AT&T, AOL, jump Kiddie Porn bandwaggon
p2pnet news view | Crime:- In AT&T and AOL we trust.
Following the lead of the entertainment cartels who long ago identified kiddie porn as a great way to generate headlines, AT&T Inc and Time Warner Inc’s AOL unit have now taken on the mantles of public guardians —- even though no one asked them.
They’ve agreed to “purge” their Net servers of child pornography identified by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), promises New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo.
An “an unprecedented undercover investigation … revealed a major source of online child pornography known as Newsgroups, an online service not associated with websites,” says the AG’s office.
Newsgroups, eh? Must remember that.
Cuomo explains >>>
The Newsgroups act as online public bulletin boards where users can upload and download files. Users access Newsgroups through their internet service providers.
Last month Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint said they’ll shut down the, “major sources for online child pornography,” say the Cuomo PR people.
“The companies have also agreed to shut down access to child pornography newsgroups, online bulletin boards that are a major supplier of illegal images,” they have him saying, observing the agreements will affect surfers throughout the country, “not just in New York”.
Cuomo also announced a new Web site, www.nystopchildporn.com, that provides details on which ISPs have signed agreements with his office to eradicate access to child porn on their servers.
And the New York AG office has itself joined in by developing a, “new system for identifying online content that contains child pornography,” says Reuters.
Cuomo revealed every online picture has a unique hash value that, “once identified and collected, can be used to digitally match the same image elsewhere,” says the story.
“By building a library of these hash values, investigators were able to filter through tens of thousands of online files at a time, quickly identifying which ISPs were providing access to child pornography images,” it states.
Did we thank Cuomo, et al?
The blurbs in the list of participants look like they were lifted wholesale from the companies’ marketing hand-books.
.
.Stumble It!
Reuters – More Internet companies to remove child porn sites, July 10, 2008
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July 11th, 2008 at 10:00 am
There’s been pornographic pictures – of all kinds imaginable – posted to newsgroups for decades. Long before the MP3 and DIVX were even around. Why did they wait until now before anyone finally noticed?
It’s most ironic that this sudden jihad against child porn in usenet newsgroups coincided with the movie and music industries’ battle against newsgroups as a source of copright infringement. Usenet has for many years flown under the radar of the RIAA and MPAA. Until now, that is.
It’s also most ironic that of all the 50 state AGs in the country, the ones most interested in combatting child pornography are from the two states where the movie and music industries are headquartered — California and New York — states that are not otherwise known for espousing moral values, but are well known for tenaciously protecting the interests (and profits) of the entertainment industries.
Could it be that this newfound jihad against child pornography in newsgroups is nothing but a subterfuge, an initial attack by the RIAA & MPAA on the outer flanks of usenet, which will lead to an eventual full frontal assault on the binary newsgroups, in order to cripple usenet as a source of copyrighted files — the same way usenet is ostensibly being weakened as a method for pedophiles to easily find child porn?
Now that they’ve been pressured to remove certain groups with suggestive names such as “lolita” – that may or may not contain anything illegal – the newsgroup service providers could have a harder time in the future resisting pressure to remove newsgroups whose names include registered trademarks or suggest the availability of copyrighted material.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
AT&T removing access to newsgroups is akin to throwing out empty boxes. Their news server sucks. Half the binary groups are empty and of the ones that do have anything in them, about 50% of the posts are incomplete and posts get cycled off within a day or less. AOL dumped newsgroup access entirely a few years ago.
July 11th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
New York DA Cuomo is the new Internet Nazi.
Newsgroups have been around long before the Net and are a major source of Free Speech
we hear a lot about.
You have to be careful what you post on the web lest you offend an ISP’s corporate sponsor.
In 1933 free speech, book burning and then the yellow star.
If I were Jewish, I’d be scared!
July 12th, 2008 at 1:09 am
A few years ago we were being constantly bombarded with the claims that file sharing supported international terrorism. Judging from the current media silence, it would appear that the terrorists are now respecting copyright.
I’m waiting for witchcraft to re-emerge as the new evil that gets associated with everything that the people in power don’t like. Save the world from destruction by burning Bittorrent users at the stake
July 12th, 2008 at 4:23 am
no, everything evil and demonic is fine and good these days. The only evil generally accepted as such, even ostensibly by pedophiles themselves, is child porn, which the anti-file-sharers can use as an excuse to oppose it. I guess virtually all men must be pedophiles anyway, cause if we look at a flirty attractive 16 or 17 year old passing by, we are branded as pedophiles, yet its totally legal and acceptable for a 16 year old girl to shift out of home to live with a 60 year old man in a sexual relationship and nobody can do anything about it. This is the stupidity, disgrace, and double standards of the law.
July 12th, 2008 at 4:29 am
the cartels are not interested in anything in this world but their profit margins, so u know if they appear to show concern for anything else its merely a pretense
July 15th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Wait, I thought Usenet was only for spam nowdays.