Verizon Blocking 4chan 677
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the and-nothing-of-value-was-lost dept.
from the and-nothing-of-value-was-lost dept.
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."
I feel split in this matter (Score:4, Insightful)
On hand hand this is malignant censorship, the forebode to a society with no free information. On the other hand, this is 4chan.....
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Fraud? (Score:2, Insightful)
Implicit in that is service to all internet hosts.
except that they most likely explicitly state otherwise in your contract with them, of course.
Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, this is 4chan.....
Exactly. 4chan is blocked, and nothing of value was lost.
Re:I CAN HAZ KITTY PORN? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:1, Insightful)
So what's life like looking through the world in rose-tinted glasses?
In all seriousness, do you know how easy it is to block a single subdomain network-wide and how extremely fucking difficult it is to sort through legal and illegal BitTorrent traffic?
Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech is only free if the speech you hate is free.
Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:4, Insightful)
I expect a statement from Verizon shortly.
Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:5, Insightful)
First they came for 4chan, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a 4chan member...
Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if you will, Verizon blocked Slashdot, and the internet was glad that all those FSF loving Unix-beard hippies would finally shut up about "This is the year of Linux on the desktop" rather than hoping for its return and condemning such censorship. Does that represent a portion of the populace? Sure. But if you loved going there you'd still be upset about not getting it back.
I love 4chan, I hate /b/, but 4chan as a whole is a unique collection of message boards with a much faster rate of posting than anything else on the internet, its almost part chatroom. The individual boards all have their own culture and sense of humor, and many of them are great sources of discussion and debate (sup /v/).
Please don't blindly judge 4chan based on /b/ and its stupid memes alone. People got tired of that whole "anonymous is legion" and "lolcat" shit a long time ago.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:Subject to change without notice. (Score:3, Insightful)
That sounds more like a hold harmless clause [businessdictionary.com] to keep you from suing them if you aren't able to access your local radio station's Web contest because of Internet traffic or server failure on their part than it does a notification that they may at anytime decide to block a Web site.
I think Verizon has done something wrong here. If they want to offer something more along the lines AOL's old walled garden, they can't advertise it as the Internet, or at the very least, they need to spell out their restrictions.
When an ISP blocks your SMTP port to combat spam, somewhere in the agreement they spell this out. If they're going to reserve the right to block Web sites, they need to spell this out, too.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analogy IS lacking.
The ISP is not a restaurant with a menu, because on the Internet, you do not obtain content (food) from your ISP.
Rather, the Internet is a cafeteria and the ISP is one of many plate-dispensers in the cafeteria. You put whatever you like in your plate and the plate dispenser has no business deciding if it likes what you're eating, it's just serving plates for you to carry around your food in.
Re:Fraud? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fraud? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd settle for 10! dollars [google.com].
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:2, Insightful)
Says Tom Cruise
Re:And nothing of value was lost. (Score:3, Insightful)
Except free speech.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
it's like freudian psychology (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:4, Insightful)
By saying "We filtered this dangerous food out," you can now get in trouble when dangerous food you missed or slipped past your filter gets served to people. Hell, you can get in trouble for specifically NOT filtering it out, and that's the trouble Verizon is headed towards if they don't say "whoops, this was a mistake."
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org]
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analogy IS flawed. If you're a restaurant, first of all, you're the *provider* of the food. A better analogy would be if you owned a car and merely delivered food per customer requests, from the sources they request. You have no hand at all in the food except moving it from Point A to Point B (in your car). Now, some of that food is going to be rotten, some of it will be downright objectionable, possibly illegal. You don't want to be required to search every single morsel of food that you deliver, because to do so would be an undue burden on your business -- you'd spend all your time inspecting food.
Then, one day, you decide you don't like veal in your car, and begin inspecting everything you deliver for veal. You stop transporting food from places that serve veal. You've now turned from a neutral transporter of food, with the contents and quality of that food being an issue only for the preparer and the purchaser, to an inspector. Now you're liable if someone DOES get something illegal, because, why, you're already searching for veal! Surely you saw this and that was illegal. If you can remove all the veal, you can remove all the soylent green as well, and to not do so would be tacit approval of illegal activity.
That's what's going on here -- 4chan is the resturant, verizon is merely the delivery service. If they are going to police the internet, they're no longer a neutral carrier that cannot be held responsible for that which they transport.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
For the uninitiated... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny thing about other *chans (kusaba or equivalent image board sites other than 4chan), they hate 4chan for the immeasurable amount of shit posting, where in comparison the smaller *chans have slower post volume but better content (usually)
When 4chan goes down, gets blocked, whatever, all these 4channers start migrating to the other imageboards and spread their 4channiness around either HAI GUISE IM GONNA POST HERE WHILE 4CHAN IS DOWN, K or just bitching about how they can't get on /b/.
