Comcast Caves To Cuomo
from the seems-like-extortion dept
Remember last week, when NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo threatened Comcast with a lawsuit, if it didn't start blocking access to a list of "objectionable" content? It was quite clear that Cuomo's threat had no legal basis -- as the law is quite clear that, as a service provider, Comcast is not responsible for what happens on the network -- but Cuomo stated (just as clearly) that he would sue anyway, and associate Comcast in peoples' minds with objectionable content. Unfortunately, it looks like the bullying threat worked: Comcast has agreed to support Cuomo's proposal. There's simply no legal basis for this, and it opens up a seriously slippery slope in saying that ISPs can block access to "objectionable" content. Yet, apparently, it's just not worth it to stand up against politicians who want to paint you as a supporter of child porn, even if that's completely ridiculous.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: andrew cuomo, isp blocking, objectionable content, porn
Companies: comcast
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Protect the kiddies...
What worries me is ALWAYS what worries me when government tries to "protect" us. WHO will be the determiner of "objectionable" material?!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
so what,..?
how about accountability to the person/group who is HOSTING said objectionable content?
perhaps the makers of the CAT5/6 Ethernet and fiber optic cables used to connect the network equipment should be sued too, huh?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Comcast Caves to Cuomo
I see that we have 4 options:
1. Allow this dictater to destroy our freedoms
2. Begin a grassroots lawsuite against Comcast for censorship including Cuomo.
3. Push the FCC to be sure that there is available competition in each area (same high speed connections)
4. Vote - Drop Comcast
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Oh Shit!!!
I'm all for protecting the children. But I'm also a big supporter of common sense and logic. I know its a lot to ask a "politician" to have those 2 qualities, but is it too much to at least ask him to pull his head out of his ass? Let me make clearer for you on the off chance that he actually reads this:
CUOMO'S PLAN IS ILLEGAL AND DOES MORE TO HURT PEOPLE THAN HELP THEM!
Thank you...i'm going to go have a memorial service for my civil rights now.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Oh, and another thing...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Great Firewall of America
We point fingers at China, and growl no censorship, yet here we are doing the same thing? So if China says they are doing it for "the children" then its ok.......right? I mean child porn, then its political discontent, government conspiracy theorists, and lets toss in green peace.. if we open that door, it won't ever stop.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Let's have us a book burnin'!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
IMPEACH CUOMO
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
> owned by corporations - instead of the other
> way around as is seemingly the case here -
> this is oddly satisfying...
> I have trouble weeping for Comcast, who I
> hate with a passion.
All of you who seem to be gloating about Comcast folding under pressure here ought to remember that this doesn't actually affect Comcast in a negative way at all. It's not Comcast's rights that are being trampled. It's the rights of all of Comcast's customers. They're the ones who have just lost access to reams of perfectly legitimate content because of Cuomo's overbroad threat. For Comcast it's just a collectively shrug of the shoulders and a flip of the switch, then back to business.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No mention of Kiddie Porn in this Article
Comcast has been censoring your content for years, and they have been doing it quietly and silently. This article only stands out because this fool (cuomo) has asked them to censor what they consider too much content.
Think about it if it wasn't for people surfing the web for porn the web would be a small fraction of it's current size. Comcast is smart enough to realize that when they start blocking everyday porn they will begin losing their customer base even faster than they already are.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No mention of Kiddie Porn in this Article
Do you have some facts you can point to that prove this ludicrous claim? Or are you just flapping your ass-jaws?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No mention of Kiddie Porn in this Article
The web site Cuomo uses to promote this proposal is http://www.nystopchildporn.com. He also has a list of sites that have not "signed agreements with the Attorney General's Office to stop online child pornography", the implication being that they are indifferent to the problem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
More political stupidity
So Comcast's lack of merit aside, this is just another grandstanding, ineffective move. And best of all, this sort of thing will probably lead to more censorship.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Is this even legal?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So, lets sue
1) abuse of power - Cuomo should know full well (and probably did) that there is no legal backing for what he was threatening to do. He had a personal agenda and he abused the system to get what he wanted
2) treason against the US for using his power (see point 1) that undermines the freedoms of America and the constitution of the United states which he is a member of
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You mean there are Comcast Customers who have reliable enough connections to view objectionable content?
Can you say "Pagewash.com"? You can if you're a Comcast customer!
