Surely ISPs exist to provide a service, not to act as censors whenever they receive a complaint for fear of court action, despite the possibility of the material concerned being entirely benign. The 'Demon Internet' trial barely manages to scratch the surface of the possible implications, not to mention that this is less of a problem in the USA, where similar situations have been dismissed.

Putting censorship in perspective

Imagine an ISP such as Demon Internet offers 'uncensored' Newsgroup access, and then in one of those newsgroups somebody (Person A) makes an abusive comment against somebody else (Person B). The man who has had to take the abuse (Person B) contacts the Usenet posters ISP and asks for the post to be removed. The ISP obviously can't remove posts from the group because it's not under their direct control, so Person B sues.

Suddenly the whole issues of Censorship opens right back up again, smacking us all in the face and knocking us cold. Nobody's saying Censorship is a bad thing; in fact in many cases it's a 'saviour'. As a light hearted example, while your eating your dinner and watching the 6 O-Clock news, do you really want to see pictures of people physically being cut up on-screen? HELL NO!

ISPreview believes that one of our readers, whom we'll refer to as 'Chris', got it right by saying the following:

"My real point was with some ISPs who cut out the binaries groups because some, not all, of them contain undesirable material. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some kind of pervert and I would never personally choose to post to or read posts in some of those groups. But the whole point is that if I so choose, I should have the right to decide what I will and will not view. I think many members of the internet-using community do not realise the extent to which their ISP censors material.

Take for example, Demon's usenet server: 60,000 groups; Force 9's usenet server: 64,000 groups; Many free ISPs servers: 25-30,000 groups. In my view there needs to be a code of conduct for ISPs to the effect that they should be forced to state exactly what they cut out and what they allow. That means that those users who wish to browse/post in a more controlled environment can use ISPs that support this, and those of us who want to make such decisions for ourselves should be allowed to do so."

We quite agree with Chris, at the end of the day it's up to the ISP user to choose what they see/read and what they don't. If somebody throws abuse at you over the Usenet or IRC then there's not a lot you can do about it, it's your choice to be there and therefore yours to decide what you see. We don't visit newsgroups or IRC for just that reason.

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