The internet has allowed a lot of free thought to circle the planet and
most of this has been very good. Yes, it's allowed for a proliferation of
hate, porn and other undesirable stuff, for certain. But, by and large,
the net affect (pun intended), has been good.

There has been a change. To my mind, a serious and quite scary one. It
was brought to fruition by the New York Attorney General. How he made
companies the size of Verizon and ATT, among others, get on board is
beyond me. I don't know what the carrot or stick was, but it must have
been pretty big! The change is that these companies will now determine
what content you may see or read on the internet. Yes, I know. The stated
goal was to make it harder for pedophiles, and yes, that is something I
think all of us can agree with, but seriously, do you think dropping
usenet access to the alt groups, or usenet access entirely is even going
to slow these kinds of people down for a day? Of course not. I remember a
couple of years ago when the web site for Sailing Anarchy got hacked and
went down. Within 15 minutes, no exaggeration, alternate servers where
set up by unaffiliated people, other than being visitors to the SA
forums, and things went humming along as though nothing had happened
until the main site could get back on line. If unprepared folks, can do
this with little or no notice, don't you think the perverts were probably
prepared with a backup plan? So maybe this kind of thing will help slow
the Orwellianization of the 'net, I'm not sure.

So now, your ISP wants to tell you that because .00001 % of the
population, MIGHT be using one of the groups in the alt hierarchy for
sick and perverted postings, you are denied access to a.b.windows.os, and
every other group in that hierarchy that has nothing to do with child
molestation.

Using this logic, we should ban cars, because some people MIGHT drive
drunk. Or alcohol, or pain relievers, or fill in the blank!

Frankly, I see this as a power grab by the major ISP's. Never before have
they passed judgment on what is going through their "pipes". I really
think this is an extremely slippery slope. The scary part is that people
don't seem to see the potential for abuse, they are just pissed they
can't get their MP3's or whatever.

Of course, the US congress critters have given the telcos immunity, so I
guess anything is fair game now.

How long before it becomes part of your ISP's TOS to have a "net nanny"
watching your activity, with Uncle Sam's blessing? Will they even bother
to tell you? Will people posting in MNID simply stop and we'll never know
why, will we even notice?

Cripes, I just had a flash back to Rollerball!