Another New York Attorney General, Another Sex-Related Crisis to Solve

I apologize in advance for the New-York-centric posts when it comes to Internet-related legislation, since that is usually the domain of Center Networks. However, I live in New York, and I feel duty-bound to comment on what happens here so that the rest of the U.S. and other countries can try to lobby their governments to prevent the same stupidity from occurring where they live.

It seems like only yesterday that New Yorkers were enjoying the fruits of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's labors over prostitution rings. And we all know what happened there, now, don't we? Well, our new Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo is going after child pornography, and the first step? Usenet.

Yes, that's right, Usenet. The precursor of Web forums, Usenet groups are "host to this immoral business" according to Cuomo. And with that sword rattling, he has convinced Time Warner Cable to announce that they will ban customers from accessing any Usenet newsgroups. Sprint is only banning the alt.* groups, and Verizon is being vague about what they will ban, saying only "fairly broad newsgroup areas."

I've previously talked about using anonymizing proxies in countries where Internet access is censored; who knew I'd be recommending it for use in my own country? The dumbest part of this whole thing is that over "several month" the AG's task force found only 88 groups that contained child pornography, so it definitely makes sense to throw the baby out with the bathwater, right?

I'll readily admit that I haven't had time for Usenet in years, but I was active on several groups back in the day, and never had any contact with porn on any of them. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children gets in on the act, claiming that this move is going to "[cut] online porn off at the source."

Do any of these agencies actually have anyone who has any common sense involved with coming up with these "feel good" policies that don't do a single thing?

Discussions of child pornography make headlines, and I'm sure that's what Cuomo is counting on. But someone needs to explain how preventing access to alt.barney.die.die.die is going to stop children from being abused. Anyone know?

The Internet is quickly becoming an easy target for useless legislation that fools voters into thinking their elected officials are actually doing something. I'd far rather my tax dollars go to tracking people who DO upload porn to newsgroups and sell images and arresting them at the REAL source, which would be the people creating the illegal materials in the first place. All this will do is flush people to a new location, and unless they shut down the entire Internet (and I hope I didn't give Cuomo any ideas there), not a single thing will change other than a lot of irate customers who can't access their newsgroups.