Usenet Dead. Film at 11

[Eric Cordian]

RAH clipped:

> search tool that would scour electronic bulletin boards for millions of
> "uncensored" movies and photographs and serve up "an all-you-can-eat taste
> of 'the Internet gone wild!"'

There used to be a service called "Boypics", which thumbnailed and decoded
all of Usenet's picture newsgroups for easy Web access.  I think they
ultimately closed down after prosecutorial grumbling, although they were
just yet another way of reading Usenet, and didn't monitor content, nor
log what their users looked at.

The indemnity of Usenet providers over content becomes a considerably more
grey area if the Usenet content is processed to some form other than
articles, even if that processing is done mechanically, without peeking at
what is being processed.

>  Voicenet Communications executives said they didn't know users also were
> using their system to access child pornography until January, when
> authorities seized the computer servers that ran their "QuikVue" search
> program, a lawyer for the company said.

Well, of course, it shouldn't matter if they "know."  I mean, everyone who
has a router through which an uncensored Usenet feed passes "knows"  
illegal porn and warez are included.  That doesn't make them "madams of
the child porn bordello", to borrow a colorful phrase from the Landslide
circus.

>  The company's attorney, Mark Sheppard, said the company had no control
> over what people posted to the groups, and was no more criminally liable
> for their actions than other hosts of Usenet material.

It's clear that the current administration would like to corral Usenet.  
This is the first appearance under the tent of something which resembles
the nose of a camel.

>  Investigators in New York pressed criminal charges against a pair of
> Internet service providers in 1998 for allegedly failing to block access to
> Usenet groups that contained child pornography. One firm, Buffalo-based
> BuffNet, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of criminal facilitation in
> 2001 and paid a $5,000 fine.

Right.  That was the Dennis Vacco nonsense, when he announced that he had
singlehanded stopped an "International Child POrn Ring" and that "Pedo
University" was a real organization.  He lost the election.

When it became evident that they were going to investigate the two
companies Vacco had attacked forever and cost them as much money as they
could, they rolled over, which was good for them as individual
corporations, but bad for the "larger picture."

>  "The case helped establish that when an Internet service provider becomes
> aware of child pornography being on its system, it has an obligation to do
> something about it," said Paul Larrabee, a spokesman for New York Attorney
> General Eliot Spitzer.

You should look at the policy of Giganews over child porn.  They say call
the FBI.  They are not qualified to determine what it and is not child
porn.  I imagine this is true of most ISPs.  I'd hate to think sysadmins
would need to sit and view pictures all day trying to decide the age of
the participants.

>  A federal judge imposed a tougher penalty on a Texas couple convicted in
> 2000 of operating a service that gave subscribers passwords to overseas Web
> sites containing child pornography. A judge sentenced Thomas Reedy to life
> in prison. His wife, who helped run the business, got 14 years.

Yes, send the owners of an age verification service to prison for life
because two of their sites not located in the US were alleged to have
child porn.

Again, this is an example of people who were told by the best legal advice
they could obtain that they weren't liable for content getting screwed
over by a jury and a prosecutorial performance that belonged on the Jerry
Springer show.

My take on Landslide is apparently enjoying a life of its own on the Web.

http://www.p-loog.info/English/ashcroft_lies.htm

The feds are still grepping the Reedy's customer list by country, and
trying to browbeat foreign LEAs into running around searching peoples
computers and taking their children away.  Aside from the UK, where
pedo-bashing is a national sport, there appear to be few takers.

These festivities are called "Operation Ore", by the way.  And the news
stories are replete with factual errors, calling everyone who had an age
verification code from Landslide, a "person who paid to access child porn
on the Internet," for instance.

Of course, if you'll lie to start a war in Iraq, you'll probably lie about
anything.

>  Prosecutors said that even though the couple didn't post child pornography
> themselves, they knowingly facilitated access to it and shared their
> profits with the Web sites responsible for the illegal material.

This is the new crime the Feebs are trying to fabricate.  "Paying for
access to child porn."  This is a step beyond even possession laws, and
could be used to put people in prison for just having a subscription to an
ISP or USenet provider that carries an uncensored fed, or owning an adult
check code that allows access to a single offsore web site which may not
even be illegal in the country that hosts it.

Bear in mind, that the Feebs had no way of telling if any of the 250,000
Landslide customers had looked at anything illegal under US law, or what
sites they had visited.  ALl the convictions in the case from from the
Feebs trolling the customer list trying to sell their own child porn.

So clearly, the next step is to criminalize merely being able to view
child porn if one wished to, whether or not any actual viewing takes
place.

"If it saves just one child."

Kind of like Saddam Hussein's "intent to create weapons of mass
destruction-related programs activities", or whatever the current bar for
justifying Iraq is set at.

>  "It's one thing to seize a server that is being used for a single Web site
> that is illegally serving up child pornography," Morris said. "But to go
> into an ISP and seize servers that have millions of postings on them that
> are perfectly lawful, with no real evidence that the ISP was intentionally
> doing anything criminal, is a much more questionable situation."

Well, one fights porn with fear.  Never clearly articulating what the
rules are by any objective criteria, and slowly pushing the envelope in
the direction you want.

The obvious intention here is to scare ISPs out of carrying Usenet.

Or at least, to force them to block groups whose names suggest they might 
carry illegal material.  And as we know, this will rapidly lead to a 
Usenet where all porn and warez are posted to rec.pets.cats. :)

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"