FTC Takes Out Porn- and Botnet-Spewing ISP 263
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today got a judge to effectively kill off the Internet service provider 3FN, which the agency said specialized in spam, porn, botnets, phishing, and all manner of malicious web content. The ISP's computer servers and other assets have been seized and will be sold by a court and the operation has been ordered give back $1.08 million to the FTC."
Break out the champagne! (Score:5, Funny)
My heart overflows for this poor oppressed Botnet operator.
Re:Break out the champagne! (Score:5, Funny)
You should apply bound checking, otherwise someone could exploit it.
What about the providers? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I see your intent here, but what happened is precisely what needed to happen... maybe FASTER than it happened, but still it happened.
Here's why I would have issue with your extended prosecution logic:
1. Such a move does not place limitations of responsibility. For example, you prosecute the upstream provider of the "criminal organization." Great. But what about the upstream provider of that provider?
2. Such a move would serve to stifle admittance onto the internet in general. It would cause upstream pro
Re:What about the providers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, that's probably the aim of the FTC, which is little more than a pro-industry group. This has definitely been the aim of the largest telecoms for at least a decade now.
They let the internet get away from them. They're still mad that the wild, wooly Internet ever came to exist without their guiding hand from day one.
The Internet was basically an accident. If it had been started by the "Free Market" it would never have looked anything like the way it looks today, with anybody who gets connectivity having the ability to become a content provider with global reach. Job #1 now is to get it completely under corporate control where (they believe) it should be. They're not going to stop until they are once again the gatekeepers for what people see and do, and every single Internet activity is metered and monetized.
This is why people like me are so anxious to keep the Internet public, using Net Neutrality laws. We remember how it started, what it was like before there was any corporate presence, and how desperately the largest corporations want to turn it into cable television.
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"This is why people like me are so anxious to keep the Internet public, using Net Neutrality laws."
If you put your faith in government, your doomed to be disappointed. I like net neutrality "in principle", and I reconcile(d) that with my libertarian world view mostly because I believe that the availability of information is critical to a free market and a free society. I was even something of a "crusader" for the cause a couple of years ago. I then came to the realization that we cannot trust the federal
How is the porn part relevant? (Score:4, Interesting)
Supporting/controlling botnets I can understand, but where does serving up porn figure in the shutdown? I can't see how it did.
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Because it gets the religious types in a frenzy, and all those anonymous letters and leaflet campaigns carry a lot of weight around the FTC.
Botnets, spams and malware aren't good headlines, PORN (36 point Verdana Bold Italic) is !
Because Americans are a bunch of sexually-repressed prudes in public, but just as perverted and fucked up behind closed doors as the rest of us ?
Take your pick.
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA - "pornography featuring children, violence, bestiality, and incest"
Not necessarily the most legal porn. Sorry if I'm a sexually-repressed prude for not thinking kiddie porn and bestiality is OK.
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Ok, so no to child porn and bestiality, but I can take it that you are into incest since you didn't include it in your second list?
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Kind of scary that he won't fuck his dog, but he will fuck his sister (and hit her too, he missed out violence form the list). Priorities ?
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Because fucking a dog is just nas... hey, why are you looking at me like that?
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sort of depends on the definitions used. I'm against cruelty, unless the target is a masochist, but...
Child porn has been used to imprison a 15 year old who sent pictures of self to their 16 year old partner. (I'm vague, because of uncertainty, but I think the 15 year old was a boy. And it's possible that he was arrested for possessing nude pictures of his 16 year old girl-friend [that she sent from her cellphone].)
Since then I've been a bit skeptical of child-porn stories.
Also, a man having sex with a small dog is clearly wrong. But with a horse...if it objected, the man would never walk again. And women appear to have been "making it" with animals since the stone ages without anyone suffering. (Well, bar a few who didn't choose to do so, but there the wrong is in the coercion.)
And incest? Do you *believe* everything you read? How do you know whether they are related or not?
P.S.: Child porn has been stretched to cover cartoons. Explain to me why I should disapprove of those cartoons? I remember seeing similar comic books when I was in high school around 1960, so I'm certain it's nothing new.
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Freedom of expression is not absolute. You cannot incite to violence, panic or break laws.
Try yelling "fire" in the crowded theater.
