New York pressuring ISPs into blocking Usenet
Usenet, one of the first internet discussion systems, is coming under fire from New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, who has convinced several major ISPs to close down access to dozens of newsgroups containing child pornography – and many more that don’t.
Of Friday, Cuomo announced that AT&T and AOL had agreed to eliminate access to 88 newsgroups. This follows similar promises from Time Warner Cable, Sprint, and Verizon. All five of these mega-ISPs have also agreed to rid their web servers of child pornography, as identified by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).
It all sounds reasonable enough so far, but some of these ISPs have gone a lot further. Time Warner, AT&T and AOL have all decided to extend their Usenet crackdowns well beyond the 88 groups flagged by the Cuomo.
AT&T will eliminate direct access to all binary newsgroups - that’s all groups that serve up full-blown data files and AOL have gone even further, announcing that they will block access to every newsgroup there is.
Yes, US lawmakers and ISPs must work to eliminate online child pornography. According the Internet Watch Foundation, an organization that fights the good fight in the UK, nearly 80 per cent of the world’s commercial child pornography is hosted on US servers.
But blocking access to large swathes of Usenet is hardly the right way to go. The pornography will only turn up elsewhere. And these ISPs - strong-armed by the New York AG - are bagging tens of thousands of newsgroups that contain nothing but perfectly legal content.
Saturday 12 Jul 2008 | Paul | USA
