R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008

CorinneI writes "In a way inconceivable in today's marketplace, Usenet was where people once went to talk — in days before the profit-centric Internet we have today. The series of bulletin boards called 'newsgroups' shared by thousands of computers, which traded new messages several times a day, is now a thing of the past."

Comments

Usenet is dead...

[Notquitecajun]

Netcraft confirms it!

Re:Usenet is dead...

[Wireless Joe]

Netcraft confirms it!

ME TOO!

It's about time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of the children who read alt.startrek.furrydom.localgettogethers

Google Groups

[Shuh]

Just like MTV is now Youtube, USENET is now Google Groups.


Same thing, different name.

Re:Google Groups

[LWATCDR]

Or yahoo groups or Myspace groups or ......
Just not the same thing to be honest. The real problem for usenet and the Internet in general is that it is just to easy.
A lot of the good stuff from usenet has now migrated to mailing lists and online forums but it still isn't the same.. Ahh the good old days.

Re:Google Groups

[brunes69]

Actually Google Groups *is* the same thing as Usenet, because that is exactly what it is, a easy to use web front end to Usenet.

That is why Google Groups is infinitely better than Yahoo groups and the others you mention.

Re:Google Groups

[geminidomino]

Actually Google Groups *is* the same thing as Usenet, because that is exactly what it is, a [sic] easy to use web front end to Usenet.

That's awfully subjective. I find the GG interface to be an exercise in masochism.

Re:Google Groups

[nurb432]

While it might be a pretty modern front end to usenet it doesn't help the fact that the back end feed is slowly being strangled by spam, and now legislation.

Re:Google Groups

[Just Some Guy]

Google Groups *is* the same thing as Usenet, because that is exactly what it is, a easy to use web front end to Usenet.

Where "easy to use" means "one tenth the features of a decent newsreader, but slower and more awkward". Long live Gnus.

Re:Google Groups

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I do hope not.

For one thing, Google Groups is currently acting as the equivalent of an open relay to all of Usenet, resulting in a vast increase in the amount of junk messages. They should be treated by other Usenet servers in the same way that we treat any other open relay: ignore anything coming from it until it gets its house in order. I fail to understand why Google being Google exempts them from this treatment. :-(

For another thing, Google Groups sucks as a Usenet interface, and numerous clients do a much better job of it.

Re:Google Groups

[RomulusNR]

The demise of Usenet was a long time ago, and coincided with the introduction of the web-based forum.

And this is the single most damaging thing to the availability of information to happen to the Internet, at least until the Wiki came along (which hasn't necessarily solved the problem in question). When there was Usenet, there was one (okay, maybe two) places to find an answer to a question on a given topic of expertise. Now, with the move to isolated independent web-based forums, of which there may be at least a dozen or more possible places to find information (not to mention a multitude of competing general question sites like Yahoo Answers et al), the odds of finding an answer on the Internet to a question have gone down, because the probability that the person with the answer to your question visits or has visited the web fora you visit has gone down.

In short: Used to be everyone would use one or two Usenet groups both to ask and answer questions, now everyone uses any given number of the much larger set of web fora on the same topic. It actually has become less likely to find a good answer to a question these days.

(And at least on Usenet even if no one could answer your question, you'd be certain to get lots of entertaining snark from regulars.)

Re:Google Groups

[ettlz]

That's awfully subjective. I find the GG interface to be an exercise in masochism.

Well I'm sure there's something in the alt.* tree for you!

Re:Google Groups

[dougmc]

To be fair, google groups does contain groups that are not part of Usenet. And Usenet contains groups that are not in google groups.

So while related, they're not the same.

Re:Google Groups

[dougmc]

Google groups is indeed the source of a lot of spam posted to Usenet. But it's also the source of a lot of non-spam posted to Usenet.

For example, about 27% of the posts to the Big-8 come from Google Groups now. If less than 27% of the spam posted to the Big-8 comes from google, then it's doing a better job of controlling it's users than Usenet as a whole. (I don't know if this is the case or not. Posts are easy to count. Classifying them as spam or not is harder.)

Either way, Google Groups is such a big contributor of noise and spam to Usenet because it's such a big contributor of _posts_ to Usenet.

No argument about the interface, however. But the retention is nice!

Re:Google Groups

[Dragonslicer]

MTV is basically just HSN without an 800 number.

You can buy cheap 18-year-old sluts on HSN now?

Re:Google Groups

[Dogtanian]

Wasn't Google Groups the old Deja usenet frontend originally?

Well, that started off as "Deja News", during which time it was quite good, although IIRC it still had annoying banner ads. By the time it was renamed to "Deja.com" though, it had begun to suck, with fruit-machine-like ads down both sides of the page and branching out into other stuff.