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Try yelling "fire" in the crowded theater.
Why is that always the example that gets trotted out? Did somebody actually do it?
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. [wikipedia.org]
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Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:4, Insightful)
From what I understand about group dynamics, shouting, "FIRE" in a crowded theater even if there is a fire will result in similar outcomes.
(People telling you "SSSSH this is the scene where Cody Rhodes gets the WarMachine armor!" in hushed tones.)
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..... in order to silence people who were protesting World War 1. And suffragettes protesting for the right to vote - they ended up in jail for the mere act of saying their opinions. That's a crime against individual rights.
Also it was an illogical argument. Protesting the War Draft on public property, and yelling fire in a private theater, are NOT the same thing. Nobody is harmed if I stand on a street corner holding a sign which reads, "Stop the Draft".
"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. ..... Their power all the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
--Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
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maybe because it's a pretty good example of the point being made?
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The other reason that's a lousy example is because it was the argument Woodrow Wilson used to imprison Alice Paul, suffragettes, and other people protesting World War 1 (Sound familiar? Almost like George Duh Bush). No leader or government should have that power to silence the people, even in time of war.
Too bad the current US President seems to be channeling Woodrow Wilson. The demonization of middle-age & senior citizens, often with children & grandchildren with them, that have protested this gove
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:5, Informative)
You think child porn is protected by freedom of expression?
Tell me, whose freedom are you thinking should be protected? The adult or the child? Is it OK if the adult's freedoms infringe on those of the child?
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The freedom of the person who’s looking at a picture and thinking something naughty.
The people who actually produced the stuff... the adults who abused kids to make porn... well, you apparently didn’t read his comment very well, because he already said you should go after them.
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That doesn't take into account the fact that the pictures were taken without the child's consent (because the child can't consent).
Yes, actually, it does.
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
-CP is produced. Someone purchases it and shares it online via file sharing. Other people download it from them, making the person that produced it happier as others find out to come to "jasonXXX8yrold" for more files. All people that downloaded it are supporting the production, because they are encouraging the distribution of the file.
You obviously do not know how this sort of thing works. The people who produce it do not want it widely distributed... as soon as it’s found by law enforcement, it’s a piece of potential evidence to find them and catch them. Hell, anonymous people on the internet tracked down a woman who stomped on a kitten with spike heels... do not underestimate the power of benign things.
-CP is produced. Someone purchases it, thereby supporting the person they got it from directly.
Those sort of things are carefully designed trades. They don’t deal with people they don’t trust, and they don’t trust people unless those people also abuse kids. There’s too much risk of being caught in a sting... and the imprudent ones who do stupid stuff like you described do get caught... which is why you think that they’re all like that, I suppose. It’s only the really clever ones who get away with it... and you don’t even know most of them exist.
-CP is produced. The producer places it online in a cloud-style system, and then monitors to see how many times it's been downloaded. Nobody pays for it, ever. But the producer gets a "good feeling" from being popular, so he continues to produce it.
They do not do it for the notoriety. That is absurd. They do it because they like abusing kids. The ones who do film it do so mostly just to share amongst themselves. If anything, when their materials do leak it just means they should be even more careful in the future because they don’t want law enforcement getting wind of them.
http://www.google.com/search?q=wikileaks+my+life+in [google.com]
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
You think child porn is protected by freedom of expression?
Tell me, whose freedom are you thinking should be protected? The adult or the child? Is it OK if the adult's freedoms infringe on those of the child?
You're protecting the freedom of the poor bastard who downloaded it by mistake and didn't nuke his hard drive from orbit.
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You think child porn is protected by freedom of expression?
Yes. Just as I think looking at photos of a grisly murder is ALSO protected by freedom of expression. I didn't commit the crime - I'm only looking at light captured on paper, so I've done nothing wrong. (BUT the person who committed the crime should be arrested and jailed for a long, long time.)
This is also why I don't think possession of marijuana should be a crime. If you are driving while smoking, then yes you should be arrested, but if you're just sitting at home enjoying the psychedelic colors
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It is called freedom of speech not freedom of expression.
So you can talk about all you want. But no your wrong it should be and is illegal. The Supreme Court is okay it being illegal as is most of society.
