Comcast has become the latest ISP to shut down access to Usenet newsgroups as part of a voluntary agreement to try and fight child porn online. Users of the ISP giant found themselves unable to access Comcast's newsgroups over the weekend, and the company has posted a notice on its web site saying that its newsgroup service has been discontinued.

Comcast, along with 17 other cable providers across the US, first announced that it would no longer offer Usenet access to subscribers in July of this year. The voluntary measures were part of an agreement among the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), and the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) in order to take part in an "industry-wide attack on child pornography."

The cable providers that made the pact cover 87 percent of US homes, so this is no small agreement—everyone from Comcast to Time Warner to Cox has signed on. Additionally, Verizon announced that it was going to block access to the entire alt.* hierarchy in June, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger asked members of the California Internet Service Provider Association to consider blocking newsgroups that contain child porn as well.



Comcast's message to Usenet users

Usage of Usenet has declined significantly in recent years—it was much more popular in the early days of the Internet in the 80s and 90s—and has largely been replaced by message boards and mailing lists. Amid the warez and other binaries groups rife with copyrighted content is still a lot of perfectly legitimate, innocent, and relevant dialog occurring across the newsgroups, however, with only a few problem areas causing headaches. As we have suggested in the past, this form of overzealous approach could turn into a trend that enables governments to regulate content that is arbitrarily deemed harmful to the public good or even commercial interests.

In fact, Comcast's Help & Support section makes it clear that its move to block newsgroups is more about offloading responsibility than actually trying to fight child porn. In response to a question over whether Comcast offers newsgroups service, the company advises interested subscribers to choose from one of several third-party newsgroup providers. Of course, you'll have to pay extra for that and Comcast's monthly fees won't be going down in order to compensate for the loss of a service that's not being replaced (a Comcast spokesperson told Ars that it was considered a "complimentary service" that has seen a decline in popularity), but you can still get access to newsgroups if you really want them for a few more dollars a month and a little bit of extra effort—two things we don't see stopping child pornographers anytime soon.