N.Y. attorney general forces ISPs to curb USENET access
Verizon offers details of USENET deletion
Verizon blocks access to whole USENET hierarchy
You really have to admire the bravery of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for standing up to the all-powerful Usenet criminal cartel that no one else dares oppose. At last, thousands of innocent Verizon, Time Warner, and Sprint customers are spared exposure to the depraved rituals of newsgroups such as alt.adoption, alt.arts.ballet, alt.astronomy and so on and so forth, all the way down to those havens of twisted perversion that call themselves alt.yoga and alt.zen. Don't be fooled: obviously those are assumed names. While it may look on the surface as if these sickos are talking about astronomy or gardening or yoga, they're actually trading kiddie porn right under your nose. That's how deep this thing goes. Anything and everything you see is a secret code word that actually means "kiddie porn." Even this very paragraph might be full of sickening perverted filth and neither of us would ever know it!
Moving on...
I need someone to tell me this is a hoax. Hmm, the Telegraph, that's like a British version of the Onion, isn't it? It just does gag stories and satire that aren't meant to be taken as fact, right? Whew, that's a relief! Because this actually being true would have made me sick as a parrot. A dead parrot.
Also, I was literally three blocks away while this was happening, and I had no clue.
Speaking as someone who still reads certain newsgroups on occaision (regardless of the startling levels of spam that pervade much of it): It sucks that USENET is such a third-class Internet citizen that ISPs can drop access to such large swaths of it. However, it should be remembered that there are multiple web portals into USENET, including Google Groups, which seems to include the alt groups. It's not as good as direct access, but it's still available to the determined reader.
ReplyDeleteColbert had a great interview Tuesday, which I just watched tonight, where his guest spoke of new neutrality, digital freedom and how the internet was moving away from the principles that guided its creation and growth. The guest got one in on Colbert at the end: when Colbert asked regarding new entrepreneurs, in his Colbertian way, wasn't it all about amassing as much money and power as you could, he responded "You make it sound like Dungeons & Dragons." Caught him off guard, it did.