N.Y. attorney general forces ISPs to curb Usenet access

[Update 6/12 11:40 a.m. Verizon has offered more details on what newsgroups will be removed. And here's background on whether or not Usenet is being blocked.]

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday that Verizon Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint would "shut down major sources of online child pornography."

What Cuomo didn't say is that his agreement with broadband providers means that they will broadly curb customers' access to Usenet--the venerable pre-Web home of some 100,000 discussion groups, only a handful of which contain illegal material.

Time Warner Cable said it will cease to offer customers access to any Usenet newsgroups, a decision that will affect customers nationwide. Sprint said it would no longer offer any of the tens of thousands of alt.* Usenet newsgroups. Verizon's plan is to eliminate some "fairly broad newsgroup areas."

It's not quite the death of Usenet (which has been predicted, incorrectly, countless times). But if a politician can pressure three of the largest Internet providers into censorial acquiescence, it may only be a matter of time before smaller ones like Supernews, Giganews, and Usenet.com feel the squeeze.

Cuomo's office said it had "reviewed millions of pictures over several months" and found only "88 different newsgroups" containing child pornography.

"We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers to ensure they do not play host to this immoral business," Cuomo said in a statement released after a press conference in New York. "I call on all Internet service providers to follow their example and help deter the spread of online child porn."

That amounts to an odd claim: stopping the spread of child porn on a total of 88 newsgroups necessarily means coercing broadband providers to pull the plug on thousands of innocuous ones. Usenet's sprawling set of hierarchically arranged discussion areas include ones that go by names like sci.math, rec.motorcycles, and comp.os.linux.admin. It has been partially succeeded by mailing lists, message boards, and blogs; AOL stopped carrying Usenet in 2005, but AT&T still does.

Many of Usenet's discussion groups are scarcely different from discussions you might find on the Web at, say, Yahoo Groups. Because there's no central authority, however--Usenet servers exchange messages in a cooperative, peer-to-peer manner--politicians are more likely to look askance at the concept. (For that matter, so is the Recording Industry Association of America.)

It's true that of the three broadband providers Cuomo singled out, only Time Warner Cable will cease to offer Usenet. Sprint is cutting off the alt.* hierarchy, Usenet's largest, which will primarily affect its business customers. A Verizon spokesman said he didn't know details, saying "newsgroups that deal with scientific endeavors" will stick around but admitted that all of the alt.* hierarchy could be toast.

Yet Usenet's sprawling alt.* hierarchy contains tens of thousands of discussion groups--one count says there are 18,408 of them--including alt.adoption, alt.atheism, alt.gothic, and alt.tv.simpsons. Ditching all of those means eliminating perfectly legitimate conversations.

"The Internet service providers should not be blocking whole sections of the Internet, all Usenet groups, because there may be some illegal material buried somewhere," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program. "That's taking a sledgehammer to an ant."

For their part, the three broadband providers that Cuomo singled out on Tuesday said that it makes sense for them to curb Usenet.

"We're going to stop offering our subscribers newsgroups," said Alex Dudley, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "Some of the early press on this indicated we were going to block certain Web sites. We're not going to do that."

That was a reference to a New York Times article with the headline: "Net Providers to Block Sites With Child Sex." It said "the providers will also cut off access to Web sites that traffic in child pornography."

That is common practice in some countries. The French government and broadband providers have reportedly inked a deal to block Web sites with child porn, terrorist, and hate speech, for instance.

What Time Warner Cable will do, Dudley said, is remove illegal content on its network when alerted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. (This is already required by law, has been standard business practice for many years, and is not a change in policy.)

Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe said much the same thing: "We're not blocking any access to Web sites."

In the United States, the idea of blocking Web sites is not new. The state of Pennsylvania came up with that idea five years ago, and Internet providers took issue with it through a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology.

The Pennsylvania statute said "an Internet service provider shall remove or disable access to child pornography...accessible through its service" within five business days after the attorney general notified them of its existence.

A federal judge in Philadelphia overturned that law on First Amendment grounds, ruling that it constituted a "prior restraint on protected expression" and that its "extraterritorial effect violates the dormant Commerce Clause" of the U.S. Constitution.

New York's attorney general surely knows about that precedent. That is probably why he settled for strong-arming broadband providers into curbing Usenet--perhaps with the threat of a press conference that would all but accuse the providers of trafficking in child porn--instead of the far more difficult process of defending a law requiring them to curb Usenet.

[couldnotunregister]

Talk about throwing out the "baby with the bathwater". Closing off access to all USENET would be an insane abuse of ISP power. I frequently consult USENET on a wide variety of topics, specifically computer and scientific groups. If we apply "reductio ad absurdem", why not just ban cameras?

[bugm3n0t]

Banning cameras isn't enough. We should ban children.

[mrorie]

Pretty amazing that a simple request like this could pressure a company to eliminate all of the alt.* heirarchy. I'm assuming that most of these companies saw the bandwidth that's required to host the alt.binaries.* heirarchy and decided to simply through the baby out with the bathwater, as the baby no doubt costs them quite a bit of money.

