time researching what is really being done to stop child abuse on the internet, because I was a victim of it.
Did you know that last year over 38 people were busted for child porn , BECAUSE of usenet ? Would you prefer that these bastards go underground to secret chat rooms and private file sharing or would it be better if they think they are okay with posting it in an open forum. Let them have their little groups on usenet. And we will be right there to prosecute every last one of them.
Did you know that the usenet services that advertise 'we don't keep ip addresses, or logs' actually worked with the fbi this year to prosecute these bastards. Its perfectly legal because using any of these services for illegal activity breaks the terms of service each user agrees to when they sign up.
Putting up warning signs and taking away their gathering places will not stop child porn. But making them think they are safe , that no one is watching, works quite well. | |
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