THIS IS HOW IT STARTS !!! WARNIG !!! (please note: I believe child porn is a hideous crime) That being said, anyone who would sacrifice freedoms for safety deserves neither. (A quote from Benjamin Franklin) If we allow any service provider the right to choose for us on any issue, they will choose for us on every issue. Pandora’s box, slippery slope, choose your poison. It is the job of the police to track down and prosecute offenders, not some private corporate entity that doesn't have to answer to the voting public. Once the door has been opened for this type of corporate censorship of the public domain, all ISP's will follow suit and we will soon LOOSE OUR FREEDOM TO FREELY SHARED INFORAMTION. This is a HUGE DEAL and yet another ploy by the private interest groups to test the waters on censorship for future profits. I.E. today the say they only want to block questionable sites, tomorrow they will block competing sites, and the day after charge a premium for limited access like with plans resembling their cable packages, pay per click ISP style.

A CRIME! In my opinion, the service providers' decision to block access to child pornography by eliminating access to child porn newsgroups and purging their servers of any child porn websites is a commendable action to help enforce a Federal Statue that prohibits such filth. If the sites that the ISPs were intending to block were not prohibited by Federal Law I would agree with the previous post in that it is a slippery slope. However, the blocking of content of an illegal nature shows good corporate citizenship. This is not an issue of corporate censorship but of helping to enforce laws passed by legislators that we elected to office.

The full text of the statute can be found at http://uscode.house.gov/uscode-cgi/fastweb.exe?getdoc+uscview+t17t20+999...

The problem with your obviously (SARCASM) well thought out argument is that the ISPs are blocking (removing) almost ten thousand, THAT'S RIGHT *10,000*, groups that have absolutely no filth in them! These are all groups where people assemble peacefully and practice free speech.

This is obviously a joint effort between our government and large corporate business to squash free speech on the Internet. This police action delves much deeper than the realm of child porn, but follows the standard adopted by this government in the 'War on Drugs', by taking away the rights of the many to 'attempt to control' the few individuals who are actually breaking the law.

You are so quick to sacrifice these freedoms to claim a false sense of safety, you deserve neither!

What kind of sick mind desires a police officer to have complete control over their life?

Here is a list of specials for those affected by the ISP's:
Usenet specials for Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner customers