Comments on: Cuomo strong-arms Comcast over Usenet

New York's attorney general finds a novel way to shake down law-abiding broadband companies: accuse them of harboring child pornography and threaten to prosecute them.

[drfrost]

Strong-arm tactics are nothing new. It's common practice for law enforcement. It's common practice among politicians. Yes, we should do something about it. Yes, it's wrong. Apparently we haven't been paying much attention for a long time now... it's no wonder Cuomo figures he can get away with it.

[Empires2]

Coumo is following daddys footsteps. Anything to raise money to sink NY into the bigger hole that it's in. Why wasn't he watching Spitty, I mean Spitzer and Bruno for that matter. What a joke he is.

[brianwolters]

Socialism...it works! (Quoting an ill-informed Chevy Chase)...just another idiodic, political power play. I am not for these pictures at all but you aren't going to stop them until they stop themselves.

[moejj]

I'm not pleased with the ISPs folding to this nazis. i loved reading alt.2600, and the various linux newsgroups which I no longer have access to. What I really want to find is why now that since I'm getting less services for my monthly Time Warner cable bill, why am I still paying the same amount? Since the ISPs are gladly dropping a great portion of service, we should be paying less for our broadband bill. I guess that extra money they are saving is most likely going straight into Shyster Cuomos' pocket. Typical political jackass. "Tuff on crime"..."tuff on porn"...etc. just an excuse for them to be able to further their own political agenda.

[annanemas]

This was really just a business decision by private corporations who decided that usenet service just isn't worth the hassle because they weren't making any money on it. Since the majority of their customers don't use it, or don't even know what usenet is, it wasn't helping them attract many users and isn't likely to cost them many customers either. Legal pressure was just the straw that broke the camel's back to stop supporting a service they really weren't making any money on in the first place. Most Americans' ISP choices are based on only one or two providers available where they live, not the quality of service.

[martin_c_e]

Too bad Comcast or one of the others don't fight this to the SCOTUS (US Supreme Court). NY AG would lose.

[thynks11]

Found more coverage on this here:
http://www.newsdemon.com/blog/2008/07/22/new-york-attorney-general-puts-more-pressure-on-comcast-usenet/
Also, they offer discounts on subscriptions for the lifetime of the account for new subscribers.
I turned into a customer after this news as Comcast has been my ISP for quite sometime.
Its been enough that theyve capped usenet access per month over the last few years, but now having them close to shutting down Usenet COMPLETELY which seems to be the only way the NY AG is happy with, I've needed to migrate somewhere else.
Ive never condoned nor involved myself with any of the illegal groups mentioned, but neither has 95% of the Usenet population either.
Focusing on the destruction of a legitimate community network to combat select groups that can easily be removed seems ridiculous to me for many reasons.

[PoorRichard1776]

[Dr_Zinj]

In my not so humble opinion, Andrew Cuomo is just another mafioso thug in a suit. Which really isn't much of a revelation since various iterations of the Mob have been running the Empire State's political machine from the back seat for years.

The crying shame of it all is that so many attorney's general at all levels of government are actively seeking to destroy the rights and protections of law abiding citizens for their own self-serving reasons.

[kael10]

It's true that Google knowingly promoted child porn & made a fortune. Google have very close ties to mafia pornographers who use children: http://endmafia.com