Andrew Cuomo attacks ISPs

In case you have not heard but New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, eldest son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, is on a rampage and he is beating his drum very loudly. What he is drumming up support over is his perseverance to get rid of child pornography. Do not misunderstand me, child pornography is a disgusting and heinous act committed by some very sick individuals. But the way some ISP’s are going about helping him eliminate child pornography is flawed.

The way ISP’s are going about doing this in New York is by eliminating the entire ‘alt’ hierarchy from the newsgroups. But the newsgroups contain thousands of discussion groups that are used by millions of people around the world. These were home to discussions before the web even. Some discussion groups go by sci.math, rec.motorcycles and even comp.os.linux, but there are many, many more. I’m sure if you perform a simple search you would find at least one thread for every programming language you can think of and more. Other highly popular languages like C++, Java and C# have multiple discussion groups dedicated to them.

Furthermore, Cuomo’s strong-arm tactics backs ISP’s into the corner over this issue. If they do not support it then they could be considered as supporting child pornography, which is complete preposterous. Currently Cuomo has turned his attention to Comcast, to which a two-page letter was sent and was received by Comcast on Monday. It threatened ‘legal action’ on child pornography grounds within five days if Comcast executives failed to agree to a certain set of rules that was devised by Cuomo. Also in the letter he states that he wants Comcast and other broadband providers to “volunteer” to take actions to “surgically directed” only at child pornography and “not at any protected content.”

If this were true, it would not be a bad thing. It would actually be a very commendable thing. However his tactics have already led ISP’s such as Time Warner Cable to kill some 100,000 discussions groups. If you are a conspiracy theorist, then here is something to feed your mind. Among the groups that got the ax were talk.politics and misc.activism.progressive. Another ISP that joined his crusade, Verizon, deleted presumably ‘unlawful’ discussion groups which included us.military, ny.politics, alt.society.labor-unions, and even alt.politics.democrats.

Cuomo had a response of, “I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry.” I liken that to burning down an entire library because one obscene book happens to be found on a shelf.

Cuomo even praised AOL for agreeing to help “eliminate access to child pornography newsgroups” but failed to mention they actually eliminated all newsgroups back in January 2005. Before Cuomo’s rush to action.

However, Comcast does not even run or host its own newsgroup servers. Rather, it outsources it to a company in Texas. The chairman and native Texan that runs the company labeled it as “fascist crap, ignorant” and “we welcome the New York attorney general to the battle of child pornography.”

Comcast is not passive in the child porn fight. It helped to organize an industry-wide agreement with a number of attorneys general. It was good enough for the National Association of Attorney but was not enough for New York and not enough for Cuomo. Comcast is a very small presence in New York State at about one half of one percent. The only reason they have that much is because it serves communities in Pennsylvania and Connecticut that happen to spill over into NY. It has been dominated by Verizon and Time Warner.

But Cuomo wants these broadband providers to sign what he calls a ‘code of conduct,’ which conveniently has not been made public.

Now step back and look at this in another way. Look at it from the point of view of the constitution. This could be an infringement on the first amendment’s write of free speech. Any governmental efforts at censorship must be narrowly focused. Censoring 100,000 newsgroups because some 80 newsgroups may have illegal images would fail that test. The courts have ruled that if a government official delivers a credible threat of prosecution, that target can ask a judge to clear stuff up through a declaratory judgment. However it’s a catch-22. Comcast, like its rivals, seem to be unwilling to confront a state attorney general fearing that they will claim that they are merely trying to protect the children and that these companies are sympathetic to child pornographers.

A spokesman said that Comcast’s attorneys are evaluating this request and that they may enter into some sort of agreement with New York which could substantially similar to agreements announced with AT&T and AOL recently.

What could this mean in the long term? It could encourage more attorneys general to play net censor, especially if the attorneys general come to view broadband providers as submissive, off the books sources of revenue. It appears that Cuomo is doing just that since his press release said Verizon, Time Warner, and Sprint will pay over $1.1 million to fund further efforts by the attorney general’s office and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to remove child porn from the internet.

It’s either a shakedown racket or a heavily veiled attempt to get rid of pirated software on newsgroups. That is if you can find any that isn’t actually spyware or virus ridden decoys. But these companies know that Cuomo can cause them millions in legal bills and public relations damage. They are basically paying for protection like right out of the Sopranos. A soldier comes in and says ‘nice business you have here. It would be a terrible shame if something happened to it.’ But this seems to be fine for a New York attorney general, but it would be extortion for a private-sector lawyer.