So the members of these smaller boards realize 4chan needs to be alive to function as sort of a floodgate of retardation. I'm sure this principal applies to more than just *chan style boards though.
Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:1, Insightful)
On hand hand this is malignant censorship, the forebode to a society with no free information. On the other hand, this is 4chan.....
This is kind of the point, when looking to infringe on your rights they start with an unpopular target.
Invasive searches at the border? But you don't want the terrorists to win do you?
Thought crimes? Won't somebody please think of the children?
Free speech restrictions on the net? We do it to catch the pedo's and terrorists
Start with a group nobody will stand up for, get your precedent of bypassing their rights from them, expand to the rest of society later.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:5, Insightful)
A DDOS attack originating from port 80 of boards.4chan.org? Think again.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, so you feel the terrorists will when then?
Fuck 4chan and the horse they road in on, pissing off Verizon is a little different than going after CoS.
Verizon has FAR money, FarFar more knowledge about finding people on the Internet, and won't have a problem bringing in government backing to find the attackers globally.
They would be attacking the very people that make it so they can perform the attacks. When you piss of one major arms dealer cause you are a retard, the others aren't going to sit around at wait to be next.
Let them attack Verizon, the sooner they do the sooner they'll disapper, and nothing of value will be lost.
Re:Fraud? (Score:3, Insightful)
well... having access to the internet, and been able to access to all items on it are two totally different things.
If somebody's server goes down, are you going to ask verizon for a rebate/refund for not been able to access it as well?
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:2, Insightful)
How is that a troll? I was responding to the statement about ISPs not being Common Carriers (Which they are, and they should be glad for that.) An ISP is a common carrier right up until the instant they start censoring their network, in which case they become legally liable for anything transmitted across their network.
I used to own a 10,000 customer cable modem ISP, I know these things. I've also had a DMCA notice thrown at my company and my lawyer threw it right back at the filer, citing common carrier protections, and I never again heard anything on that issue. (My company did no censorship, so it was automatically considered common carrier.)
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:NSFW!!!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
why the hell is this modded up? (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm guessing that many more people are willing to consider that drastic step now.
But I think you're missing the point. You shouldn't have to move anywhere in order to look at a web site. As long as it isn't behind the Great Firewall of China, you should be able to see it from anywhere in the country. Because that is a part of what having internet access means.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, they are. Demonstrably. They would have long ago forced ISPs to filter if they weren't.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:4, Insightful)
Wish I had mod points. This pretty much makes this entire slashdot story pointless.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:4, Insightful)
And for what it's worth, I spelled out in a successive post why I believe that the all-the-good-but-none-of-the-drawbacks status of the ISPs is a bad thing... so hopefully the more in-depth consideration merits your approval
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:3, Insightful)
Time to dig down /b/ (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:4, Insightful)
We really need to stop abusing the word terrorism into yet another fear talking point.
yes: alchemy is the basis for modern chemistry (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:4, Insightful)
Gore and porn... Isn't that pretty much what the modern vampire has become? Blood and sex?
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not filtering content, they've intentionally broken connectivity to some IP address(es)
Probably due to DoS conditions, spam, or other issues.
ISPs blackhole spammers' and DoSers prefixes routinely. Interesting (and ridiculous) that you think, just because the IPs in this case are also used by 4chan, that it means something different.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:andnothingofvaluewaslost (Score:1, Insightful)
If this attempt is successful, then what's to stop them from going after something else? And then something else? And then something else... and if there's something out there on the net that they don't like then why not hire someone to place something offensive on it under the table and then... get rid of it! That's how you effectively silence competition, and it all starts with getting rid of the "bad stuff."
Move on from there to silencing attempts to defend yourself against a mega-corporation/government when they have legitimately wronged you (or even if you are in the wrong, since the constitution still gives us the right to fair representation in this country, even criminals) and you have mass censorship. We share our rights with a lot of assholes, but that doesn't devalue the rights themselves. Their rights are your rights, and taking them away from them is effectively stripping yourself of them.
Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:2, Insightful)
They are common carriers. The whole net neutrality debate is about them wanting to have it both ways: restrict or rate limit certain forms of traffic while still retaining common carrier status and the liability protection it provides under the guise that they can't be held responsible for the traffic that flows on their network as it is out of their control.
The sad thing about tyranny (Score:1, Insightful)
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 [theodoreroosevelt.org]
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