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.
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.
You have got to be kidding me. Usenet is not a website, first of all, it is a service which archives files and serves as a message board. Plus, there are very few kids out there who can effectively figure out how to use Usenet as it is somewhat complicated. Another thing is the censorship issue- do you feel right letting the government decide what you can and cannot access? That is ridiculous.
I’m sorry, but it are people like you who fall for the bullshit the media force feeds you about things which you have absolutely NO CLUE about.
“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.
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
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)
lnqvyf xlojse rzkt zbxcfug awcbg hjbexf gbsqyt