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Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can’t sell, consume, promote, or otherwise utilize a movie without inherently promoting its production. That’s why the MPAA encourages piracy of movies.~
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Because Americans are a bunch of sexually-repressed prudes in public
Yeah, that's the impression I get from watching American mass media. We are all prudes....
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:4, Informative)
I was watching a German TV show the other day, when suddenly a young woman came strolling across the screen topless. Oooops. That's not allowed on U.S. broadcast television (although I wish it was). I'd say we're prudish, or at least the FCC is.
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And yet there is all sorts of political speech that is illegal in Germany. For instance you can not say heil Hitler on tv even in a sitcom like Hogan's Heros where they where making fun of the Nazis.
Different cultures have different standards. I can understand why Germany has it's rules even if they are bit over the top to me. After all a flag has never killed anybody.
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BOTNETS can be used to distribute porn, but they are much more likely to be used for anoymous proxies, spam networks, credit card fraud etc.
Saying botnets = porn is just as insipid as saying PostOffice = porn. It's just the magic P-word to get the people / media into their frenzy. Because everyone knows "ALL porn is kiddy porn, even if you don't actually specify that".
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:4, Funny)
Because it gets the religious types in a frenzy, and all those anonymous letters and leaflet campaigns carry a lot of weight around the FTC.
Of course. You know that 1 complaint = 1 billion people, right?
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Of course. You know that 1 complaint = 1 billion people, right?
I hear they got 20 calls about that incident, which means that 20 billion people were offended by this. [allenhuntshow.com]
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>> 20 billion people were offended by this
Wow, that's one fifth the number of people that have been served by McDonalds!
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Supporting/controlling botnets I can understand, but where does serving up porn figure in the shutdown? I can't see how it did.
RTFA--they were hosting child pornography sites. That's a whole different animal from the usual porn.
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And why counldn't that have been mentioned in the news snippet? 'c' 'h' 'i' 'l' 'd' a whopping 5 bytes more, and the aura of trolling for comments would have been blown away.
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Because the “news snippet” is actually just the first 2 paragraphs of the article, copied verbatim, and the nature of the porn wasn’t mentioned until the 3rd paragraph:
The Federal Trade Commission today got a judge to effectively kill off the Internet Service Provider 3FN who the agency said specialized in spam, porn, botnets, phishing and all manner of malicious Web content.
The ISP's computer servers and other assets have been seized and will be sold by a court and the operation has been ordered give back $1.08 million to the FTC.
According to the FTC in June 2009, it charged that 3FN, which does business as Triple Fiber Network, APS Telecom, APX Telecom, APS Communications, APS Communication and Pricewert LLC, actively recruited and colluded with criminals to distribute harmful electronic content including spyware, viruses, trojan horses, phishing schemes, botnet command-and-control servers, and pornography featuring children, violence, bestiality, and incest. The FTC alleged that the defendant advertised its services in the darkest corners of the Internet, including a chat room for spammers.
This is Slashdot... what did you expect?
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:5, Funny)
RTFA--they were hosting child pornography sites. That's a whole different animal from the usual porn.
Which animal is in your usual porn?
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RTFA--they were hosting child pornography sites. That's a whole different animal from the usual porn.
Which animal is in your usual porn?
ManBearPig [wikipedia.org], Manimal [wikipedia.org] or a Whoreasaurus [urbandictionary.com]?
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Which animal is in your usual porn?
H. sapiens?
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Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...harmful electronic content including...pornography featuring children, violence, bestiality, and incest.
The "children" part seems relevant...
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:5, Funny)
No more sex in marriage either.
Way ahead of ya, pal.
Re:How is the porn part relevant? (Score:5, Funny)
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New moderation method ... +1 Relates
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I can't think of anything else that would effect the geek community less than banning sex.
A giant shield to block the sun? There could be one deployed right now, i'd never know about it.
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You just wouldn't be able to personally *see* it, from down there in your parents basem..., um, H@x0rs L@!r...
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Banning sex would make it impossible to effect anyone! (Except through cloning). It would, however, not affect the geeks as much as the rest of the world (unless masturbation were included in the ban). :)
This post brought to you by "Grammer Nazis 4 Gooder Englush". :)
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You're not married, are you?
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Going on 6 years over here and I still have way more sex than my single friends :) And yes, my wife IS hot AND real ;)
Pics on an ISP other than 3FN or it didn't happen.
