New York, ISPs target child porn found on Usenet
- June 10th, 2008
- 5 Comments
Usenet is in the news today, but not for something as trivial as downloading music or movies or anything, but for efforts against child pornography. New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, said today that ISPs Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner have agreed to help block newsgroups known to carry child pornography. Some 88 groups have been identified in the plan, which contained as many as 11,390 pornographic images. Additionally, the ISPs said they’ll kick in some $1.1 million to help stop the spread of the offending content.
That’s the problem with something as unregulated as Usenet. While most of us will use it fairly innocently, maybe grab a missed TV episode or album or whatever, there are others who use it for that type of thing. And it’s people like that that will draw unwanted attention to the service.
ashlieghe (Who am I?)
2 months ago
this is a great thing that they are doing and it makes the internet more safer after blocking these sites and now I feel alot better letting my kids on the internet or even getting on the computer. This is one thing that makes surfing the internet alot more safer for parents with son that might accidently get into those bad websites.
xzela (Who am I?)
2 months ago
“Some 88 groups have been identified in the plan, which contained as many as 11,390 pornographic images.”
88 groups sounds like a lot, however this article conveniently forgot to mention that there are well over a million different groups on usenet, many of which are not dedicated to serving up binaries.
I would imagine that normal web surfing (via port 80) contains much greater quantities of illegal porn which is much easier to access.
Nicholas Deleon (Who am I?)
2 months ago
Yeah, 88 groups is a drop in the bucket on Usenet. I mean, that’s a lot of groups as a raw number, but compared to the number of non-offensive or non-binary groups out there, it’s a small fraction. But good luck explaining how Usenet works to the average Joe.
-na
Tom Woolf (Who am I?)
2 months ago
Farging* TW in Raleigh, NC dropped newsgroups today (6/23) with absolutely no notice.
Being the good corporate citizens they are, and of course in making every effort to help their customers, they’ve pointed newsgroup users to subscription plans that cost $15/month.
Bastages*.
(*with apologies to Roman Moroni)
juimsb gyjplva (Who am I?)
1 week ago
lnqvyf xlojse rzkt zbxcfug awcbg hjbexf gbsqyt