Gibber-gabber
alt.censored-Verizon blocking access to USENET/News groups
beingzoe over 3 years ago

This comes via Ars Technica, in the article alt.blocked: Verizon blocks access to whole USENET hierarchy by David Chartier.

Where Mario Cuomo found 88 newsgroups of 100,000-plus Usenet groups to contain child pornography, Verizon has responded by simply blocking access to the nearly the entire network.

As David Chartier says in his article:

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.

I just had to include that quote, I love the G-rating from Utah comment.

One could argue that Usenet/newsgroups don’t see quite the same traffic they used to back in the 80s and 90s. Even so, Verizon is now voluntarily agreeing to censor an entire network containing hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of legitimate and innocent discussions in the name of squashing a few problem areas. As we’ve suggested before, this form of overzealous approach could turn into a trend that enables governments to regulate content that is arbitrarily deemed harmful to the public good or even commercial interests.

I for one am appalled. Issues involving child pornography can be confusing. While I do not support the actions of child abusers and child pornographers, shows like To Catch a Predator and now censoring legitimate digital communications is getting a little to reminiscent of the Chinese Great Firewall for my tastes. If we want liberty, there is a certain amount of risk involved, for you, your friends, and yes, even your children.

While liberty might survive a modicum of social limitations and still be robust, in this era of “wars on terrorism”, corporate control becoming unnaturally influential , and a booming security industry that by the laws of a free market continue to grow and expand in order to remain profitable, it doesn’t seem to me the right time to be tinkering with what liberty we have left in the United States. From Patriot act to the suspension of Habeas Corpus the indicators seem to say our liberty is not what it used to be.

For more information please see the Ars Technica article .