Cable giants bullied into new child porn censorship deal

[Frank]

Here. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9994159-46.html)

What to say? Who allowed it? Police state?

Sure, child porn is bad, but this allows any random censure by any organization that lobbies successfully.

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

This is another con I'm afraid. If you look at the details (http://www.slyck.com/story1694_ISP_Newsgroup_Alternatives), the ISPs used the opportunities to close down all the alt groups so they no longer had to support them based on 0.0003 percent of postings that were child porn, instead of using them to track and catch the child porn posters. Now the child pornographers will either go underground or spread to other groups.

They used the hot button of "protect the children" to close down something that is overwhelmingly not about child porn. If we did the same for child porn websites, we'd close down every web site. If we did the same for books, we'd close every library and burn every book.

If I had to put my finger on what this is about, I'd pick either politicians trying to look as if they are doing something when they are not accomplishing anything ie. some 12,000 posts out of 3.7 billion, which will just appear elsewhere, the media cartels using this to close down groups used for piracy, the ISPs taking the opportunity to cut costs and services to customers and get out of any risk of confrontation with the media cartels.

Still, there are many good dedicated usenet suppliers, and Giganews is doing special deals for usenet refugees.

[BRiT]

They were hardly bullied into it. Too many of them were looking for a means of dropping usenet as an officially provided service. This gives them an easy escape from that added cost.

[Frank]

This is another con I'm afraid. If you look at the details (http://www.slyck.com/story1694_ISP_Newsgroup_Alternatives), the ISPs used the opportunities to close down all the alt groups so they no longer had to support them based on 0.0003 percent of postings that were child porn, instead of using them to track and catch the child porn posters. Now the child pornographers will either go underground or spread to other groups.

They used the hot button of "protect the children" to close down something that is overwhelmingly not about child porn. If we did the same for child porn websites, we'd close down every web site. If we did the same for books, we'd close every library and burn every book.

If I had to put my finger on what this is about, I'd pick either politicians trying to look as if they are doing something when they are not accomplishing anything ie. some 12,000 posts out of 3.7 billion, which will just appear elsewhere, the media cartels using this to close down groups used for piracy, the ISPs taking the opportunity to cut costs and services to customers and get out of any risk of confrontation with the media cartels.

Still, there are many good dedicated usenet suppliers, and Giganews is doing special deals for usenet refugees.
Yes, I agree. It's a win-win for all parties involved but the consumers: the focus organizations get their censure, the big ISPs get to take down anything they perceive as only costing them money and the media groups can destroy the most important means of unregulated data exchange.

[Frank]

They were hardly bullied into it. Too many of them were looking for a means of dropping usenet as an officially provided service. This gives them an easy escape from that added cost.
Yes, and it allows them to drop any other unregulated data exchanges at the same time.

I'll bet, that within a few years only the new and strictly regulated Microsoft P2P is allowed by the big cable companies as an "independent" way to exchange files.

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Yes, and it allows them to drop any other unregulated data exchanges at the same time.

I'll bet, that within a few years only the new and strictly regulated Microsoft P2P is allowed by the big cable companies as an "independent" way to exchange files.

And it won't work. To quote the famous (and correct) maxim, "the internet perceives any censorship as damage, and routes around it".

[Frank]

And it won't work. To quote the famous (and correct) maxim, "the internet perceives any censorship as damage, and routes around it".
Agreed. Most people will simply take another ISP. Management and politicians often have a quite different view and focus than the consumers.

Then again, count on those managers blaming their lost sales on anything bad the consumers did, instead of their own faults, let alone adapting to the changes and looking for new ways to successfully do business. Like Hollywood and the music industry (don't) do.

[tongue_of_colicab]

Shouldnt be such a big deal as if you want to use usenet you might as well pay a couple of euro's a month for a real good usenet provider instead of using your ISP one.

What they are doing in holland is worse, the police is blocking sites but there isnt actually a list on what is blocked so there is no way to controll what is blocked.

Ofcourse, you can filter anything you want but anybody with some knowledge about networking know its totally useless. Even China with all its effort in blocking content still doesnt come close to block everything out. If you want its still pretty easy getting around. These half assed measures taken by the west arnt going to help the smallest bit.

And even if you do manage to block stuff its not going to help where its needed and that is prevent children getting abused. You can jail 1, 10 or a 100 people who watch that stuff but obviously the person that is getting abused couldnt care less as its not really going to change anything about his/her position. For everyone that you jail you still got who knows how much not getting caught.

[Frank]

What they are doing in holland is worse, the police is blocking sites but there isnt actually a list on what is blocked so there is no way to controll what is blocked.
They do? I didn't hear about that. Can you explain?

[Geo]

This thread would probably have been better in Politics & Ethics of Technology forum, actually.

[Sxotty]

This thread would probably have been better in Politics & Ethics of Technology forum, actually.

Darn right, and none are there unfortunately

[tongue_of_colicab]

They do? I didn't hear about that. Can you explain?

Its been on the news a few times, about how they are blocking sites but the filter is ofcourse working like crap. But maybe I misread it and they have the filter but its not totally in use yet though the news did show a video of how sites were given a blocked message. But its for sure that the list of sites that are blocked wont be available for the general public, only for policy/government.

[Blazkowicz]

are there many newsgroup users? geeks, non-geeks, US, non-US? I'm part of the few % people that know their existence and I've never used them 'cos I didn't want to pay. And the weird ISP dependency, etc.
I'd love to see the 1980's internet but why are there toll boothes and censorship on the way?

[Moloch]

I use usenet for getting erm.. keyboard drivers...

[Kaotik]

Its been on the news a few times, about how they are blocking sites but the filter is ofcourse working like crap. But maybe I misread it and they have the filter but its not totally in use yet though the news did show a video of how sites were given a blocked message. But its for sure that the list of sites that are blocked wont be available for the general public, only for policy/government.

In Finland we have similar system, but I think the list can be found somewhere - the bad part is that it has countless of sites which have nothing to do with childporn or such nor anything else illegal, and then sites which are just pointing out that they're blocking sites which shouldn't be blocked and criticizing the system.