Usenet going bye bye

[Leo Mauler]

-- <someone else> wrote:

> Further, I don't understand how child pornography
> can't use other mediums than usenet?  If anything, 
> this should be the headline:
> 
> AT THE BEHEST OF NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL ANDREW 
> QUOMO, TIME WARNER CABLE FORCES CHILD PORNOGRAPHY 
> ON TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB
> 
> because that's all that can happen.  And the worst
> part? goodness! web sites can easily be encrypted 
> to prevent access by law enforcement.

There are good reasons why the World Wide Web hasn't become a haven for illegal child pornography, due to a basic difference between Usenet and websites (even encrypted ones) which boils down to two words: "paper trail".

Usenet is practically a public service.  Anyone can use it, and it is incredibly anonymous thanks to its decentralized nature.  Thanks to "common carrier" laws, ISPs deliberately ignore everything you do on Usenet, so a single guy can upload terabytes of child pornography from some public or insecure Usenet server.  Usenet even allows the one uploader to upload his files exactly once, saving him time and money, and also meaning that by the time the record of his huge upload is discovered on the "unintentionally public" Usenet server, he's long gone.  Lots of other people all over the world can then download those terabytes of child pornography on their own ISP's Usenet server, secure in the knowledge that their ISP isn't taking an active interest in their Usenet downloads.  

The same isn't true of the World Wide Web, which is an incredibly centralized service.  Yes, the Internet is decentralized, but web servers have physical locations (which can be raided) and, more importantly, cost money to run.  Those two factors add up to requiring users of any encrypted child pornography web server to pay for their access.  Thus the pedophile logging into the encrypted web server has a payment record on his credit card *and* a payment record on the child pornography website server.  Anonymity is lost, and the pedophiles know this to be true, so it is a deterrent to starting such web servers.  One snitch and one server raid, and everyone who is a member of the child pornography website has a lot of explaining to do on the way to their individual sex crime trials.

While there are more complicated but highly secure means of sharing data between systems, pedophiles' activities are condoned only by other pedophiles and thus they have no technical community to draw on for assistance.  Unlike the music and movie pirates, whose activities aren't seen as major sins by most of the world.

However, condemning and ending Usenet because Usenet can easily be used to distribute child pornography is rather like condemning and ending Bittorrent because it can easily be used to pirate music and movies.  Tools with both legal and illegal uses shouldn't be banned solely on the possibility that they could be used for illegal purposes.