I find this whole issue of banning very sad.

[ShadowCat]

Hello,

Today I logged into my Anandtech account and found myself banned. Is Yahoo banned now? I have been with Anand since his old site, made his page my home page. I have seen his site grow to what it is today and I have been very happy(and still happy) for him. I don't post much. In the last few years perhaps I have posted twice.

I have been in the Internet for 10+ years and I have seen it changed so much. I was there when AOL open the IRC to their customers and I saw how this people was treated. Now we don't have to have colour or race to discriminate. An IP Addy will be sufficient. Gone are the days of freedom to express oneself.

I understand about banning someone for bad deeds. But to be prejudiced against everyone for one IP address for the bad deeds of a few? Yes, it smell like the real world is in the Internet now. Will china, or India or Russia, or even the state of Ohio will be next?

I know this sound a bit dramatic..but is something that made me think and i have seen it going on all around me when I'm surfing and reading postings. I guess that is the way it will be. Welcome to the 21 century!

btw..there is a lot of decent folk in AOL from the Americas and the other side of the Continent. As for AOL not giving info about their customers, I'm glad about that too. Years ago a girl almost got killed by an idiot that got her info through aol channels. She left the interenet and swored never to return and I don't blame her. There are a lot of nasties out there but there is also a lot of good people.

There has to be a better way to do this without banning the whole world.

Earth has been Banned cause is filled with humans and they tend to be such nuisance!

Have a nice day!

Kitty

 

[kranky]

Kitty, I agree that it's a shame certain domains have been banned. But from my observations it was the last resort. There were people creating accounts one after the other and causing major disruptions here. As soon as one got locked out, they'd create another account and start up again. It was making things miserable. Banning the domain was the only step to solve the problem.

I'm making an assumption here, but I don't believe that the AT admininstrators really wanted access to someone's private information. They just wanted the provider to take action when provided with enough information for the provider to identify the culprit. If the provider wouldn't do so, it was a choice to either let people wreck the boards, or ban the domain.

So in my mind it was users who caused this step, with the unfortunate side-effect of affecting other legitimate users who might use the same domain. But I blame the providers for not making an effort to clamp down on their users who were maliciously causing trouble here.

 

[Jason Clark]

ShadowCat, noone expects AOL to give out their personal user information. What yourself and many other don't understand is the serverity of what some of these people were doing. It is IMPOSSIBLE to just ban one person on AOL, so as a last resort the entire block was banned. It's a popular saying but someday when the shoe is on the other foot you may understand the reprocutions of what these people were doing, and how much effort is involved in keeping a forum of this size running, and serving the community in an ethical manner.