The British Government wants to ban porn from the internet. The move would force ISPs to block all pornographic content unless users had 'opted in' (providing a handy list of people who wish to view pornography) and is said to be motivated by a desire to combat the early sexualization of children. There is no word on how 'porn' is to be defined.
posted by unSane
on Dec 20, 2010 -
136 comments
Wanna test if your ISP (or company or university) is blocking or throttling BitTorrent traffic? Want some tools to diagnose network problems in your "last mile" connection? Google to the rescue:
M-Lab! Predictably, with the recent
announcement and
publicity, the servers are now getting hammered. So post this?
You can help: Host a Glasnost server (tests for BitTorrent). *Results so far. Coming soon are apps to "Determine whether an ISP is giving some traffic a lower priority than other traffic" and "Determine whether an ISP is degrading the performance of a certain subset of users, applications, or destinations". Power to the People, bay-bee!
posted by spock
on Jan 29, 2009 -
58 comments
They hate Flickr for it's Freedom. An
ISP (and government controlled monopoly) in the
United Arab Emirates has decided to ban access to Flickr for it's citizens, apparently due to the complaints of a couple of
UAE expats in the
UK and
Canada. Of course, said blockage won't apply to them. Most interestingly, they blame the rest of the world's non-flesh-fearing photographers as opposed to their ISP (and by proxy their own oppressive government.) Now Flickr joins
Skype, AtomFilms, Friendster, AOL, and anything from Israels top-level domain, as
outlawed content and services in the UAE (related study
here). Well, if they don't care, why should we? Via
linkfilter.
posted by rzklkng
on Jun 22, 2005 -
28 comments
Proposal to have companies rewire their networks to support easy wiretapping by police "A far-reaching proposal from the FBI, made public Friday, would require all broadband Internet providers, including cable modem and DSL companies, to rewire their networks to support easy wiretapping by police. The FBI's request to the Federal Communications Commission aims to give police ready access to any form of Internet-based communications. If approved as drafted, the proposal could dramatically expand the scope of the agency's wiretap powers, raise costs for cable broadband companies and complicate Internet product development." Read more about the FBI's proposal at Cnet.com.
or
MSNBC. But where is the actual proposal?
posted by fluffycreature
on Mar 15, 2004 -
8 comments
Perhaps you've seen the new MSN commercials that use M$'s "spam-blocking" technology to support their ISP service. Maybe you've read fluff pieces like
these, where AOL and Microsoft execs are allowed to wax poetic about their deep anti-spam convictions:
"'I get spam too, and I am as fed up with it as all of our members are,' AOL chief executive Jonathan F. Miller said yesterday."
"'To help keep intruders at bay,' Microsoft said, "we must all do our part.'"
So what's
this all about?
"'AOL and Microsoft argue there is a place for legitimate unsolicited e-mail in the marketplace,' said Marc Berejka, Microsoft's senior director of public policy."
posted by Pinwheel
on May 9, 2003 -
19 comments
Hosting Provider Bans RIAA - According to this press release, Information Wave Technologies will actively block all RIAA IP space because RIAA is intentionally seeking to invade customer networks / hosts to check for copyright violations. Additionally, they are going to deploy a "honeypot" system (simulates a GNUtella client sharing copyrighted material) in order to log requests for the files and correlate them with attempts to invade the host -- RIAA's stated plan to combate music piracy.
posted by Irontom
on Aug 19, 2002 -
24 comments
Has anybody here done business with
AIT? After several of their customers switched to our web hosting company with bizarre stories, I did a little research. These folks are a little over the top,
including gun cabinets, razor wire and uniforms. They even claim to have security teams that physically hunt down spammers and such. All of this would be great if they took care of their
customers. Or should I say cared for their customers.
posted by rotifer
on May 22, 2002 -
13 comments
Matt Besser of the
Upright Citizens Brigade has a home phone number one digit away from tech support for a major ISP. Rather than fight it or change the number he's decided have some
fun with his clueless callers. If you've spent as much time doing tech support work as I have this is some good cathartic fun.
This one is my favorite.
(A few dirty words, so probably
NOT work safe. Requires RealPlayer.
posted by jonmc
on Apr 16, 2002 -
31 comments
The ThreeRing Web Mapping project adds a dot to a blank canvas showing your geographic location (or that of your ISP, as best it can guess based on your IP address). They've also got a code snippet to put on your own site that automagically adds your visitors to the map. The US is already clearly defined, Europe is getting there, and Oceania is coming into view. (They've also got one of them
Tag-Board thingies, which is painful to read for any length of time.)
posted by gleuschk
on Apr 5, 2002 -
26 comments
StarTrek.net is
offering internet access (care of EarthLink), your own StarTrek.net email address with anti-spam service, and exclusive Star Trek content, as well as a few other "goodies", all for 21.95 USD a month. Destined to be huge, or will this fizzle and eventually disappear?