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And yes, my wife IS hot AND real ;)
...and robotic.... :)
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of course this gets modded up. it's easy to dismiss something when you can just blindly point your fingers at 'wacko religious people'.
In any case, 1 acronym for you: RTFA
Hey hey hey! (Score:2, Insightful)
which the agency said specialized in spam, porn, botnets, phishing and all manner of malicious Web content
One of these things is not like the other
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How long did your career producing segments for Sesame Street last?
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Maybe it was redundant because he cleverly bolded the word “porn” to make it stand out and then pointed out the rather obvious fact that it was unlike the others?
And maybe something that’s otherwise somewhat redundant can be funny if you put it to a witty rhyme?
Porn? (Score:5, Funny)
"FTC Takes Out Porn, Internet traffic slows to a trickle."
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Damn. Can they put the porn back online and just leave the botnet off please?
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Oh god NO! (Score:3, Funny)
Coincidence? (Score:2)
Just checked the spam folder in my e-mail client--it's empty. I can't even remember the last time that happened.
Where/When is the Auction? (Score:2)
I've always wondered how to get in on auctions like this. Anyone know how to find the pertinent information?
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I've always wondered how to get in on auctions like this. Anyone know how to find the pertinent information?
Yeah, there's gold waiting to be extracted from those disks ...
Re:Where/When is the Auction? (Score:4, Insightful)
i would hope that the actual drives themselves are locked in some evidence warehouse in crates labeled with a case number since they will needed as evidence for when they hang^imprison these folks post trial.
so in short if they still have the files on them a number of somebodies need to lose their jobs (or you wont be getting the drives at all).
One of These Things.... (Score:5, Funny)
One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
Did you guess which thing was not like the others?
Did you guess which thing just doesn't belong?
Re:One of These Things.... (Score:4, Funny)
Phishing doesn't belong because it's a verb.
The others are nouns.
Hint for the graduates of Texas:
nouns=names
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Spam can be a verb.
Re:One of These Things.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One of These Things.... (Score:5, Funny)
Botnets doesn't belong because it's the only one without the letter "p" in it.
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It's there, it's just upside-down.
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None of them are the same thing.
Came in for the people who didn't RTFA on Soapbox (Score:3, Informative)
Child porn will generally get you in trouble in just about every western jurisdiction. This is not news. This was not just a singular administrative action born in the middle of the night. This started over a year ago and was the culmination of a legal proceeding where they apparently proved that this entity was actively recruiting nefarious clients to host child porn and other illegal activities.
This one smacks more of sensationalist summary writing than of government censorship or unconstitutional takings.
Is 3FN 3FN.NET? (Score:2, Interesting)
If so, it still seems eager to take my business:
http://www.webhostingstuff.com/company/3FNNET.html [webhostingstuff.com]
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Re:Is 3FN 3FN.NET? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe so, but their uptime graph really sucks.
Blocked at work so I can't RTFA - but... (Score:2)
I find it hard to believe than an *identifieable* ISP that is making money with legally dodgy stuff (spam) and legal but offputting stuff (bestiality, etc.) would jeopardize its revenue by hosting for-real child porn. That's just stupid.
Could someone who's not blocked from reading the article tell me - Was this *real* child porn? Or was it "under-18 in skimpy clothes" sites? Lots of politicians like to throw around an "entry-level child porn" label when they really mean "about as much skin as you can see
Before you knee-jerk about the porn... (Score:3, Informative)
...the original complaint lists "pornography featuring children, violence, bestiality, and incest" in one section, and every other mention of "pornography" is listed as "child pornography".
Even excluding the child pornography, reading the complaint, the pornography aspects of his business are not legitimate porn sites. He runs porn sites whose primary purpose is to catch search engine hits and direct them to sites containing malware, viruses, and fake anti-virus products (ransom anti-virus software, effectively). This is not a guy who runs a few woefully unethical businesses and then runs a legitimate pornography business on the side. Please don't confuse this for the shutdown of a pornography website, even the porn sites are just tools to infect unsuspecting visitors with hostile software.
Pretending this particular case is the law coming in and preventing you from looking at pornography is roughly akin to suggesting that Adolf Hitler was considered an enemy of the Allied powers because they didn't like his painting.
