Why ISPs' "Stand" Against Child Porn Is Actually Not a Stand Against Child Porn 283
TechDirt has an insightful article on the recent push for ISPs to turn off Usenet access under the guise of fighting child pornography. Unfortunately, the "stand against child porn" isn't actually a stand at all, it seems — more like ignoring the issue while trying to snag some headlines and good will. "Taking a stand against child porn wouldn't be overly aggressively blocking access to internet destinations that may or may not have porn (and there's no review over the list to make sure that they're actually objectionable). Taking a stand against child porn would be hunting down those responsible for the child porn and making sure that they're dealt with appropriately... Also, this sets an awful precedent in that the ISPs can point out that it's ok for them to block "objectionable" content where they get to define what's objectionable without any review."
Re:Copyright infringement, too (Score:3, Informative)
I guess if they were really really really really really serious, they could do some packet inspection to weed out all these evil potentially-kiddie-porn-laden NNTP packets (you know what nests of pervs places like alt.fan.tolkien and alt.atheism are). The way I read it, it looks like the few remaining big-name ISPs still running news servers shutting them down while declaring "it's for the children", when in reality, it's probably more for the reason the ISP I worked at finally killed the feed, because only a very small fraction (in my case, about one in ninety or a hundred customers) actually using them.
Re:Well DUH (Score:5, Informative)
How about the fact that a 6 weeks ago, Roadrunner stopped serving Usenet altogether?
USENET least of my worries. (Score:4, Informative)
Have you had a chance to read the new article about Child porn and Cable companies letting a private organization dictate their content?
Check this out
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9994159-46.html [cnet.com]
This scares me a hell of a lot more than usenet. Usenet is basically used by the more "in" technical crowd.
Standard websites and family photos of bathing children etc have in the past been called Child Porn when parents try to develop harmless photos. This went away for a long time because of the digital age... Now these buggers will be able to repeat the same crap with more innocent photo's against parents who are not doing anything wrong.
There is real child porn out there.. I get that.. and kids should be protected... protect the children ... yata yata...
But giving an unsupervised private organization complete control over the vast majority of US web space content is pretty scary stuff.
Re:Copyright infringement, too (Score:5, Informative)
The other funny thing is that while the summary cries "Usenet", TFA only mentions Usenet in passing, and the article to which it connects does not mention Usenet at all. That is basically a copy of the same article that was posted here a short while ago which didn't mention Usenet either.
From TFA:
All 18 cable companies have agreed to use NCMEC's list of active Web sites identified as containing child pornography, to ensure that no such site is hosted on servers owned or controlled by those companies.
(emphasis mine)
Why on earth are people screaming "They are turning of Usenet!"?
Re:Copyright infringement, too (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know about any other ISP, but Verizon dropped all but the "Big 8" without warning or explanation about three weeks ago.
Re:Copyright infringement, too (Score:5, Informative)
It appears all they're doing is not hosting in their local NNTP cache the listed newsgroups
That's what I've gathered also. Cuomo's (D., NY State AG) people have lists of groups and sites they've identified according to some criteria and those groups and sites will be blocked and dehosted.
You have to click through link in this Slashdot story and the link in the first TechDirt story to another TechDirt story [techdirt.com] before you discover that specific usenet groups are being targetted. Characterizing this as "turn off Usenet access" is a lie and the referrers, including Slashdot, are lying.
The related story [ncta.com] linked earlier today by Slashdot makes it clear that the websites being targetted (as opposed to newsgroups) are those actually hosted by the ISPs involved; no "firewall for the children". They are dehosting sites they host, not filtering. Right or wrong this is an enforcement of their existing "acceptable use policies", which Cuomo claims they have neglected.
The ISPs are being browbeat by a politician that is threatening fines. Don't like it? Vote the Fuck out of office. ISPs aren't at fault here.
Slashdot editors: I decline to assume the intended level of apoplexy based on your lies. Sorry to disappoint.
Re:Copyright infringement, too (Score:4, Informative)
Howto for Ubuntu is here [ubuntuforums.org].
Welcome to Salem (Score:3, Informative)
It's not just CP and ISPs and DCMA either. Here in California, it's the proposed AB1634, which in its new incarnation allows anyone to accuse without merit, and the accusation WILL be taken as proof of guilt, with absolutely no recourse and no protection from the Bill of Rights. That it happens to target pets is irrelevant. What's truly scary is how it codifies witch-hunting. And once that precedent is back in legal force, ANY aspect of our lives can far more readily follow the same legislative and regulatory path.
Welcome to Salem, in the year of our Lord 1689. [umkc.edu]
Re:Copyright infringement, too (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not sure if trn supports it (I couldn't figure it out in a few minutes of searching), but it looks like alpine (http://www.washington.edu/alpine/ [washington.edu]) does have SSL capabilities for news.
Re:Copyright infringement, too (Score:3, Informative)
Thanks for reinventing...Usenet. You just described how Usenet was originally designed to function. :)