The news archives side got sold to Google later on, which was actually a major improvement over deja.com's annoying Las Vegas style pages...

Re:Google Groups

[slyn]

Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

this was never about porn

[night_flyer]

it was about alt.binaries.mp3s

Re:this was never about porn

[waffledoodle]

Dude, be cool!!!

Re:this was never about porn

[uniquename72]

While I know you're right, I feel much better and safer knowing that it is no longer possible to trade kiddy porn online anymore.

The ends justify the means. Thank you, Mr. Cuomo.

Web 2.0 ftw

[aredubya74]

"Usenet was where people once went to talk â" in days before the profit-centric Internet we have today."

Internet company profits have zero to do with the decline of USENET as a discussion forum. In its heyday, it was the only Internet-wide forum. It's been supplanted by web forums of every conceivable niche. Web 2.0 beat it out, plain and simple.

Re:Web 2.0 ftw

[Hatta]

Except that no Web 2.0 forum comes close to matching the features that any decent USENET client had 15 years ago. Things like real threading, filters, kill files, etc.

Re:Web 2.0 ftw

[squiggleslash]

I don't think either explanation really matches reality. Usenet started to seriously deteriorate to the point most people I knew who were regulars started to drop it around 1995-1998. At that time, while there were web forums, they were still in the teething stage and no replacement for Usenet. That, for me, is the time Usenet "died". It began to be re-invented as a binaries distribution network shortly thereafter.

Why did it die? Spam. Spammers began to make swathes of Usenet unreadable. After a few managable carpetbombs, the serious spammers first attacked in earnest the alt.sex hierarchy (it's an interesting fact that comes as a surprise to many that back in the early nineties, alt.sex contained some of the most respected newsgroups in Usenet. alt.sex.bondage, for example, was originally started after a prank revealed massive interest in such a group, and it became one of the more respected groups thereafter.) The groups became unusable within two years, with a few migrating to "safer" areas out of the alt.* hierarchy. After that the rest of Usenet started to get similarly hit.

A few attempts were made to protect Usenet, from serious attempts to hold ISPs to account for their users (which caused more damage than it helped, as the legitimate customers of those ISPs were cut off from Usenet too and as a result drifted away, reducing the S/N ratio even further) to attempts to introduce various forms of moderation that, ultimately, also caused more damage.

People just gave up. Even the spammers started to give up after a few years largely because it wasn't worth their time any more, but by that time Usenet was dead anyway.

What's dying today isn't Usenet, at least not the network in operation back from 1980. It's a binaries distribution system, the one that took over from the mid-nineties onwards.

And frankly, I don't know about you, but I don't care about that one.

Re:Web 2.0 ftw

[jandrese]

A lot of the more respectable groups started moderation systems back when the spam onslaught started, but they were afterthoughts on a system not designed for them. The problem with moderator systems is that it requires a small handful of trusted moderators, and what do you do when they grow tired of the subject and leave? Electing a small group of moderators (technically, it's rarely an election, they're usually self appointed) always seems to start the slow death of a newsgroup.

It's really a shame because as people have pointed out, the tools built into your average usenet client completely blow away most web forums for features, especially with threading, scoring, tracking, etc... Plus, the Usenet is fast, being a simple text protocol with built-in multicasting you can support communities of millions with virtually no drain on your personal resources. Web forums frequently crash and burn when they start to become popular because the centralized hardware requirements and the fact that you have to run a database means that once you start getting more than a few readers per second you have to start looking at specialized solutions or lose your community to database overload crashes and general slowness. Unfortunately, it is this feature that guarantee that any two bit joker with an internet connection could clobber a group with spam.

As it is so often true in life, we can't have nice things because some jackass will always try to mess it up.

Re:Web 2.0 ftw

[ArcherB]

What's dying today isn't Usenet, at least not the network in operation back from 1980. It's a binaries distribution system, the one that took over from the mid-nineties onwards.

And frankly, I don't know about you, but I don't care about that one.

Frankly, that's the only one I care about. Sure, there is TONS of porn, but there are also respectable (non porn) files out there as well. When my wife missed an episode of "Dancing With the Stars" a while back, where did I find a copy? Newsgroups. When the latest Ubuntu was released and my ISP was slowing BitTorrent to a crawl, where did I turn? Newsgroups. When I wanted some ideas for how to set up my garden, where did I turn to? You guessed it, Newsgroups!

