New York forces shutdown of usenet

[m***@privacy.net]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9964895-38.html?tag=nefd.lede
(Basically, because child porn was found on 88 newsgroups,
New York is pushing ISPs to eliminate or severely curb
usenet groups.)

What the jackass doesn't understand is, if alt groups are shut down
entirely as a whole, someone will come along shortly thereafter and
create a whole new hierarchy.

In Usenet, "shut down" means "not carried". If an ISP chooses not to
carry the alt.* hierarchy, then it certainly is going to choose not to
carry anything someone sets up to serve the same purpose.

I think that we can safely assume that anyone who is willing to post
material likely to get them jailed if they are caught would also be
willing to break other rules, such as not posting off-topic material
to Usenet newsgroups. Shut down all the alt.* groups and all new
groups created to serve the same purpose, and they will simply move
to the established big-8 discussion groups. Shut down every single
group except one, and they will use that one. Moderate every group
and they will bypass the moderation.

Trying to stop people from posting illegal material by shutting
down alt.* makes about as much sense as trying to stop people
from robbing banks by noticing that most of them use Ford Mustangs
as getaway vehicles and shutting down Ford Motor Company, as if
they were somehow unable to pick another brand of vehicle.

The intelligent way to reduce bank robberies is to catch as many
bank robbers as possible and put them in prison where they don't
have access to cars or banks. The intelligent way to reduce the
distribution of child pornography is to catch as many buyers and
sellers as possible and put them in prison where they don't have
access to computers or children.

Or they can do as they are doing now, playing whack-a-mole with
our civil liberties and constitutional righs being the only
thing getting whacked.


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Privacy note:

"***@privacy.net" is the most commonly used psuedomym on Usenet,
beating such favorites as ***@nospam.com, ***@x.x and
***@example.com
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=author%3Ame%40privacy.net

Google Groups users are banned from finding out more about
anyone posting as "***@privacy.net"
http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?user=me%40privacy.net&qt_a=Look+up+author

If you want to make it hard for an attacker to analyse your posting
history, use "***@privacy.net" as your email address when posting.
The more people use it, the harder it is to trace any one of them.



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alt.html,alt.privacy,news.admin.net-abuse.usenet,news.admin.censorship,misc.legal.computing

[Andy Dingley]

Post by m***@privacy.net
Shut down all the alt.* groups and all new
groups created to serve the same purpose, and they will simply move
to the established big-8 discussion groups. Shut down every single
group except one, and they will use that one.

They'd still be restricted to the designated binaries groups though,
as anything else just isn't going to propagate.