SBC/Pacbell To Filter 90% Of alt.binaries Groups

An Anonymous Coward writes: "I received an email from PacBell.net (Pacific Bell's ISP), stating that they're transitioning their usenet services to Prodigy. They're making a few changes along the way." He excerpts from the email: "In addition, after evaluating possible copyright infringement issues, newsgroup usage and the cost of providing newsgroup access, we will no longer offer some alt.binary newsgroups. For a list of alt.binaries that will no longer be offered, please refer to our FAQ at http://global.pacbell.net/usenet_update.html.' Note that the link currently doesn't go to the right place. After telephoning SBC, I was informed that upwards of 90% of the alt.binaries.* groups are going to be blocked."

Comments

Regarding newsgroups and ISP's

[mindstrm]

Although I agree that a big, fat news server does make an ISP more attractive...

when I buy internet service, I want IP routing, PERIOD. I don't *want* to pay for whatever wierd services they think they need to run. I'll do my own mail, dns, everything else.

If tehy don't want to waste resources (legal or technical) in carrying some newsgroups.. fine. I guess it sucks for their customers who like it....
but I've been paying for access to news-servers separately for years now. It just makes sense. They are far less likely to change policies and rip you off when it's their sole business.

Re:The 'net has moved on

[rknop]

I say, let it die peacefully. The intelligent people left newsgroups a long time ago and the only remaining denizens are the pornographers and anarchists who don't deserve a voice in the first place.

Sort of a pity, realy, since NNTP is a protocal designed for distributed discussion groups. Now, instead, we're all stuck with web-based messaging systems, like this one, which, in a word, suck. Oh, some are better than others, but to my view, using a web browers for a discussion board is like using a hammer to drive screws.

Think about it: we're all stuck with the interface that the server has decided to implement. Whereas, with NNTP, we can each choose our own newsreader client, and yet still all communicate.

A pity that the Web Browser has become such the "killer ap" that now everybody uses it even when there are far better longstanding tools out there.

-Rob

could backfire on them

[sessamoid]

While cutting down on their news server costs considerably, this move could backfire on them. If a significant number of their customers actually like and use the alt.binaries groups on their news server, they'll go elsewhere for news service.

The problem with this is that since the news is no longer kept within their own network, that all that traffic is going to have to pass through their mian connection to the internet. They could end up having to spend quite a bit more on bigger pipes as a result of this.

Should be interesting to watch.

It's a good thing

[martin-k]

Though they have ulterior motives, I applaud the move. Anything that rids Usenet of the binaries is inherently good.

A full newsfeed is 200 to 250 *GBytes* a day, of which only around 5% is text-based discussion. Just by dropping binaries and keeping the same amount of disk space, a news provider increases retention time for *real* discussions immensely. If I had to decide whether I want my ISP to serve incomplete binaries to alt.fan.britney-spears.blow-job or have six months retention for comp.lang.*, I'd prefer the latter (others might have different preferences, though ...)

Get used to it: If you want binaries, pay for it. It's not that bad: 10 bucks a month, and you're in business. Go to Newsguy, Giganews, Supernews, uncensored-news.com, newsfeeds.com but don't expect your ISP to provide everything.

-Martin