In article ,
(PlusNet Support Team) wrote:

We only carry newsgroups from the 'official' ISC listing

What 'official' listing.

Does ISC own usenet?

What does ISC have to do with the UK.* hierarchy?

--
Paul Cummins - Always a NetHead
Wasting Bandwidth since 1981

begin Who gives a **** about Outlook Express anyway.exe

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 13:25 +0000 (GMT Standard Time),
(Paul Cummins) wrote:

What 'official' listing.

Does ISC own usenet?

What does ISC have to do with the UK.* hierarchy?

I put 'official' in quotes because it isn't really official (Obviously
there is no such thing!). The ISC active list is however the same list
is as used by many other ISPs to provide a standardised list of groups
and the list itself does include uk.* groups.

ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/active

Regards,

Ian
--
| Ian Wild Unmetered & ADSL solutions
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
+ ------- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -------

In article , Jonathan
Buzzard wrote:
Of course if you actually know that the material carried in the said
groups contains pornographic material of children, which you can only
have done by looking at it, then you are also breaking the law and
are liable to end up on the sex offenders register.

Clearly, it's a minefield, full of rules and regulations written by
people who haven't a clue how the technology works. The particular
aspect of this that I was trying to emphasise is that a newsgroup
cannot really be said to "contain" anything in the usual sense.
Messages are always passing through, so that what is carried on the
hard disk on one day will be quite different on another day, or even at
a different hour. It thus has more of the characteristics of a
communication channel than a storage medium, the use of a hard disk
simply being a technological detail. It could be argued that electronic
memory "contains" information in the same dubious way.

The question that needs to be settled, if there are any legal experts
capable of understanding all the ramifications, is how long an
automatically managed temporary store (which is really only a dumb
electronic component) has to keep data before it can be regarded as a
container of it, rather than a conduit.

Rod.

"Mugwump" wrote in message
...
In article , Jonathan
Buzzard said......

snip

The allegation is that
PlusNet have in their possession hard disk that contain pornographic
material. I am surprised they have not had a knock on the door from
the police with a search warrant demanding to know which of their
customers has been downloading from the said groups.

But that is an allegation that can be raised against any service
provider providing Usenet at any time. Unfortunately illegal stuff does
not stay in well defined newsgroups.

If you did a trawl of every disk of every UK service provider you would
probably find that each one has paedo stuff on it somewhere, not
necessarily identified by the group that is normally associated with
this stuff.

As you say this law is blunt, and probably wrt Usenet is unworkable.
--
....

I'm sure the post office is also in possession of loads of illegal stuff at
any one time, as are courier services.

It seems to me that it would be impossible under the Law to hold any
"communication" organisation responsible for what passes through its
systems.

(However various news providers can and do refuse to carry specific ng's
that are intended for paedo's. But if there was a lot of that "censorship",
I can only assume that the rest of us would get more of them hogging other
ng's. Perhaps it's better for police etc to try and keep these people in
fewer places..?)

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:56:04 -0000, Mugwump wrote:

But that is an allegation that can be raised against any service
provider providing Usenet at any time. Unfortunately illegal stuff does
not stay in well defined newsgroups.

Right, well... I think there is nothing more to do here than replicate
a post made today to our customers and point out that the groups
mentioned earlier in this thread are NOT available on our service.

"Over recent months, we have been working in partnership with the
Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to help make the Internet a safer
place. The IWF concentrates in combating child abuse images online.

As a result of this consultation, the IWF have provided us with a list
of publicly available newsgroups, which have been highlighted as being
cause for concern. We have now taken action to ensure that these
newsgroups are not available via our service.

We believe the work of the IWF is very important and will continue to
offer our full support and co-operation to them in the future. Further
information about the role of the IWF, and what to do if you are
concerned about any online content, can be found at their website:
http://www.iwf.org.uk "

With Regards,

Ian
--
| Ian Wild Unmetered & ADSL solutions
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
+ ------- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -------

"Mugwump" wrote in message
...
"The majority of the major ISPs carry binaries."

In the UK?
I'd check your crystal ball again and look at the ACTUAL binaries groups
they are carrying.

"PlusNet Support Team" wrote in message

So you would agree that it would not be proper or legal to offer NG's that
"Contain images of child abuse, anywhere in the world"

As per the IWF frontpage

If this is so then please take a look through some of the erotica.teen
groups you are offering and tell me if you think the content therein is
legal.

Better still - don't bother, as one of your customers Ive already taken the
time to report you with examples from your news server with headers.

Any ISP holding this kind of filth and basically selling it - and any
individual that promotes it (yourself included) rank pretty near plantlife.

I suggest the reason you make it available is you enjoy pulling your pud
over it.

"Jonathan Buzzard" spoke the truth in message:

"It is one thing for the Royal Mail to handle envelopes containing illegal
material, it would be entirely another for them to set up post boxes
specially marked for you to put such material in."

Totally agree. I further put it that plusnet make this material and groups
available as a feature to sell their services. Nice to share an isp with
peados and weirdos.
Perhaps your business customers would share the same view?

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 18:04:30 +0000, PlusNet Support Team wrote:

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:56:04 -0000, Mugwump wrote:

But that is an allegation that can be raised against any service
provider providing Usenet at any time. Unfortunately illegal stuff does
not stay in well defined newsgroups.

Right, well... I think there is nothing more to do here than replicate
a post made today to our customers and point out that the groups
mentioned earlier in this thread are NOT available on our service.

Indeed, when I checked in my newsreader it did not appear to carry
the groups mentioned. However it did not take long to find at a number
of other groups that are still cause for concern. It may be that the
list of groups Leafnode is showing me is out of date however.


JAB.

--
Jonathan A. Buzzard Email: jonathan (at) buzzard.me.uk
Northumberland, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 1661-832195

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 18:21:07 -0000, "Amigo Entertainments"
wrote:


I suggest the reason you make it available is you enjoy pulling your pud
over it.

LOL - How I love getting paid to read such well considered trolling.

As has already been said, we are members of the IWF, on organisation
who I think you will agree have been, so far, the most effective UK
organisation at dealing with matters in this area. Feel free to liaise
with them in relation to any specific content you feel we should not
be carrying and I'm sure that we can sort this out on an amicable and
professional level.

I do think that singling out one provider for criticism in this area
is unfair and as far as I am concerned there isn't very much more we
can say in this thread - I think the actions taken demonstrate that
your original assertion is incorrect. If you want to discuss the
legalities and principles of Usenet publishing though I would be happy
to pick that up on monday, provided you can remain rational and avoid
stooping to the level you just did.

Night,

Ian
--
| Ian Wild Unmetered & ADSL solutions
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
+ ------- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -------