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Old 06-October-2005, 07:14 PM
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Exclamation Road Runner blocks certain sites

In an effort to make the CTers happy, RR has blocked their subscribers from a bunch of web sites, The best news is Alex Jones 2 sites have been blocked, so now he can wax ecstatic about the plots.....no doubt we will hear about soon, on C2C or something similar.....Now I have noted that certain other sites are also blocked, including firearms related historical sites, ie: not selling any guns, just pictures and histories. Since I am in the antique gun biz, this is somewhat strange....I have to state, that even though Alex is controversial, the bed wetters and politically correct idiots at Time-Warner need to stop trying to censor the net....This is really unacceptable, I do not need some whiner at an ISP telling me what I cannot see....If Bush did this, the media would go berserk, so I wonder why no one else has mentioned this in the supposed "real media"....

This was discovered by this writer on 10-04-05, and noted on C2C on 10-05-05.......Has anyone else noticed this??? (RR has confirmed for me their blockage of "Controversial" web sites...via a 3rd party..)

Dale in Ala
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Last edited by vonmazur : 06-October-2005 at 07:17 PM. Reason: missed a phrase...
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Old 06-October-2005, 07:25 PM
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Bluecoat currently claims that my own website (and everyone else who uses the local Mac user's group as their ISP) is pornography.
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Old 06-October-2005, 07:53 PM
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What are CTers? What is Roadrunner and Bluecoat?

Pete
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Old 06-October-2005, 08:13 PM
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RoadRunner is a DSL ISP running on Cable TV lines here in Birmingham...(Alabama)

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Old 06-October-2005, 08:24 PM
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Bluecoat is a service that categorizes websites. You can get software that will read their categorizations and block browsers on your computer (or network) from accessing inappropriate sites. For example, from this office I can't get to pornographic, hacker-related, or political websites because they're blocked (or, more precisely, sites that have been categorized as such, correctly or not).
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Old 06-October-2005, 08:27 PM
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"CTers" is the local shorthand for "Conspiracy Theorists".....BTW They are foaming at the mouth over this......

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Old 06-October-2005, 08:38 PM
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Okay, I use Roadrunner, and this is slightly peeving me off. I use it here in Corpus Christi, TX, and so far I've loved how fast and effective it is, and how low my problems have been.

To hear that they would censor anything irks me. An entire ISP deciding what to censor and what not to censor makes me irritated, especially when I'm 20, nearing the age of 21, and I should be able to view practically anything I wish to (limited at Rights to Privacy, of course).

If I want to look at anything pornographic, I should be able to. If I want to look at guns, whether to buy (legally), sell (legally), or look over histories of (I doubt I could do this illegally), I should be able to. This is incredibly disheartening news, and seems slightly fascist (though instead of the government telling you what you can and can't look at or do, it's a corporation).

Bah, sorry for the minor rant here, I'm not really adding anything besides an editorial, but I had to pipe up.
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Old 06-October-2005, 08:54 PM
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Question Alex Jones claim is here.....

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles...nercensors.htm

This is his claim on this issue....

Dale
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Old 06-October-2005, 09:06 PM
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It is about time someone started policing the web

Pornography degrades all who touch it, funds terrorism and may bring the final apocolypse

What we need now is some decent software that will block those obscene news items that criticise the government. Criticising the government is running the country down and a blow to morale.

We have seen what these so called free thinkers do, drugs, rock and roll, free love. It is time to put an end to this pernicious cancer once and for all. Censorship is your friend, you will love and adore it

It was good to here that Yahoo has been helping catch serious offenders in China (see here)


Wow I just managed to keep a straight face there spouting that lot off


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Old 06-October-2005, 09:09 PM
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Are you sure that this isn't fall-out from the Level3-Cogent dispute? I've see Roadrunner customers complaining about large pieces of the Net being unreachable.

Cogent Network Status

Date: 10/06/2005

Quote:
Level 3* has partitioned its part of the Internet from Cogent's part of the Internet by denying Level 3's customers access to Cogent's customers and denying Cogent's customers access to Level 3 customers.
On a Roadrunner status page I see:

Quote:
10/5/2005 8:53:06 AM Road Runner is currently experiencing issues with connectivity to websites hosted by Cogent. This issue is being caused by third party issues. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
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Old 06-October-2005, 09:28 PM
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I personally think it is the cogent/level 3 thing, but since Alex loves to rant und rave, I could not resist putting this up....

Alex has a so called camp listed in Arab Alabama, I live near that town, so I did some checking.....Wal Mart Area Distribution Center...passed off as a camp in a Sat.Pix... So I have no faith in his rants anymore, btw: Later he claimed that Wal Mart is in on it, and part of the grand plot....

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Old 06-October-2005, 09:39 PM
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http://www.prisonplanet.com




Woo-woos, sir! Thousands of them!
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Old 06-October-2005, 09:39 PM
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For what it's worth...

I implemented the web filtering solution at the rather large corporation where I work, so I've got quite a bit of experience with them. You can generally get around any category-based web filter by using a web proxy. Since web proxies include translation sites (like babelfish) it is unlikely that RoadRunner has blocked these. On the other hand, if they're using some sort of active content-based filter that wouldn't work--but since it's rather difficult to imagine what sort of keywords would indicate "controversy", I doubt they're doing that.

This seems very odd to me. What would make an ISP decide to block its users from wide swaths of the web? It seems like that would serve only to give advantage to their competitors.
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Old 06-October-2005, 09:59 PM
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I noticed some on GLP talking about this. Some people replied that they were on Roadrunner and weren't having problems. It seems like it might just be a regional thing. This could have been one person's decision to block these sites. Most likely it will be reversed soon as people complain about it.

Frankly, I don't see it as a big loss.
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Old 06-October-2005, 10:01 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kemal
Woo-woos, sir! Thousands of them!
Great, now every time I watch Zulu I'll be snickering at the the tensest parts, imagining hoards of crystal-wielding new-agers. Thanks for that, Kemal.
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Old 06-October-2005, 11:57 PM
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Roadrunner is my ISP, and I cannot access the site(s) in question. Hopefully this is simply a result of the aforementioned dispute. I loathe Jones and his tiresome, nonsensical PCT claims, and generally have no desire to visit his website (unless I'm interested in viewing something specific for debunking purposes). If RR attempted to arbitrarily decide what I can or cannot view, I'd drop them in a heartbeat even if it meant going back to dial-up.
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Old 07-October-2005, 12:23 AM
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i would tend to agree that it is more likely the level 3/cogent issue. the ISP is not liable for content you choose to view at home, so they have no reason to limit your access. i had roadrunner when in florida (via cable modem) and never had any issues.

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Old 07-October-2005, 02:37 AM
peter eldergill peter eldergill is offline
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I thought AOL was the worst offender by far in this respect...can someone tell me about what AOL does? I heard it's not actually the web, but their own little world, with only approved sites and so on...Is that true? Personally , I don't care for AOL's advertising methods and would never use them as an ISP

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Old 07-October-2005, 05:01 AM
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Default Re: Road Runner blocks certain sites

Quote:
Originally Posted by peter eldergill
I thought AOL was the worst offender by far in this respect...can someone tell me about what AOL does? I heard it's not actually the web, but their own little world, with only approved sites and so on...Is that true? Personally , I don't care for AOL's advertising methods and would never use them as an ISP

Pete
What AOL does is charge people more for service that is of a lower quality than real ISPs.

It started back in the 1980s, when home-accessible networks were being developed outside of ARPANet. Others of this ilk were Prodigy and CompuServe.

When the net was opened up in 1995, these providers managed to hang on by claiming special content and services. An aggressive and often deceptive advertising campaign by AOL, banking on the general ignorance of the American public about the WWW in particular and computers in general, paid off.

What was really hilarious about these three was during 1995, before they became de facto ISPs, they claimed to provide a user with "net access", but only to their own proprietary domains, which were inaccessible to non-AOL, etc., net surfers.

Why AOL is still is business was best described by H.L. Mencken many years ago,

Quote:
No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
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Old 07-October-2005, 06:21 AM
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I'm on RR and don't seem to have a problem getting to those sites. I guess it's over with, whatever it was.
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Old 07-October-2005, 08:15 AM
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