AT&T Blocks 4chan

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

AT&T is so screwed. I'm not a fan of the site, but AT&T picked the wrong people to mess with.

What's interesting, is this: "Telcoms have got no liability for illegal things being transmitted over their networks as long as they are completely neutral in serving it. Once they start filtering or censoring, they're responsible for filtering all the bad stuff out." (Project AT&T)

"And in a similar case, Shillitani v. Valentine, 53 NYS 2d 127 (1945), the court stated that absent illegal use, "a telephone company may not refuse to furnish service and facilities because of a mere suspicion or mere belief that they may be or are being used for an illegitimate end; more is required." 53 NYS at 131. The court went on to quote approvingly of a California case (People v. Brophy, 49 Cal.App.2d 15, at 33, 120 P2d 946, at 965) where the police exercised veto power over telephone installations. The California court, found the arrangement unenforceable and stated, "public utilities and common carriers are not the censors of public or private morals, nor are they authorized or required to investigate or regulate the public or private conduct of those who seek service at their hands."

"In National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners v. FCC, 525 F.2d 630 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 992, 96 S.Ct. 2203, 48 L.Ed.2d 816 (1976) (NARUC I ), we observed that the essential element of common carriage is the carrier's undertaking " 'to carry for all people indifferently.' " [60] In the communications context, this means providing a service whereby customers may " 'transmit intelligence of their own design and choosing.' " Computer and Communications Industry Association v. Federal Communications Commission, 693 F.2D 198, 209, 224 U.S.APP.D.C. 83 (D.C. Cir. 1982)"

Courtesy of Cybertelecom::Common Carrier and Cybertelecom::Telecom Carriers. Emphasis mine.

Thoughts? Will AT&T back down or is this going to get hilariously bad?

[Darlica]

They can do that?

What happened to the glorious land of the free?


There are things that results in blocked sites over here too, child pornography is the main one but in that case it is the Swedish police authorities that blocks them.

[Swatopluk]

I heard that during Dubya's reign AOL blocked emails critical of dear leader. If that is true that would mean that they
a) read the mail
b) censored it.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

We will have more incidents like this going forward, the more time passes, the more needed are laws for net neutrality.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

AT&T is currently claiming that it was done to stop DDoS attacks that were flooding servers and sending their bandwidth out of control. Why target /b/ and whatever the others one was?
Really, I don't think the /b/tards will care what the motive was, they'll still screw with AT&T.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

A Denial of Service (or DDoS) attack is when a number of hits overwhelm a particular address to the point of blocking the server. The only possible way that could be related is if 4chan had a DDoS targeting specifically /b/ and/or /r9k/, and given the response from their admins they never requested such thing (although they did indeed have a DDoS attact the week before).

The alternative would be that 4chan was hosting a script that was targeting ATT servers (of which there is no evidence whatsoever) but that would imply that 4chan would be experiencing the same traffic ATT would, rendering the effort selfdestructive (and that assuming every single user of 4chan hitting the server at the same time to make a valid DDoS attack), besides if that were the case why block two folders in 4chan and not the whole site?

The whole DDoS thing is complete and utter bullsh!t, the block is likely because someone in a high place within ATT complained about his kid reading the wholesome* stories in /b/ and /r9k/.

* the word used here in it's most ironic form, the content there is a mixture of disgusting, disturbing and infantile.