Google Expands Usenet Archive to 20 Years

Paul Boutin writes "The Ghost of Usenet Postings Past has returned to haunt many more of us: Google just announced the expansion of their Usenet archive back to May 3, 1981."Check out the past on Groups.google.com

Comments

Straight to the point

[squaretorus]

Don't you love Google? This item took some decent reseach, holds genuine interest for many of us, is presented in a light format with no banner ads and is actually interesting.

If only Google could take over the WWW as well as usenet we'd all be better off!

A trip down Slashdot memory lane

[IntelliTubbie]

It appears that this is the first message mentioning slashdot.org.

This one is the first post by Rob Malda.

First mention of Jeff "Hemos" Bates.

First mention of CowboyNeal (is it the same guy?).

Awww, you guys...

Cheers,
IT

Say thanks

[augustz]

Hey Folks,

A lot of fun and a great job. Christ it's a laugh to look up first mentions of things.

Why not send a little thanks to google and the folks listed on their page that THEY give thanks to. For the lazy:

comments@google.com
bjones@wmhosting.com
faq-admin@faqs.org
magi@csd.uwo.ca

Doesn't take but a few minutes... So go on and drop them a note. Probably matters more than you think :)

Re:massive copyright violation

[Tassach]

No. But I do expect other people not to make money from my postings, and I do expect that people don't engage in massive copyright violation and redistribute large collections of postings with expiration dates of a few weeks after 15 years.

Stop whining. You posted your comments to a PUBLIC forum. The fact that someone has found a way to make money off of a archive of public messages does not give you any kind of legitimate grievance. There's nothing stopping you from doing the same thing if you wanted to. If you really feel so strongly that your copyright has been infringed, put your money where your mouth is and file a copyright infringement suit against Google.

If you spray-painted a bunch of grafitti around your town, then someone came around and took pictures of it and published a coffee table book of your art, you would have a VERY hard time convincing a court that you were due a cent. While IANAL, I would be suprised if there was not ample precedent saying that by placing your original work in a public forum you are releasing it to the public domain.