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AOL Kills Usenet Access
Numair writes "BetaNews is reporting that AOL is about to terminate Usenet access for its users. Now, before everyone starts rejoicing ... where is the Usenet community going to find another large media company to protect it from frivolous copyright lawsuits?"
Usenet died not long after Canter and Siegel. The amount of spam and crossposting just made the signal-to-noise ratio too much.
*sigh* I remember the days where I could catch up on 50 newsgroups in under an hour, reading most of the threads too.
If I need information now, I hit google. If I want to ask a question, I find the appropriate mailing list and send it.
... screw it. The Market will deal with it. If users want usenet access, they'll leave and find a better ISP.
But I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that this is not the case, because most consumers just don't think that way. So by extension the whole self-regulating market thing is immediately dead in the water.
Phew. Good job I'm not from the right wing, or else my entire worldview may have been shattered right there
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Let's not knock AOL too much. In all honesty, their simple/stupid model has helped the Internet community grow. Yes this particular brand of Internet users tends to be on the less informed scale, but they spend money - they help the computer industry grow with their wallets.
So remember, AOL caters to the simple/stupid crowd.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
This is a Bad Thing. It is simply another indicator of USENET's decline. And that's a Bad Thing, because the alternatives (the web-based forums, many of them excellent--let me plug bikeforums.net as a superb example) are all under corporate, rather than community control. They are simply not committed to the same degree of openness and free-as-in-freedom that USENET is.
It is one more sign that the Wild West days of the Internet are coming to an end and the Internet is coming more and more thoroughly under the control of business interests.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"Usenet is finally dying its rather long-deserved death."
Whats deserved about it? I still find it a useful discussion forum. Just because some groups are full of spam spouting imbeciles doesn't mean they're all useless and just because you obviously don't use it doesn't mean that there arn't hundreds of thousands if not millions of people out there who still do.
I do wonder if this is a sign.
Now that the largest member of both the RIAA and MPAA no longer has a stake in usenet, AOL can participate in a campaign to break it up, or at least to more heavily police it.
A great feature of usenet for copyright violating is that you can leech all you want and noone will ever know except you and your usenet server.
But that won't matter if they convince Congress to place burdensome requirements on companies that maintain usenet servers.
Of course, there are plenty of good Constitutional and practical arguments against doing that. But who is going to make them. More importantly, who is going to have the kind of clout that's necessary to fight a lobbying effort by these people?
So remember, AOL caters to the simple/stupid crowd.
Thanks for bringing this up. Remember, half of the population has an IQ under 100, by definition.
There are a bunch of self-righteous egotists who hang out here and contend that they just shouldn't have access to technology. That is, of course, bullshit. Including antivirus software with their service is the second best thing AOL has done in a decade (supporting Mozilla being #1).
There needs to be an onramp for the Internet and I don't see anyone else stepping up. Remember - you too were once an annoying helpless newbie!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So I guess this means they won't be advertising their service as Unlimited Internet Access? Why is it that ISPs no longer actually provide a connection to the Internet but just a connection to port 80? Sorry this is slightly off topic.
> Anybody who had the vaguest clue how the Internet, and in particular DNS and SMTP work would not have written the above.
Anybody who had the vaguest clue how humor, and in particular sarcasm works, would not have written the above.
I don't know any that get OFF the onramp - they just stay within the little AOL world, and have no desire to learn about anything else. They get their email, they have their chat rooms, and the cute little AIM icons.
They stay *right there* and never learn anything.