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Comments: 677 + - Technology: Verizon Blocking 4chan on Monday February 08, @03:49PM
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ScuttleMonkey
on Monday February 08, @03:49PM
from the and-nothing-of-value-was-lost dept.
from the and-nothing-of-value-was-lost dept.
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internet
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censorship
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."
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Submission: Verizon Blocks 4chan by Anonymous Coward
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DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Interesting)
Rules #5, #6, and #7 [encycloped...matica.com]
Verizon, you are doomed. Pissing off 4chan is probably the worst thing you can do on the Internet.
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.
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Informative)
for about the 500th time, ISPs are not, and do not want to be common carriers.
The DMCA safe harbor provision is completely different from common carrier protection and applies regardless of whether the content host monitors their content or not.
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Funny)
they'll become liable for any copyright infringement going on their network because they're showing that they are actively monitoring and controlling data, instead of acting as a neutral data routing service
Some people simply say that they are not a lawyer, rather than feeling the need to prove it dramatically.
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, your analogy doesn't work as it doesn't reference cars in any way.
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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.
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Informative)
go somewhere else.
In the United States, home of 4chan, Verizon, and Slashdot, there are five ways to get on the Internet:
What do you recommend?
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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...
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Funny)
Remember we're talking about posters to 4chan here:
"Mum, can we move house?"
"Why?"
"So I can look at stuff a million times worse than what you imagine to be the worst possible thing I could look at on the web"
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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.
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Funny)
Pissing off 4chan is probably the worst thing you can do on the Internet.
I disagree: http://xkcd.com/591/ [xkcd.com]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not that they've pissed of 4chan. They've pissed off ME. And I don't know what 4chan is beyond a reputation that it's supposedly more childish than fark and slashdot combined. All I know is Verizon's decided I'm not allowed to view a site that doesn't appear to be breaking any laws.
And if that wasn't bad enough, customer service is pushing it under the rug. I just spent 20 of the stupidest minutes on the phone with Verizon listening to some smarmy shit apologize that I mistakenly perceived that I was being blocked. This is clearly a device issue as he can access boards dot 4chan dot org on two devices with no trouble at all. But he wouldn't even consider opening a ticket until I'd gone through every troubleshooting step in the book. Including a HARD RESET. (For those who aren't familiar with the lingo, that's the one where you reset the device to factory fresh.) Only then would he have opened a ticket. And the whole time, he's insisting that Verizon isn't blocking the site, saying I shouldn't trust blogs. Nevermind the fact that Verizon has admitted that they're blocking traffic and plan to lift the block tonight. After playing along with his bullshit for 20 minutes, I just couldn't stay on the phone any longer without calling him a lying sack of shit so I hung up.
Which, of course, is exactly what Verizon wants. They didn't have to open a ticket documenting a problem. My call just got logged as an uncooperative customer who refused to complete the troubleshooting process.
The worst part is they could have had the same effect if they'd just said, "We apologize for the inconvenience. Some of 4chan's affiliates were staging network attacks and we chose to block traffic from that site until the problem was resolved. There have been no attacks coming from that network today so we're going to restore access this evening." That's it. A simple statement that tells the customer what is going on, doesn't require opening a ticket, and ends with a happy customer. Perhaps even grateful. Or at least one who isn't pissed off.
Oh, and the best part of the call came a couple minutes after I hung up. "FREE VZW MSG-DO NOT REPLY:Start > Settings > All Settings > System tab > Memory > Clear Storage tab Enter 1234, tap OK in upper right of screen Display: Confirm"
Yep, that text message popped up on my phone shortly after I hung up on the tech. WinMo folks should recognize the Hard Reset instructions. I don't suggest you follow those instructions as it will wipe your WinMo phone clean. No explanation or warning came with that message. I assume he sent it for the lolz, hoping I'd follow the instructions blindly.
BTW, if you call Verizon's Network Repair Bureau at (866) 298-5373 as advised by 4chan, they won't do anything for you unless you have a ticket which you must get by calling Customer Care at 800-922-0204. Of course, it'll take you a good half hour of bullshit (and hard-resetting your phone!) to get a ticket assigned. But I suggest every Verizon customer who gives a shit about censorship should call anyway and let them know how you feel about censorship.
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Funny)
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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?
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score:5, Informative)
Are you aware of *just* how many posts are on 4chan? The most active board, "random," has over 100,000 posts a day. I think the entire site averages something like 1,000,000. Per DAY. You just can't effectively police something like that with the kind of set up they have. It was never built for that volume of traffic. They'd need to make everyone register, and that'd take away half the appeal of the place.
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Re:NSFW!!!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fraud? (Score:5, Interesting)
So Verizon sold me internet service. Implicit in that is service to all internet hosts.
Has Verizon criminally defrauded me?
Works fine for me (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a FIOS customer and I can get to 4chan just fine at the moment.
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Re:Fraud? (Score:5, Informative)
Implicit in that is service to all internet hosts.
I bet if you read the terms of service - which you agreed to - you'll find that it doesn't support that assumption.
For example, from Comcast's terms of service [comcast.net]:
Comcast reserves the right to refuse to transmit or post, and to remove or block, any information or materials, in whole or in part, that it, in its sole discretion, deems to be in violation of Sections I or II of this Policy, or otherwise harmful to Comcast's network or customers using the Service, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful so long as it violates this Policy.
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Re:Subject to change without notice. (Score:5, Informative)
you can be sure that somewhere in the agreement there's a section which boils down to "we reserve the right to do whatever we damned well please and are in no way obliged to do anything"
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Re:Subject to change without notice. (Score:5, Informative)
Which in no way protects them from a lawsuit.
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Hassen ijou da! (Score:5, Informative)
Get it right, you can sue for OVER 9000! dollars.
Or 8000, in the original Japanese...
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Do they also block goatse? (Score:5, Funny)
rebellion? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:rebellion? (Score:5, Informative)
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Works From Here (Score:5, Funny)
I was able to connect to boards.4chan.org from a Verizon FiOS connection.
Sadly, it seems that I have contracted Syphilis.
Misleading Summary (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Wouldn't want to work at Verizon support right now (Score:5, Funny)
ANONIMOUSE IS LEEGON"
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like yelling. Filter error:
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:has the blocking stopped (Score:5, Informative)
What the summary fails to note is that this -only- affects users of Verizon Wireless, namely DROID owners.
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Re:has the blocking stopped (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:has the blocking stopped (Score:5, Informative)
http://status.4chan.org/ [4chan.org]
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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.
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Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech is only free if the speech you hate is free.
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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...
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Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:5, Funny)
First they came for 4chan, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a 4chan member...
Then they came for... well, they didn't come for anyone else. There wasn't really a good, next logical step in the continuum. The rest of the Internet was safe. Story over.
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that's not now the quote goes (Score:5, Funny)
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."
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Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:5, Informative)
You have my word that when the government starts rounding up and mass-murdering 4chan users, I'll speak up.
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Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:5, Interesting)
4chan is the radio active waste dump of the internet and for the most part all of their shenanigans tend to stay at 4chan, when you close 4chan it spreads.
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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.
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Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:5, Informative)
"Recently, Verizon Wireless security and external experts detected attacks from an IP address associated with the 4Chan family of web sites that was disruptive to our customers and our network. To protect both, we eliminated connectivity to the IP address. 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."
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Re:I feel split in this matter (Score:5, Insightful)
A DDOS attack originating from port 80 of boards.4chan.org? Think again.
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