This past weekend I switched my internet provider from RCN to Comcast. Last Fall RCN sent me a notice saying it would no longer provide access to newsgroups. And when Comcast welcomed me this weekend, it told me the same thing: no access to newsgroups. It is not a big deal, but I am wondering why they (and maybe other internet providers) stopped the access to newsgroups. Is there something I don’t know?
Because nobody uses them any more. Maintaining a Usenet server can be a large expense (especially now that a huge amount of NNTP traffic is dedicated to distributing pirated movies and TV, and all the rest is spam.) And it’s not worth it for an ISP to go to the trouble for the small minority of their users who have even heard of newsgroups.
There was an FBI sting operation against newsgroup readers. I don’t know what it was called, but a friend of a friend got caught in it. He was downloading pictures from a binary group, possibly alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.young-girls or some such. Now he has to prove that every picture he looked at featured girls above 18 years of age. It’s already cost him his job.
Some newsgroups are still very active, but there’s a question of the legality of some of the content (especially the various binary hierarchies). Combined with the fact that it’s a very old technology, predating the web, a lot of companies probably don’t feel that it serves the majority of their customers. The fact that it’s a lot of data to transfer and archive, a lot of groups are heavily spammed, and the perceived narrow interest, NNTP is probably deemed not cost-effective as a service to be offered.
ETA: or, never mind. I added nothing that friedo hadn’t already said.
It has to do with a deal that several ISPs made with the Attorney General of New York. The ISPs agreed to block access to newsgroups that might be used for child porn. Time Warner chose to do it by blocking all newsgroups, and a couple of other ISPs did it by blocking the alt.* hierarchy. Cnet News article.
Google bought out DejaNews years ago, it was an adequate way to keep up on text newsgroups. But then Google merged it with Google Groups, and now, don’t even put Google Groups on their main seach page. Lately, the newsgroups have become overun with sporge (that’s spam, with forged headers so you can’t killfile people) so it’s even worse. If I’m looking for info, I do a web search for a forum, like SDMB, where at least total arseholes get banninated. So yeah, the USENET technology has become outdated, so there’s no real good reason to dedicate server space to it.
Wow, he sure has a crappy lawyer.
I haven’t browsed Usenet for years but I think we’ve lost something with the virtual demise of the alt newsgroups. They were completely and absolutely uncensored, ungoverned, freedom of speech in its purest form. The drawback was, of course, that absolute freedom meant freedom for everybody, including groups who you felt unclean just sharing the same planet with.
BTW here’s one of the guys who started the alt hierarchy. Interesting reading.
I started with Usenet back when there was only one, low volume, alt.sex group. There are just better ways of getting the same information out now. It is a classic case of something being so crowded that no one goes there anymore. The last time I even looked at it, years ago, it seemed to be spammers posting for other spammers. I can certainly see why ISPs would find it economically worthwhile to not fight orders to remove groups.
He taught music (brilliantly) to high school kids, and was forced out before he could even hire one. They arrested him at the school.
You misspelled porn.
All the free pr0n on Usenet is very bad for people in the pr0n business. There are, or were, also groups where you could download binaries of commercial recordings (the one I went to featured 78s).
usenet is alive and active and greatly appreciated by me. Where else can I get my daily porn, mp3s, movies and software all on one easy site. I agree that using a normal usenet server is a pain due to the spam, but there are plenty of useful web sites that (for a subscription) will filter out the spam, present the data in a web format, and join all the split files for you and send it to you encrypted.
My $11/month astraweb account is worth every penny. Gives me 6 months back access to every usenet group, and at speeds that BT can’t even begin to match (and without the bullshit ratios and lack of seeders that BT has)…and only maybe 5% of what I use it for is pr0n.
I do agree with the statements that most DISCUSSION groups are pretty much dead aside from spam. Even the pr0n groups are overloaded with it
The aggravating thing is that there were alt.* groups that were pretty damn well regulated/moderated by the group as a whole and were not about filesharing or porn.
God, I spent I don’t know how many hours on alt.gothic.fashion and still have my t-shirt that we as a group organized and got printed*. 
- the front has three goths in front of a computer, one lacing another up in her corset. The back says (in Courier New, naturally) “alt.gothic.fashion. We look good so you don’t have to.”).
I think the other poster was referring to the fact that your friend “must prove that every girl is over 18 years old”. He must be stuck in a bizzaro-world legal system where a defendant must prove his innocence…
Certainly my first :dubious:
Like, oh, alt.fan.cecil-adams 