Verizon censors the WEB, 100,000 newsgroups BLOCKED

i cant believe it has finally happened,but i don't think this is the end. the first amendment has just been flushed down the toilet. i don't advocate child porn in any way,but i don't see wht 100,000 newsgroups were censored because of 88. this is going to lead to the destruction of the internet as we know it

Verizon has released details of the agreement it and other ISPs signed last week to block access to Usenet groups that have been caught trafficking child pornography. Instead of simply blocking the handful of offending groups, however, Verizon has decided to enforce a blanket ban on what could be tens of thousands of completely innocent groups.

It all started when New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo enlisted the help of Verizon and other ISPs with his assault on child pornography spread through Usenet groups. A while ago, Cuomo's investigators submitted anonymous reports to ISPs like Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner Cable about child pornography images stored on their servers and trafficked through Usenet groups. When the ISPs did nothing—failing to uphold their policy of taking swift action against peddlers of child porn—Cuomo's investigators threatened to charge the ISPs with fraud and deceptive business practices.

The ISPs bargained with Cuomo's office and came to an agreement in which each would pay $1.125 million to the Attorney General's office and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to fund further efforts. The ISPs also agreed to clean up their servers and block access to Usenet groups that are spreading child pornography, and Verizon has now offered details on exactly how it plans to enforce this ban. Originally, Cuomo's office claimed to have found child pornography on 88 of the 100,000-plus Usenet groups. Perhaps aspiring to win a G-rating from Utah, CNET reports that Verizon has opted to block not just the 88 offending groups, but a whole lot more. Verizon will provide access only to the "big 8," a group of hierarchies that are actively managed and governed by a more substantial set of rules than the banned groups.


link to original article

why hasn't thee mainstream media picked up on this one?

[edit on 24-6-2008 by Spectre0o0]

[edit on 24-6-2008 by Spectre0o0]

at first i thought the server was having trouble as usual...then i checked further. when i clicked on the first highlighted sentence in the article ,i was linked to another story about how the french have gone even further. here's the link to that article. DOES THIS SCARE ANYONE?


LINK TO SECOND ARTICLE

[edit on 24-6-2008 by Spectre0o0]

Witch hunters and book burners.Ban idiots!

Pretty freaky stuff. This is just the first step in testing the waters of the public reaction. Little reaction to this will just give leeway for them to do this to other things such as p2p (oh wait my bad they already do it to p2p)

Net neutrality is on a thin line and I'm afraid stories like this just make it one strand thinner.

I hope people will wake up to this kind of blatant censorship. If I was a paying Verizon customer this kind of thing would make me cancel my account very quickly.

probably the most important article/happening on the web,and nobody cares.
when they start slicing and dicing the comercial,people will care. i guess most people dont even know what the newsgroups are. this just opene the door to the total control of the web!



WAKE UP PEOPLE

I hate people who are into child porn, they should have there manhood ripped and blended and fed to zoo animals. However, There so many groups that were innocent - I have verizon, and now i have to pay my newsgroup services. Bite me verizon....I will be switching providers.

Have you even read the article? I think that it's a good thing that verizon is filtering out websites with child pornography. People who like child pornography are sick and twisted.

reply to post by Frankidealist35


And there will be people who say the same thing about conspiricy theorists. "Anybody who thinks there government would carry out 911 should be censored".

Originally posted by Blueracer
reply to post by Frankidealist35

 

And there will be people who say the same thing about conspiricy theorists. "Anybody who thinks there government would carry out 911 should be censored".

Bump for the truth in that statement.

9-11 people who don't believe are crazies... filter their net and arrest them for being unpatriotic....

Since I have Verizon, I am trying to understand what this really means. After reading the statement from Verizon which I have listed below, I get the impression that I can still access usenet groups directly but NOT through Verizon's newsgroups. What am I missing here?

Link to Verizon's statement

The part that confuses me from that statement is the last paragraph which states:

This change will NOT affect your ability to use the Internet or other commercial newsgroup services. The change only affects the number of newsgroups accessible through Verizon's newsgroup service.

I guess the point where they specify Verizon's newsgroup service is where I am getting confused.

First of all, newsgroups aren't the "WEB" just like email isn't the Web. But anyway...

These ISPs that are cutting back or eliminating newsgroup service all together are really just using this child porn bologna as a handy excuse to reduce their services and infrastructure costs to save themselves a butt-load of money. This is the wave of the future. There will soon be a day when ISPs will not host their own newsgroup service and you will have to use a third-party newsgroup provider like Giganews or EasyNews.

But, of course, your bill will not reflect the reduced service.