My East Ky

Well after AT&T has successfully got rid of kiddie porn on usenet I decided to do a simple search using my newsreader and using the key word “sex” and to my surprise I find probably over 200 groups that still exist. Way to go AT&T you have effectively done nothing. As I posted earlier getting rid of the alt.binary groups will not accomplish a thing. This was all done to save some $$. Here is their “official announcement:

Notice
AT&T takes its obligation to protect its customers from child pornography very seriously. We’re working with public officials and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the effort to help prevent the distribution of this harmful and illegal content.

We’ll continue to provide access to newsgroups as part of our broadband offering, but we’ll no longer include alt.bin* nor alt.bain* hierarchies because of the possibility of child pornography in those particular groups and the difficulty in ensuring that no child porn reappears in them.

Our customers will continue to have full access to all lawful content on the Internet. That includes newsgroups, which are available from multiple sources, not just ISPs.

Customers may still access lawful content of their choosing from unaffiliated newsgroup providers.

Currently there are no reported issues. However, if you are experiencing a problem with the News Service or if you have any other concerns please email us at newshelp@bellsouth.com

Just admit it AT&T you did not remove the alt.binary groups to help fight kiddie porn (although it makes you look good) you did it to help cut your costs.

Below is a screen shot I took from an updated group list from AT&T’s newsgroup server: newsgroups.bellsouth.net

Click to enlarge

In an effort to stop child pornography At&t and AOL have dropped access to alt.binary groups in Usenet. If you don’t know what I am talking about then you will not miss it, or if you did use Usenet you noticed the first day they blocked access. The only way to access alt.binary groups now is threw a pay service.

Now we are all gun ho about getting rid of kiddie porn and stuff but blocking the entire alt.binary groups is a little to far IMO. This is just another attempt to cut cost’s on At&t’s end. Sadly I don’t think this will stop the kiddie porn traders at all, this was just political junk by Andrew Cuomo. Hey vote for me I got rid of kiddie porn on the Internet. While ISP’s are loving the fact that they get to block access to a very resource heavy service & get to join the fight kiddie porn crusade. Does not any think about actually catching the pedophiles instead of blocking a service? For example guns, when a criminal act is committed with a firearm do we take away firearms from everybody in the USA, stop selling them, or do we go after the criminal?

This is just the beginning of more things to come by ISP’s, usage caps are coming. Are you going to pay more on your ISP bill to watch videos on you tube? I just love how ISP’s boost there available network speeds like AT&T’s 3MB or 6MB plan but now that people are starting to utilize them they are worried about network performance and bandwidth issues.

I touched on this subject lightly in another post and I thought I would post some more info on it. Here is a quote from a article I read

At&t is considering a surcharge for customers who go above normal amounts of downloaded data on the internet

Ok, first I really can’t wait to see what they consider “normal” amounts of data. It will probably be around 40 GB a month for customers that have the highest level of dsl service and lowered with the lower service you have like TWC. The so called reason behind this new billing method is because AT&T says it can’t handle the growth of the internet basically. AT&T says that it’s backbone usage has grown over 60% the last year. As I check my DU meter for the last month my usage was 266.93 GB & so far this month I am well over 100 GB. Now keep in mind I have a home network with one main pc, one file server, and one laptop computer, plus two or three other devices that require internet access. So if the method does take permanent affect my ISP bill will be outrageous. I knew when I was able to drop my land line and use my cell phone exclusively plus have a dry dsl loop it was to good to be true. Doing so saved me about $30 or so a month. Maybe At&t is doing this to recoup loss revenue from offering naked dsl? Or could it be now that At&t is now in the TV business ( U-Verse) they are doing everything in their power to fight the competition, like Netflix downloads, Apple TV, DirecTV On Demand and so on. So much for checking out the new movies trailers in High Def or at all for that matter.

This is where outdated technology gets you, with only the consumer paying the price. Maybe if Bellsouth (At&T) upgraded to fiber instead of outdated and very limited copper they would not be in this position to begin with. How much longer does At&t think it can survive on copper anyway? Especially with them now in the Tv business, High definition is a bandwidth hog. Or maybe they will degrade the signal like some other cable company to save on bandwidth. Anyway I just got off live chat with sudden link to check out internet packages, and currently I am able to get a 10meg service for $59.99 with a $45 activation fee. That’s $12.04 more than I am paying for a 6meg connection with At&t. Although I am kind of hesitant to switch to cable again (had a bad experience with Charter) I may just give it a go to see if the service has improved any. Anybody want to post a review for the Floyd, Pike or Johnson county area?

Here is a link to the article I was referencing.