Comment Re:Logical progression: (Score 1, Informative) 579
Verizon is not really "cutting off access" to anything. They are just no longer providing these groups *on their own servers* which they are completely free to do, and good for them.
The only times I've used usenet in the last few years were to download TV shows. When my ISP decided to drop postings larger than a few megabytes in order to fight piracy, I was slightly inconvenienced, and had to switch to an alternate pay service, but I didn't complain. In fact I didn't understand why they didn't do it sooner. They were, after all, *hosting* the content on their own servers.
Now sure, that probably ended up blocking some valid postings along with the wealth of pirated movies and music that could previously have been found, but what else were they to do?
In this case, the solution isn't so easy though. Do any of you whiners have a better one? And before you suggest cutting of just the obvious child porn groups, you might want to read up on how Usenet works.
Anyway, I don't see this as unfair. The moment they start blocking websites that *might possibly* contain illegal material, they would be crossing a line into censorship territory where they are deciding what you can or can't expose yourself to, but in this case they are just choosing to not make the material availaable themselves.
Would you guys also object if a web host cancelled the account of an unmoderated web forum about cars or star trek or whatever but also let people post child porn to their servers?
The only times I've used usenet in the last few years were to download TV shows. When my ISP decided to drop postings larger than a few megabytes in order to fight piracy, I was slightly inconvenienced, and had to switch to an alternate pay service, but I didn't complain. In fact I didn't understand why they didn't do it sooner. They were, after all, *hosting* the content on their own servers.
Now sure, that probably ended up blocking some valid postings along with the wealth of pirated movies and music that could previously have been found, but what else were they to do?
In this case, the solution isn't so easy though. Do any of you whiners have a better one? And before you suggest cutting of just the obvious child porn groups, you might want to read up on how Usenet works.
Anyway, I don't see this as unfair. The moment they start blocking websites that *might possibly* contain illegal material, they would be crossing a line into censorship territory where they are deciding what you can or can't expose yourself to, but in this case they are just choosing to not make the material availaable themselves.
Would you guys also object if a web host cancelled the account of an unmoderated web forum about cars or star trek or whatever but also let people post child porn to their servers?
