Net Censorship at its Worse

There are a few things that get me very riled up in the scheme of things. Excessive Internet censorship is one of them. The latest net censorship comes from the NY attorney general. In his mission to combat child porn, he is convincing Internet Service Providers to block access to large parts of Usenet.

For those who do not know what Usenet is, it is a group of a large number of discussion groups. They have been around before the web became popular.

The groups are unregulated and at times people do post materials of a questionable, and sometimes illegal nature. The logical thing to me would be that when one of the illegal pieces is found, take down that piece. The NY AG's approach goes way beyond monitor and enforce. His preferred method is the blanket censoring of massive chunks of the Usenet. Instead of doing their job, access is cut to thousands of news groups so they don't have to monitor the groups. Now news groups that help people with legitimate, non-controversial topics are gone at certain ISPs all in the name of "Protecting the Children" and allowing law enforcement to be lazy.

To get a feel on how wide spread the censoring is, it would be like banning all of the *.net websites because a very small amount of them contain child porn. By blanket banning parts of the Usenet, it does nothing for reducing the amount of child porn. You are not stopping the flow, you are just moving the material to a different place the producers have access to. Don't censor the Usenet, do your job and prosecute the few who are ruining it for all.

News Source:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080711-ny-attorney-general-gets-more-isps-to-block-alt-newsgroups.html