French Government decides to censor the Internet, Time Warner Cable closes Usenet

Keep your Égalité and Fraternité but shove your Liberté!

..In fact, worse still is that any site is now game for a French blockade, as Sarkozy’s government is inviting people to send in huge long lists of sites which offend their delicate sensibilities. The French government, which will purportedly be able to receive complaints from Internet users in real time, will be able to add sites to a so called “black list”, which it will then force national ISPs to block.
The move, announced by France’s Interior Minister, Michel Alliot-Marie, is France’s way of showing it is indeed taking a strong stand against cyber-criminality, but it seems that the line between ‘strong’ and ‘authoritarian’ is a little fuzzy on this one.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/06/10/french-government-decides

Time Warner Cable To Stop Offering Newsgroup Access

An internal tipster drops me a line to note that Time Warner Cable/Roadrunner will be eliminating newsgroup access. The newsgroup ax is expected to fall before the end of the month, and my source says that an official announcement should go up on the Roadrunner website sometime around the sixteenth. Roadrunner has actually held on for some time, given many broadband ISPs stopped offering newsgroup access several years ago. http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-Cable-To-Stop-Offering-Newsgroup-Access-95030

According to a report by Declan McCullagh, Sprint will be blocking the entire alt. hierarchy of Usenet, while good old Time Warner Cable has no time for such fussiness and will just stop offering all Usenet access. Verizon, the third participating ISP, has not yet announced its blocking plans.
http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Verizon__Time_Warner_Cable__and_Sprint_To_Block_Usenet