I'm curious whether or not the AGs will go after giganews and the like next.

[darose2]

Wow! Is anyone else as concerned about this as I?

So in other words, by executive fiat, a huge majority of Internet users in the New York City area will be restricted from accessing a large swath of the Internet ... because a small portion of it carries kiddie porn?!?!?!? What country is this?!?!?!?

Hell, let's just cave on this completely. There's kiddie porn elsewhere on the Internet, so let's just censor the *entire* Internet. There's kiddie porn available in some magazines, so let's shut down all magazines.

Un-fricking-believable!!!! Where is the EFF and ACLU/NYCLU on this?!?!?!?

[pugster]

ILess than .0001% of the usernet material out there is probably related to Child porn, yet the NY AG thinks we should ban the other 99.9999% of the materials out there. Why not just ban the internet while they are at it, because people can get their porn with or without the use of usernet.

[Radish555]

This is ridiculous. I actually met my wife on alt.personals, 14 years ago. Of course, we met by swapping child porn but that's besides the point (to the humor-impaired, that last bit about child porn was a joke. I did meet her in alt.personals though).

I still use usenet - there are a lot good discussions and a person can get answers to questions on specific topics pretty quickly. It's nice to have a decentralized place to hold discussions, one that is not beholden to a sysadmin to correctly run a forum, one that's free of blinking gifs and flash ads. It is uncensored too, for the most part (except for the moderated groups) but that's the price of freedom.

[craig33761]

I registered to this site just to tell you how hard I was laughing when I read your "met by swapping" line. That came out of nowhere! -thanks

[JCPayne]

This is a dangerous precident....
Next thing P2Ps could end up banned....
Then I.R.C....
Then Email....
This is a slippery slope.

I say go after the offenders and stop censoring the rest of the online netzens....

[JCPayne]

Chinese/Cuba/Middle Eastern style censorship finally reaches New York City eh?

[faceless128]

It looks like paid Usenet providers are the only way to go, and the era of ISP supported Newsgroups is over. I bet this had more to do with them saving money by not having to support alt.binaries.* than anything to do with child pornography.

[veryconcernedcitizen]

That's why I signed up at a usenet provider that doesn't carry binary groups. Supernews used to provide a binary free feed but they're gone now. So now I use databasix. No binaries. No problem.

[TomL_12953]

There a quite a few free news servers available. Most are read-only but some allow posting as well.

[Major_Woody]

All he found were 88? He must not have been looking too hard then. lol I know a 'friend' who has found thousands! What a dope that AG is. He is an idiot just like his predecessor.

[Lerianis]

Actually, 88 sounds like the correct number, unless they are ALSO counting the 'child modeling' newsgroups that have children in underwear and shirts, bathing suits, etc..... nothing more outrageous than what is in any 'store magazine'.

[JCPayne]

correction: precident ---> precedent

[n3td3v]

Does this include Google Groups?

[declan00]

Well, Google Groups provides a Usenet feed, but not the binaries, last I checked.

Whether or not they're next in the NY AG's crosshairs is a question you'll have to ask the NY AG.

[dogbertbh]

I guess they should have asked Pete Townshend of The Who for his "research" on child porn

[v35_pilot]

IMO the big three ISPs have been looking to get rid of USENET for at least a few years now primarily for financial reasons (cost of providing USENET versus a reduced benefit to subscriber growth by providing USENET) and perhaps backdoor deals with media companies to prevent piracy. This order by the NY AG was the most noble excuse in their eyes to pull the entire plug.

[fokkwp]

"Cuomo's office said it . . . found . . ."88 different newsgroups" containing child pornography."

So Cuomo's staff has downloaded at least 88 images of child pornography? (your can't view images "on the internet" without downloading them first to your own computer via your browser). Doesn't that mean they go to jail, no questions asked?

[fokkwp]

"Cuomo's office said it . . . found . . ."88 different newsgroups" containing child pornography."

So Cuomo's staff has downloaded at least 88 images of child pornography? (your can't view images "on the internet" without downloading them first to your own computer via your browser). Doesn't that mean they go to jail, no questions asked?

[njstokie]

q

[virtual_sunshine]

Not surprising that Time Warner is doing this. That's how AOL was 10 years ago (i havent used them since so I dont know), controlling what people see on the internet (I'm not talking about child porn).

[xona anox]

This really is very simple. Just say no to these ISPs and go elswhere.
In America, money talks - censors walk. I would not waste my time with
junk corportations like Time Warner, Verizon Communications, or the idiots who run Sprint.

[atherworld]

There aren't always alternatives for everyone. Especilaly without paying more.

[luxobscura]

It's funny how it's always the Blue States like New York and California that wind up being more like Police States than anywhere else.

[CBSTV]

This situation is ripe for a protest by the A.C.L.U.