Here's an article from today's PSB, and my comments.
I have added an update Thu Aug 21 @ 3pm to clarify
based on comments by natasha667 on the original article.
11 more Web providers to cut child porn, Cuomo says BINGHAMTON -- State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that 11 Internet service providers had agreed to block access to child pornography. Marlene Boedicker of Endicott was pleased. "It's refreshing to know that someone is out there protecting families and children," said Boedicker, a mother of three. Cuomo visited the Broome County Library as part of an upstate tour to promote a continuing crackdown on child pornography. Windstream, Frontier/Citizens, Local Net, Clarity Connect and Wild Blue have agreed to rid their servers of child pornography Web sites and eliminate access to child porn newsgroups. That's on top of six other companies that agreed to the ban last month when Cuomo also visited the Southern Tier. Those companies are Earthlink, HughesNet, Clearwife, Netzero, Juno and BlueLight. Instead of investigating users, Cuomo decided to target suppliers.
Parents, not law enforcement, are the first line of defense, he said. They should talk to children about being careful about what they post on My Space or who they talk to in chat rooms. "Parents have to understand the computer well enough to protect the child from the computer," he said.
Kathy Cramer of Johnson City, a mother of two, said she was impressed with Cuomo's crusade.
"You feel that somebody is on your side," she said.
For information on companies that have agreed to ban child pornography, go to www.nystopchildporn.com  natasha667 wrote: While I appreciate the goal of the program, you can't censor the Internet. The protocols that make up the net are designed to route around failures. Censorship, no matter how well intentioned, looks to the technology like a failure. The net will do it's best, to route around it. Plus the Internet is international. There are many countries with better connectivity and cheaper bandwidth. Not to mention all the other ways to distribute any kind of information on the Net. Even the most illegal of data is just 1 and 0's. To cease investigation of the consumers of the material seems negligent. Even somebody who uses every anonymizing trick in the book will slip up at some point. I want some LEO watching when he does. These are the people you want to catch, with luck before some aberrant prurient voyeurism turns into something more serious and a childhood is taken away. 8/20/2008 11:28:23 AM  bhuston wrote: I despise the reality of any child (or adult or animal) being harmed or exploited, The real sickos are the people MAKING exploitation porn and for that, you have to follow the money trail. I will use the term SNUFF PORN or EXPLOITATION PORN instead of "child porn" to indicate that *someone is getting hurt in the image*, because I do not believe pictures of naked children are necessarily evil, or should be forbidden. It is the act of forcing or coercing children into performing sexual acts which is criminal (whether or not photos are taken). It is exploitation, coercion, and violence which is the real crime, and I believe this applies equally to all persons (not just children). So following the money, I agree with the strategy of going after hosting companies. Note the article says it is ISPs which are being targeted. ISPs is how a consumer connects with a hosting company (where the images are stored). ISPs only need be involved to investigate or disrupt the consumers. I am concerned about this because the general trend is for increased fascism, more censorship and domestic spying on ordinary americans. Intelligence agencies like the FBI and CIA and local police agencies are claiming the right investigate the activities of ordinary people on the internet, without a warrant. This is UNCONSTITUTIONAL, and a dangerous trend. They will use "TERRORISM!" and "KIDDIE PORN" as the rallying cry to get consent to install the technology to spy on ordinary people, but once in place, it will likely be used for other purposes (more on this later...) Any blocking strategies are misguided and doomed to fail. I agree with the first 1/2 of natasha667's post. and would add: 1: It is impossible to block all "bad content" 2: It is impossible to define "bad content" where everyone agrees 3: It is impossible to block bad content without overblocking good content. I disagree with the part about investigating the "consumers", unless a distinction is made between paying consumers. You have to follow the money. Who is paying for the production of child porn (and other exploitation porn)? Here's one thing I find curious. There is a TON of free porn on the internet. Everything. Anything you can imagine. Any kind or kink or fetish you happen to be into. It's all out there and available freely. I find this very curious, because they claim it being paid for by subscriptions to paid porn sites. But why would someone pay when there is so much out there which is free? Something seems wrong with the whole internet porn business model. Where is the money coming from to pay for the hosting, bandwidth, and production expenses? One suspect is big for-profit ISPs, like Earthlink, AOL, and Time Warner. Why? Because when people pay $50/month for high speed internet, they have come to expect certain free services. Internet Radio, Google, Email, Blogs....... and dare I say it? Yes: PORN. You bet. Sex is such a basic human drive. Since the earliest days of the internet, computers were used to distribute nudes and sexually explicit photos. Heck, it was an early use of the camera. People like to have access to pictures of naked people. It's normal and natural. But the curious thing is, who is paying for all the free internet porn? To answer that, you have to ask, who is making money by the existance of free interent porn? One answer is for-profit broadband internet providers. If you want porn and you discover it's free with your $50/month bill to Time Warner Cable, you are a happy customer who will keep coming back. So while I know of no direct link, my squeegee'd third eye tells me that this would be something interesting to investigate. If it could be shown that the broadband internet providers were in some way subsidizing the porn industry, it would all make sense. Let's be very clear. I am NOT definding the right for someone to have access to child porn! OK!? Is that clear? I am saying I have a big problem with any law the punishes people for what they do with a keyboard and a mouse... [Unless they are typing in a credit card number to pay money to someone who has photos of exploited children (or adults). If there is a money connection between the consumer of Snuff/Exploitation Porn.] Because any "crime" should have a real victim and a real injury. 1: If someone hurts a child in actual fact: fine: Call in Law Enforcement. 2: If someone *pays someone* to harm a child: same thing. 3: If someone happens to observe a photograph on the internet which depicts violence to a child (or anyone for that matter), I honestly don't think that is a crime. No victim, no injury. Yet, if we have watched the news over the last few years, we've seen many examples of people who suffered legal action just for having the wrong kind of porn on their computer. Interesting item... examining documents found at nystopchildporn.com: The State of NY has built a library of child-porn. Thus, NY State must have *paid someone* to seek it out+view it!! Just think about that for a moment Additionally... I have just completed a review of 1,000 years of censorship: Media control by fascist dictators who want to control your mind, influence your behavior, and exploit you for their own gain. Here's what a review of history reveals: The fascists will use the any of the following excuses to ban literature, speech, or art: Heresy - Sex - Scat - Sedition But once censorship is in place, the rich, powerful elites use it for much more. Like keeping the people ignorant and confused, so they keep their power. I love this quote: "The myth of obscenity ... is perpetuated in order to keep a censorship mechanism in place, because as long as ... they can convince somebody that you need to have a watchdog to keep the dirty words off the air, then that same watchdog agency will be able to keep political ...[or] social ideas that are undesireable off the airwaves, and that is the real basis for perpuating myths of obscenity." -- Frank Zappa 8/20/2008 6:43:44 PM |
1 comment:
Eh, its a band-aid approach.
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