posted by mikhail
on Mar 20, 2002 -
15 comments
Does
this actually throw any more responsibility onto ISPs? In PA they are now mandated to block child pornography. But only the kiddy porn the government already knows about. Which apparently anyone can get
around, anyway. Noble attempt at eradicating a social scourge or pointless burdensome do-nothing legislation?
posted by umberto
on Mar 19, 2002 -
5 comments
eek! at+t broadband cable units to be bought by comcast. this means chicago cable service will shift to its third owner in two years (at+t broadband having purchased prime cable just last year, and having just gotten cable modems back online from the excite@home failure two weeks ago). anyone have any clues about the ramifications of this purchase?
posted by patricking
on Dec 20, 2001 -
21 comments
@Home pulling a Northpoint? Looks like excite@home might go dark on friday. I've gotten three emails from AT&T on this and this week looks like it might be it. I feet a great disturbance in the net, Like millions of voices cried
out in terror, then were silenced."
posted by skallas
on Nov 28, 2001 -
39 comments
Dump broadband? *gasp* Well, according to this ZDNet article, it's a movement. With price hikes and a souring economy, some people can't justify the cost. Could you let it go?
posted by hotdoughnutsnow
on Nov 7, 2001 -
50 comments
Music biz wants tougher DMCA "If the RIAA gets its way, ISPs will be as guilty of copyright violation as their subscribers. "Because of the magnitude of the problem, ISPs can no longer be shielded from the wrath of the law," shrieked Rosen righteously."
posted by Mick
on Oct 8, 2001 -
23 comments
PacBell seeks to secure a monopoly Californians urged to contact the PUC to put the brakes on PacBell's plan to kill the independent ISP.
Should they be allowed to take their toys and go home or be forced to share? And, what effect will this have on the future of tech companies if PacBell is able to lock out DSL competition?
posted by sillygit
on Jul 31, 2001 -
6 comments
Surviving your ISP’s Darkest Hour Geoff Duncan: “I’m a somewhat extreme example of this
group, since I not only do everything myself (all the way down to
DNS), I create and sell custom online services to clients. So when
my connection died,
everything I do went with it.”
posted by joeclark
on Jul 17, 2001 -
0 comments
Be careful what you say online. At least if you're in the UK, where an anonymous poster to 2 message boards now faces charges of defamation after the courts ordered the disclosure of their identity. ISP
Totalise used existing law to force Motley Fool to disclose the details of an anonymous poster to their
message boards alleged to have made defamatory comments. Landmark case or storm in a teacup?
posted by Markb
on Mar 23, 2001 -
3 comments
Popularity kills: nosepilot hit (almost) into oblivion Not all Flash sucks: many of us who have dreamed of putting our fists through the screen at yet another stupid corporate Flash intro loved Al Sacui's dreamy little piece.
But now Sacui is looking for some way to cover or modify his ISP's $16,000 bill (which he just found out about yesterday -- no warning beforehand that traffic was a problem). He's hoping to sort out the financial problems and has people in contact with his ISP re the debt, but what he really needs is someone to mirror or co-host the 4.8 Mb of files that make up the site. Can you help out?
posted by maudlin
on Mar 9, 2001 -
34 comments
"Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this," Heckler told the Summer Forty-Niner. "We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source -- we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block it at your [Internet-service provider]. We will firewall it at your PC."
Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds this really, really disturbing.
posted by CrayDrygu
on Aug 23, 2000 -
13 comments
AltaVista lies to England about free net access. I am shocked that a company in the honorable net industry could think of such a scam! Shocked I say!
posted by Mick
on Aug 22, 2000 -
7 comments
Privacy? What's that? We all know that most of the new 'free' Internet Access Providers pay the bills by selling ads that you're forced to read, and some of them are selling information about *you* to other people. Well, along comes Predictive Networks,
who are going to sell information about your surfing even if you're paying the freight. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.
[ from Lauren Weinstein's Privacy Digest ]
posted by baylink
on Apr 21, 2000 -
2 comments
TheSimpons.com ride's along with K-Mart's
Blue Light Special to offer free internet access and email. While what is considered the top ISP offering free internet;
NetZero, it would just seem much
cooler to be
chillin@thesimpsons.com.
posted by sikk
on Feb 9, 2000 -
4 comments
I'm saying this from experience: avoid Interland.com's web hosting at all costs. These guys are one of the nation's largest web hosting operations and every minute I've had to deal with them has been painful. Their uptime is terrible, their NT servers are so unreliable that your site may be down more than it is up on an average day, and when I asked their tech support staff about it, they basically said '
if you want better uptime, upgrade to a higher account.' That type of arrogance and customer disservice shouldn't be rewarded by new customers. Avoid these people at all costs.
posted by mathowie
on Oct 22, 1999 -
0 comments
