A potential update for AT&T "customers" and fishing pics

If those of us unfortunate enough to be forced or otherwise coerced into
using AT&T, it appears (from AT&T news service personnel) that they were
ordered to drop all alt.bin* and alt.bian* NGs - period. If there were
a NG titled alt.fishing.binaries.pictures, they would carry it. In
fact, it appears that they aren't actually prohibited by policy from
carrying, oh, say, alt.illegal.child.porn.binaries.for.sick.perverts
(but
alt.binaries.personally.moderated.by.tipper.gore.t o.be.free.of.child.porn
would be a no-go because it would be an obvious potential source of
child porn.)

If the story is correct, somehow, something Andrew Cuomo did in NY wound
up causing AT&T lawyers to send an order to the limited number of AT&T
news admins ordering them to eliminate only the above hierarchies to
stop child porn on USENET. The news people explained that such was a
silly idea and wouldn't stop jack ****. The lawyers insisted and the
hierarchies were dropped and the rest left alone. And the updated
directory of available NGs on 2 AT&T servers seems to bear this
silliness out because a search on "binaries" shows over 1500 NGs
available and incredibly, a seemingly unlikely place to find child porn,
alt.sex.binaries.erotica.teens, shows as available. I don't know what
is there as I have no interest whatsoever in seeing what's posted.

IAC, if anyone is interested - er, Tim/T-Bone - in "creating" something
like alt.flyfishing.pictures.binaries, I'll request that it will be
added.

TC,
R

wrote in
:

If those of us unfortunate enough to be forced or otherwise coerced into
using AT&T ... [snip]

It's not only AT&T, but Verizon and every other major ISP in the land. And
yes, the cover story is kiddie porn, but IMO that's just convenient cover
for the ISPs. Simply, they wanted (for years) to dump the cost of those
bloated binary newsgroups but didn't have a good enough reason. Now add to
the bandwidth and storage costs, the potential liability for illegal music
and movie sharing (far more popular than kiddie porn by all accounts), not
to mention illegal software, which has flourished on the binary newsgroups
since the birth of the internet. The landlord finally tore down that
abandoned building in the internet neighborhood. Well not really, you can
still get there, just not via the news servers on any major ISP, and
probably not for free (but it is cheap, see GigaNews, ThunderNews,
NewsRazor, etc). Good riddance, I say.

BTW, I also will miss alt.binaries.pictures.fishing, which is the only one
of my 15 or so regular groups to be axed!

Sam