Child Item

Site Totals

61432 Questions Answered 270 Categories

News Group Censorship

I was dumbfounded to find that Verizon has restricted newsgroup access to what it calls "the Big 8." Is there any possible other explanation than CENSORSHIP to explain this? It surely can't be bandwidth with all the video downloads that are occurring everywhere else.

In a time when the Chinese look ridiculous for their attempts at Internet restrictions how could Verizon think locking out a portion of the Internet would be acceptable? We have been fairly pleased with Fios but we will be switching to another provider if this policy stays in effect.

Comments

Kathleen

Thank you for your inquiry, Concerned.

We believe that limiting our Newsgroup service to the Big 8 groups will dramatically cut down on the availability of child pornography, which we believe is an important step in the overall fight against the exploitation of children online. We remain committed to combating child pornography and where we discover it on any Verizon server, we will immediately take action consistent with our terms of service to remove the content and report the matter to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Verizon's decision to limit its Newsgroup service to the Big 8 hierarchies does not prevent you or any other customer from accessing alt newsgroups through other Newsgroup services, including commercial Newsgroups as well as web-based services like Google Groups which are available at no charge.

JohnA

It's not censorship. They aren't blocking it, they're just not hosting it anymore. The NY AG is backing ISPs into a corner to get some press coverage for fighting child porn, and rather than fighting him in court, they just stopped spending money to host other than the big 8.

PhilC

I think what you are referring to is the USENET and not newsgroups in general. There are plenty of *private*, but freely accessible newsgroup systems in existence (I happen to be an admin to several of them). In any case, I personally have no issue whatsoever with a carrier providing access to only a portion of the USENET -- many others are doing the same... so are private companies. The USENET has become so choked with noise that the signal is hardly worth it. Plus, there are so many things that can go wrong with USENET feeds and pickups that it has become more of a burden than a benefit to anyone.

And, no, I do not work for Verizon. It's just been my observation having been involved with things like the USENET for about 25 years.

JohnG

Don't think for a second that the groups they removed had anything to do with censorship. Try the bean counters determined that a news server that holds the entire alt group needs over 400TB to have any decent retention. alt.cancer.support, alt.depression.suppot, alt.support.alzheimerz, alt.support.amputee and thousands of other groups were deleted but I really doubt that had anything to do with protecting children.

The idea that they are too hard to manage is foolish. As someone with the experience managing a lot more data at much higher speeds than you will ever see in usenet I assure you a professional can manage this without issue. (He does need a paycheck though) What they are serving up now I could run on my network.

Child Item