As long as "objectionable" content = bandwidth consumption, believe me Mr. Cuomo, it's already being "screened".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Comcast's PR Spinzone
The flap with Cuomo was just a PR smokescreen, designed to clean up Comcast's image among people who care about the government shutting down alt.support.diabetes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Comcast can't get a break
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Comcast can't get a break
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Federal Censorship Agency
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) “is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization” “established by Congress in 1984.” According to its latest published annual report, the NCMEC receives the bulk of its funding from congressional appropriations. For the calendar year ending December 31, 2006, the NCMEC's “unrestricted” revenue from federal funds amounted to about $36 million (p.31 / p.33 in PDF). These federal funds are budgeted and administered through the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Protection.
On June 3, 2008, Mr. Bush signed the “Protecting Our Children Comes First Act of 2007” (Public Law 110-240). This act amends 42 U.S.C. § 5773, and increases the authorized funding for the NCMEC for FY 2008 to $40 million.
This is the net censorship agency.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ridiclious
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1963)
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Rhode Island Legislature created the "Rhode Island Commission to Encourage Morality in Youth," whose members and Executive Secretary are the appellees herein....
... The Commission's practice has been to notify a distributor on official Commission stationery that certain designated books or magazines distributed by him had been reviewed by the Commission and had been declared by a majority of its members to be objectionable for sale, distribution or display to youths under 18 years of age....
The typical notice to Silverstein either solicited or thanked Silverstein, in advance, for his "cooperation" with the Commission, usually reminding Silverstein of the Commission's duty to recommend to the Attorney General prosecution of purveyors of obscenity....
What Rhode Island has done, in fact, has been to subject the distribution of publications to a system of prior administrative restraints, since the Commission is not a judicial body and its decisions to list particular publications as objectionable do not follow judicial determinations that such publications may lawfully be banned. Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity. See Near v. Minnesota; Lovell v. City of Griffin; Schneider v. New Jersey; Cantwell v. Connecticut; Niemotko v. Maryland; Kunz v. New York; Staub v. City of Baxley. We have tolerated such a system only where it operated under judicial superintendence and assured an almost immediate judicial determination of the validity of the restraint. Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown. The system at bar includes no such saving features. On the contrary, its capacity for suppression of constitutionally protected publications is far in excess of that of the typical licensing scheme held constitutionally invalid by this Court. There is no provision whatever for judicial superintendence before notices issue or even for judicial review of the Commission's determinations of objectionableness. The publisher or distributor is not even entitled to notice and hearing before his publications are listed by the Commission as objectionable. Moreover, the Commission's statutory mandate is vague and uninformative, and the Commission has done nothing to make it more precise. Publications are listed as "objectionable," without further elucidation. The distributor is left to speculate whether the Commission considers this publication obscene or simply harmful to juvenile morality. For the Commission's domain is the whole of youthful morals. Finally, we not that although the Commission's supposed concern is limited to youthful readers, the "cooperation" it seeks from distributors invariably entails the complete suppression of the listed publications; adult readers are equally deprived of the opportunity to purchase the publications in the State. Cf. Butler v. Michigan.
The procedures of the Commission are radically deficient.
....
Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1963).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Regardless isn't Comcast about to possibly get hit with a "traffic shaping" suit soon? Now I understand the difference, but aren't they both traffic shaping? And who gets to decide whats objectionable? And who is looking at this crap to determine it any way?
Once again, I in no way endorse child abuse on the internet, but there must be a better way, ie go after the sickos making/distributing it, if you don't stop them, it'll still continue, it'll just be "blocked" to some extent. And some other more hidden route will be used (encrypted torrents, email, etc).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Cheryl B. Preston is certainly well versed in law, but she is obviously not a technologist, and even if she were she would require knowledge of how TCP/IP works as well general concept of how applications use it in order to make an informed statement how ports should be used.
The idea of legally requiring ISPs to serve specific content over specific ports, and provide separate tiers of service to customers that limit access to port ranges based on the tier purchased is as ludicrous as creating a .xxx top level domain and requiring all porn sites to migrate their domains to it.
Why is it acceptable to infringe on the freedom of the people for a (laughable) attempt at protecting them from themselves?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mike
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Welcome to China,
Mind you, us Canucks have our own ISP problems also.
Concerning to say the least.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Good to know who you can count on. No one.
This is not Comcastic. Not at all. If there was another provider in my area that had half the speed of those bastards, I'd dump them like... a washed up 20-yead old porn star.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
how long
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
copyright infringement and other objectionable material
I wonder if we can turn this page into a googlebomb. Cuomo supports child pornography by making it impossible to prosecute offenders.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Cuomo is nothing more than an attention whore
Methinks he feels his waning spotlight and decided to recast the light upon himself, at whatever cost to whomever he aims his pencil-dick mentality at. Sorry for the rant.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]