Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable are going where no ISPs have dared to go before by completely blocking Web sites and Internet bulletin boards that include child pornography.
This move, occurring under pressure from New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo, dives into an area of the Web that is generally not touched by providers for legal reasons. As part of the agreement, the three service providers will shut down access to newsgroups that distribute child pornography. Newsgroups are Internet bulletin boards where users can talk, and more importantly, swap files. The agreement will also block access to Web sites that facilitate child pornography based upon a list from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
We can agree that the issue of child pornography on the Internet should be addressed, but the route that Cuomo and the three ISPs are taking is worth questioning. Like we've seen with Comcast in the past, this type of content and traffic regulation is never received well.
The obvious answer is to hunt down the violating Web sites and newsgroups and shut them down one by one, but this plan by Cuomo, with cooperation from a few service providers, is obviously a much easier route that accomplishes the same goal.
I don't have a problem with ISPs blocking child pornography-related material, but I definitely have a problem with this approach to combating illegal activity with content-regulation by ISPs. I'm concerned this action could snowball, with ISPs choosing to give other topics the axe, as well.
THIS IS HOW IT STARTS !!! WARNIG !!! (please note: I am a father and believe child porn is a hideous crime)
That being said, anyone who would sacrifice freedoms for safety deserves neither. (Quote from Benjamin Franklin) If we allow any service provider the right to choose for us on any issue, they will choose for us on every issue. Pandora?s box, slippery slope, choose your poison. It is the job of the police to track down and prosecute offenders, not some private corporate entity that doesn't have to answer to the voting public.
Once the door has been opened for this type of corporate censorship of the public domain, all ISP's will follow suit and we will soon LOOSE OUR FREEDOM TO FREELY SHARED INFORAMTION. This is a HUGE DEAL and yet another ploy by the private interest groups to test the waters on censorship for future profits. I.E. today the say they only want to block bad sites, tomorrow they will block competing sites, and the day after sell us acces plans like cable.
If these sites are able to be found and identified, why doesn't the FBI just arrest the people who put them up and then shut them down? At the very least they can shut them down. Why does the ISP have to do their work for them?
Child porn is terrible but we don't want ISPs to decide what content is good or bad.
In all things moderation. Just about everything has a use and a misuse/abuse. There is no reason to go off half-cocked on this. In this case, I say let judgment and reason dictate that using ISPs to block porn in entirely justified and a good idea. It doesn't mean the end of freedom of speech or privacy. It just means it's a tool to an end - the end of child porn on the internet - hopefully. Let's get behind the good things, instead of helping further the bad - which child pornography is. Of all the things in the world of which to be afraid, this idea isn't one of them.