Comments on: N.Y. attorney general forces ISPs to curb Usenet access

Time Warner Cable pulls the plug on all newsgroups after Andrew Cuomo's office finds child porn on 88 of them. Verizon Communications and Sprint plan to limit Usenet too.

[BlackFoxFour]

I signed up for this privacy outfit last week Ultimate Anonymity and got a free anonymous usenet account along with the tools to remain anonymous from the server. Pretty cool stuff. They are at http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com

[Screwcthis]

I emailed my senetor. Everyone else needs to stop this. Please call or send them a message.

[Laserdisc]

Oh boy, I wonder what Andrew is up to. Whenever something like this happens with Andrew, something funny is going on in the background. He needs to be closely watched. The man always has an ulterior motive.

[rich357x]

Excuse me por favor mister dictator sir, but you see, YOU have no sole authority to force anyone to do anything. You say your team found 88 usenet newsgroups that contain child pornography and you want all of usenet shut down? Hell, why not shut down the internet because a few websites contained it?
Then would you kindly define what exactly child pornography is? According to USA federal law sir, nudity in and of itself is not illegal.
Then, how are you going to enforce YOUR law upon other services that aren't even in New York?
Oh and by the way sir, may I kindly suggest you look up in your archives about a usenet provider the state of New York tried to shut down? About 10 years ago. The state lost the case.

Freedom of speech still rules in America. So please sir, kindly shut the f... up.

[Laserdisc]

Don't know why the author uses the word "force". If child porn and such are discovered where an ISP can do something about it, well by law they have to shut it down or deny access to it.
My worry is what is Andrew Cuomo up to. Child porn on usenet isn't new, why did Andrew all of a sudden picked today to inform the ISPs that it's been discovered on usenet.
What kind of scheme are the ISPs and Andrew cooking up? The real headline should be... "Is Andrew Cuomo being bribed by the ISPs?".

[atherworld]

He's already affecting non NYers, because TWC is dropping all acess for all customers. Him pay big whompum cash, so TWC listens. TWC then uses money saved form no usnet to poay big whompum cash to his campaign.

How you doing Cuomo? AWFUL!

[realpatriot]

Another absurd "solution" by the NeoCons to freedom of the internet. Make no mistake folks it has ZERO to do with child porgnography. That's just the lever they use against companies and the emotional appeal they use to make it saleable to the public while they steal more of our freedoms.

It has EVERYTHING to do with suppression of free speech and control of the internet. They and the CIA have already used Operation Mockingbird to usurp the mainstream media. Notice the blackout on Kucinich's introduction of Articles of Impeachment against Bush yet they were all over the "entertainment value" of Bush doing a "farewell tour" like some sort of aging rockstar?

Hopefully, lawsuits will be filed straight away and put that idiot Cuomo back in his box. What he is done is flat out unconstitutional. Then again, he's also probably one of the ones involved in the false flag attack by the NeoCons and our government against its own people called 911.

Wake up America. Fascism is on your doorstep and in your back yards!

[ranpha]

The N.Y. AG is a Democrat. So Andrew Cuomo is a neocon huh?

[poindexteriii]

THIS IS HOW IT STARTS !!! WARNIG !!! (please note: I believe child porn is a hideous crime)

That being said, anyone who would sacrifice freedoms for safety deserves neither. (A quote from Benjamin Franklin) If we allow any service provider the right to choose for us on any issue, they will choose for us on every issue. Pandora?s box, slippery slope, choose your poison. It is the job of the police to track down and prosecute offenders, not some private corporate entity that doesn't have to answer to the voting public.

Once the door has been opened for this type of corporate censorship of the public domain, all ISP's will follow suit and we will soon LOOSE OUR FREEDOM TO FREELY SHARED INFORAMTION. This is a HUGE DEAL and yet another ploy by the private interest groups to test the waters on censorship for future profits. I.E. today the say they only want to block questionable sites, tomorrow they will block competing sites, and the day after charge a premium for limited access like with plans resembling their cable packages, pay per click ISP style.

[johnxtampa]

You're all missing the point... seriously... this is smoke and mirrors by the RIAA, they're behind this via campaign contributions to the governor.

[Imalittleteapot]

Wait, Wait, and WAIT!!! DON'T YOU SEE!!!! THIS IS THE ANSWER!!!. THIS IS HOW WE'LL FINALLY GET RID OF ALL INTERNET CHILD PORN. How you ask? I know it's so exciting!!! JUST SHUT OFF THE WHOLE INTERNET!!!! I mean, after all, how do you get Internet child porn with no Internet? It isn't just Usenet you know? The whole net has child porn. I say we shut the whole thing off. That will stop it quick. HAHA. I CAN'T BELIEVE WE NEVER THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE!!!

[matchlight]

I worked at an ISP over 10 years ago. It took me 10 minutes to remove all of the Usenet groups that dealt in child porn. OMG it was hard.

[doctordawg]

This is a false flag operation. Every idiot knows the torrents, not websites, are where the most illegal traffic flows. These are the FISA criminal co-conspirators trying to usurp the internet as if they own it, claiming it's only to protect the children, one of the most common argument of cads and liars. This is a huge step towards privatizing the internet.

We are not fooled.

[ralfthedog]

Truth in advertising would be a better strategy.

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Just rename alt.binary to alt.virus.

.

Honestly, alt.binary.porn keeps the anti virus companies and spam botnets in business.

[kil0watt]

Is there a list anywhere of which 88 groups? We might as well know how much baby is getting thrown out with the bath water. Will this precedent doom the alt.*divx and alt.*mp3 hierarchies when Hollywood goons decide to join this crusade against Usenet?

[yo_supermom]

This is their politically correct beachhead towards killing network neutrality.

They just created the precedent in everyone's minds that they control what you can access on *their* internet.

This is huge and it has to be stopped.

[sam99999999]

I don't like child pornography any more than the next guy, but this decision totally sucks.
It's political correctness at its finest...coupled with sanctimonious gutlessness on the part of these ISPs.

I read Usenet newsgroups all the time in my work. They're a great resource for debugging MS and other software problems. This cave-in by these ISP's is a travesty.

[x646d63]

This isn't a surprise. USENET is distributed, effectively peer-to-peer (although the peers are servers.) The point of banning USENET is to *centralize* free speech so that it can be censored. USENET is difficult to censor since speech gets replicated all over the world. With blogs and website forums, the website simply has to be shut down to censor speech (easy to do when you control DNS.)

[nokilli]

It's not Usenet - It's ... children. If we didn't have any children, there couldn't be any child pornography! The answer is simple the U.S. should ban children immediately, and force other countries to follow (like a good democracy)

[Imalittleteapot]

This is even better then my idea. We'll just combine our ideas. We'll ban children and the internet. Then we can all just cry in the corner from all the other things we're afraid of.

[Tod Smith]

If TW bans Usenet as it does it's P2P now testing THEY ARE DONE. They should filter sex USENET for NY servers only.

Why pay the premium? I will go DSL!

[veryconcernedcitizen]

Why didn't they just drop all the binary groups? You can get pics on the web anyway

[petkov00]

Wow, this is so 1999! They JUST figured usenet carries child porn??? Wonder WHEN they will hear about P2P? Probably right around 2015, torrents in 2025+ and free web hosting in 2045 at the earliest.

[SilverStreak1]

Well what if someone has a few too many drinks, gets in a car, and kills someone! We better ban alcohol completely! Oh wait a second....

This is just a spearhead to enabling filters on net content. Bye bye net neutrality. Big business has finally won.