CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘Newsgroups’ Category

California pols ask ISPs to block child porn | Tech news blog – CNET News.com: “California pols ask ISPs to block child porn

Posted by Marguerite Reardon, Update: This story was updated at 2:55 p.m. PDT to add comments from AT&T.

California’s governor and attorney general are asking Internet service providers to help stop the dissemination of child pornography.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued a press release Friday asking Internet service providers in California to follow the lead of Verizon Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint in ‘removing child pornography from existing servers and blocking channels’ that disseminate the illegal material.

‘Protecting the safety of our children must be a top priority, not just for government, but also for businesses with the direct power to reduce the ability to conduct illegal activity,’ they said in a joint letter to the California Internet Service Provider Association. “

Upcoming Changes in Verizon s Newsgroup Service – Verizon PolicyBlog: “Upcoming Changes in Verizon’s Newsgroup Service
Posted by Eric Rabe in Policy on June 13, 2008, 01:23 PM EST

There has been a lot of reporting about our announcement this week with New York’s Attorney General that we will work to more effectively limit customer access to child pornography over the Internet. We have also seen discussion in online forums about what this means.

Here’s what Verizon will do.

In the case of Web pages on Verizon servers, we have clear terms of service that prohibit posting of child pornography and to do so violates those service agreements. We will review a list of Web pages containing child pornography that is provided to us regularly by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and take down pages from that list that are on Verizon servers. We will report the infraction to law enforcement.

Also beginning June 24, 2008, Verizon will no longer provide access to many of the newsgroups that we had previously provided. We will only offer groups in the Big 8 newsgroups hierarchies, which are listed below. Users will not be able to post or download from any other newsgroups. We have notified customers on the Verizon.net Web site of these changes.

We are not blocking access to either newsgroups or Web sites operated by others. Customers who still want to access newsgroups that are not on this list can do so through commercially available newsgroup services.

Here are the Big-8 newsgroup hierarchies that we will provide access to:

comp.*
humanities.*
misc.*
news.*
rec.*
sci.*
soc.*
talk.*

The 0.verizon.* newsgroup hierarchy will also continue to be available.

Verizon Business, which serves the enterprise market, has a somewhat different solution. Verizon Business is eliminating the ability of newsgroups to carry pictures, limiting the size of the articles distributed through its service, and is eliminating all alt.binaries and alt.binaries hierarchies. In short, Verizon Business will allow access to all newsgroups, but only for text messages.

This change will not affect our customers’ ability to use the Internet or other commercial newsgroup services. Verizon has been a strong proponent of free access for all users to the Internet, and we remain so today.

Verizon offers details of Usenet deletion: alt.* groups, others gone:

Verizon Communications confirmed on Thursday that it will stop offering its customers access to tens of thousands of Usenet discussion areas, including the alt.* groups that have been a free-flowing area for discussions for over two decades.

Eric Rabe, a Verizon spokesman, said only a subset of discussion groups, …

(Via The Iconoclast.)

ISPs: We’re limiting our own Usenet groups, not blocking others:

An announcement this week by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that three Internet service providers would ‘block’ sources of child porn has caused a surprising amount of confusion.

First, some news reports assumed that meant blocking, say, overseas Web sites that are deemed illegal. But Cuomo’s press …

(Via The Iconoclast.)

ATTORNEY GENERAL CUOMO ANNOUNCES UNPRECEDENTED DEAL WITH NATION’S LARGEST INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS TO BLOCK MAJOR SOURCES OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY

For Immediate Release:
New York City Press Office / 212-416-8060
Albany Press Office / 518-473-5525
nyag.pressoffice@oag.state.ny.us

June 10, 2008

ATTORNEY GENERAL CUOMO ANNOUNCES UNPRECEDENTED DEAL WITH NATION’S LARGEST INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS TO BLOCK MAJOR SOURCES OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
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Attorney General’s Undercover Investigation Reveals Thousands of Images of Child Pornography
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Landmark Agreements with Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint Eliminate Child Porn Sources and Secure Over $1.1 Million to Combat the Spread of Child Porn

NEW YORK, NY (June 10, 2008) – Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced landmark agreements with Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint to shut down major sources of online child pornography. For the first time, three of the world’s largest Internet Service Providers (‘ISPs’) have agreed to block access to child porn from two significant sources. The companies will eliminate access to child porn Newsgroups, a major supplier of these illegal images, and will also purge their servers of child porn websites.
(more…)

Washington Post coverage of the New York Initiative

New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, at the podium, is joined at the announcement by, from left, Matthew Sullivan of Sprint Nextel, Jeff Zimmerman of Time Warner Cable and Tom Daly of Verizon.

Internet Providers Agree To Block Child Pornography: Internet Providers Agree To Block Child Pornography – Deals Cast Telecom Firms as Censors

By Peter Whoriskey, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, June 11, 2008; A01

Three of the nation’s major Internet service providers have agreed to block customer access to newsgroups and Web sites that offer child pornography, according to an agreement announced yesterday by the New York attorney general’s office.

The agreements, which were hailed by child-welfare advocates as a significant step, push the service providers to take a more active role in monitoring what takes place over their lines.

But by forcing providers to act as censors, the agreements may also violate the First Amendment, free-speech advocates said.

Here is another review article this time from a UK perspective.

New York talks net giants into child pornography crackdown:

Time Warner torches newsgroups

After discussions with the New York Attorney General’s office, three big-name American ISPs – Time Warner Cable, Sprint, and Verizon – have agreed to a sweeping crackdown on child pornography.…

(Via The Register – Comms.)

Following on from yesterday’s announcement here is a review article.

N.Y. attorney general forces ISPs to curb Usenet access:

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday that Verizon Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint would ’shut down major sources of online child pornography.’

What Cuomo didn’t say is that his agreement with broadband providers means that they will broadly curb customers’ access to Usenet–the venerable pre-Web …

(Via The Iconoclast.)

I thought they might use the British CleanFeed system but apparently the companies have agreed to shut down access to Usenet newsgroups that traffic in pornographic images of children. The US ISPs are a bit slow on this as the UK ISPs have been blocking access to similar Usenet newsgroups since 1996…

3 Net Providers Will Block Sites With Child Sex: “Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block access to Web sites that spread child pornography.

(Via NYT > Technology.)