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TFA also mentions child pornography, which is fairly universally forbidden.
If your gonna be critical of the government, don't give them any other reason to attack you. It helps bolster your case of "I did nothing wrong" and "they're just trying to take me down"
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If CP was not so regulated and forbidden, there would be a lot less children harmed in the making of it.
Huh? That argument flies with the War on Drugs because most drug addicts are consenting adults. How does it fly with something that requires sexual behavior on the part of those too young to consent to such activities?
Re:Today "malicious content" (Score:5, Interesting)
If you have an audience who wants something and there is no where else to get it (because it is illegal and actively destroyed) you can set a rather high price on it and run a business doing it. On the other hand, if there is so much free CP floating around because it isn't actively destroyed the few people with that fetish go to that and don't even bother to purchase CP destroying the economy of it.
There are lots of really, really strange fetishes out there but none are so financially successful as CP because of the presence of regulation. In order to fill the small number of people who like CP, more CP has to be produced because it isn't out there anymore which leads to more children being abused.
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Because think about it.
That’s a dangerous way to start off an argument about something you know little about.
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If it was free and unregulated it would fill the internet making it hard for people to turn a profit producing it on their own which would lead to any economic benefit being reduced or eliminated.
Right. Just like how "regular" porn is unprofitable because the internet is already full of it.
because it is illegal and actively destroyed
Right. Because CP doesn't exist in digital form with multiple copies floating around the world, and is therefore easily destroyed when it's found.
if there is so much free CP floating around because it isn't actively destroyed the few people with that fetish go to that and don't even bother to purchase CP destroying the economy of it.
Right. Which is why nobody is producing "regular" porn anymore, since there's more than enough of it available to satisfy everyone already.
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Right. Just like how "regular" porn is unprofitable because the internet is already full of it.
The difference is, everyone uses regular porn.
Right. Because CP doesn't exist in digital form with multiple copies floating around the world, and is therefore easily destroyed when it's found.
It is effectively destroyed when they raid servers, HDD, etc. Yeah, there might be a few copies floating around but they aren't generally hosted on the internet for fear of them being taken down.
Right. Which is why nobody is producing "regular" porn anymore, since there's more than enough of it available to satisfy everyone already.
The difference is the amount of CP produced because of the economy is disproportionate to the number of people who consume it which is directly caused by the fact it is illegal.
People are producing regular porn now because there is a -large- market for it that
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Because think about it. If there is already free porn of it, why make even more of it for what is a fetish for a small amount of people. If it was free and unregulated it would fill the internet making it hard for people to turn a profit producing it on their own which would lead to any economic benefit being reduced or eliminated.
Yeah, sure. Look at how that has killed the mainstream porn industry. Not.
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wait a moment...
If CP was not so regulated and forbidden, there would be a lot less children harmed in the making of it.
Isn't that the arguement for legalizing drugs?
Are you making some ironic comparison of the two that's wooshing over my head, or are you actually suggesting that the solution to child porn is to leaglize and regulate it?
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If CP was not so regulated and forbidden, there would be a lot less children harmed in the making of it. Since it is though, it has created a large economy dedicated to the production of it.
Ridiculous and untrue.
http://www.google.com/search?q=wikileaks+my+life+in [google.com]
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the only ground i would give on this issue is that some sanity should be employed as to what is considered "child porn"
1 father of a child has pictures of a non sexual nature OF SAID CHILD on his computer NOT PORN
2 parent of a child has pictures that include said child and possible other children (while not sexual) NOT PORN
3 Non parent has a bunch of pictures of children (with a number of them barely dressed) PORN
4 a set of pictures of a child in various poses (and clothing) being sold PORN
5 naked pics of
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Non parent has a bunch of pictures of children (with a number of them barely dressed)
a set of pictures of a child in various poses (and clothing) being sold
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=children+stock+images [google.com]
If you’re feeling really risque, add the search term “swimsuit”!!
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Way to troll on several things at once: 7.5
But I'll bite...
This single 'win' probably shut down .0001% of all spam traffic. In response, the price of hiring a botnet just went up .0001%. Yay. What a 'win'.
{yawn}
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Up there getting "Flamebait" mods for equating this to government silencing dissenters (using the tried-and-true slippery slope fallacy).