Verizon to Block Access to Whole Usenet
Verizon has described the details of the agreement it and other ISPs signed last week to block access to Usenet groups that have been caught trafficking child pornography. But instead of just blocking a few of the usenet groups that had been implicitly named they decided to block all of the groups.
Usenet is a pre-Web technology that, for most of its history, relied on companies, Internet service providers, and universities to operate servers that would exchange messages posted by their users. Each server operator can choose what newsgroups they wish to offer. Today, some companies like Supernews, Giganews, and Usenet.com offer newsgroup access for a fee.
‘No law requires Verizon to do this. Instead, the company (and, to varying extents, Time Warner Cable and Sprint) agreed to restrictions on Usenet in response to political strong-arming by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat. Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups — out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist.’
The ISPs bargained with Cuomo’s office and came to an agreement in which each would pay $1.125 million to the Attorney General’s office and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to fund further efforts.
The only Usenet newsgroups that Verizon will continue to offer customers are the comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.* hierarchies. Customers will continue to be able to connect to other non-Verizon Usenet servers; no blocking is taking place.
Source: Cnet News
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