There are some things that no Web site can offer that you can only find on Usenet. That stupid Dancing with the Stars thing is an example. It was not available on any website because it is protected (even though there was absolutely no other way of retrieving it). With ISP's starting to block P2P, we should always be able to fall back on good ol' usenet.

Which brings me to the point you mentioned about spammers. Spammers are relatively easy to avoid on Usenet. The bigger problem is spyware, viruses and trojans. However, the beauty of Usenet is that someone can reply to a post with bad intent and say something like, "Do not download! VIRUS!!!" You can't do that on a non reputable or hijacked website. All you can do is hope that the file you downloaded really is the XP drivers for a new "Vista Only" system and not a virus that will zap your HDD.

   

Re:Web 2.0 ftw

[Sloppy]

Except that no Web 2.0 forum comes close to matching the features that any decent USENET client had 15 years ago. Things like real threading, filters, kill files, etc.

That's actually quite doable. Making forum software that is feature-competitive with newsreaders is totally viable. That's not what concerns me.

A bigger problem (which web mail suffers from, as well) is that web forums are a way for a server operator to make decisions about the features you get (as well as how/if it is integrated with other content, whether for good (I won't go into that, here) or ill (ads)), rather than leaving those decisions to the client.

I really see it as technological step backwards.

As an exercise in absurdity, imagine if we applied the same trend to the web itself. In addition to "web mail" and "web forums", imagine "web web", where your browser window contains a widget consisting of code loaded from someone else's server, and that widget has features similar to a web browser. Oh wait, we have that: Flash and Silverlight.

Re:Web 2.0 ftw

[tkinnun0]

Yet here we are, on a web forum, and not on USENET. Makes you wonder whether those features were just a crutch to get around USENET's design flaws.

Re:Web 2.0 ftw

[Darinbob]

Yet here we are, on a web forum, and not on USENET.

But this isn't a universal forum. USENET encompassed any topic and was the most widely read set of forums. If you wanted an answer to a complicated technical question, it was the best place to go. If you wanted to discuss obscure music theory, it was the place to go. If you just wanted to sell your old sofa to local people, it was the place to go. It was frequented by geeks and non-geeks.

Web forums don't do that. They're all specialized and there are too many of them. Slashdot only covers topical news of interest to geeks. Web forums have always been complex to use, almost always requiring registration to write, sometimes even requiring registration to read. You'll find tens of forums all devoted to the same topic. One newsreader would keep track of all your news groups you were interested in, and you could add and remove them as you wish; what keeps tracks of the hundreds of forums I may be interested in and provides the same interface to them?

The problem with USENET dying is that there is no replacement for it! This isn't the case of horse and buggy being usurped by the automobile. It's more like playgrounds being replaced by televisions.

I think USENET started going downhill when the spammers and advertisement took over. There's still activity on USENET, it's just been declining steadily.

Personally, I never liked the Google/Dejanews twist to archive postings for eternity. In the old days (get off my lawn!) it was a place just for discussion, not to get your words down for posterity. Once I learned things were being archived and searchable, I definately felt I had to ask less stupid questions...

WHAT?

[olliec420]

I use it all the time!

Re:WHAT?

[ClaraBow]

So do I! It is still a great place to exchanges ideas and stuff. Just because mainstream internet providers are dropping it doesn't mean it is dying. Usenet is immortal, like Dracula, it will never die.

Re:WHAT?

[Man in Spandex]

Hmmmm, so we have to stake Usenet through its heart, or at least hurt it with garlic?

yellow journalism at it's worst

[Anonymous Coward]

please stop posting the opinions of bloggers as fact.

Re:yellow journalism at it's worst

[SQLGuru]

A rumor repeated often enough eventually becomes fact......or at least a Wikipedia edit.

Layne

Re:yellow journalism at it's worst

[Randwulf]

I've heard the number of Usenet users has tripled in the last six months.

Bullcrap

[fnj]

Stupid headline. Usenet is still there. Stupid idiots who are slaves to only what their ISP spoon feeds them may drop off. So what.

Re:Bullcrap

[Roberticus]

Certainly misleading. Between the headline and the summary, I assumed this was a story about some official cancellation of Usenet. Instead, it's someone pining for the good ol' days (of free pron, if I understood right after skimming TFA).

Re:Bullcrap

[saschasegan]

No, I'm pining for the really good ol' days before the binaries groups suffocated the rest of Usenet.

That's Interesting...

[feyd-rautha]

My 1+ year subscription to EasyNews would indicate otherwise...

Re:That's Interesting...

[houghi]

Subsciptions are only realy needed for binaries and that is the one thing that should move elsewhere.
There are plenty of free servers out there. Below some I use. Most you need a subscription that is free to get:
root@penne : grep ^server /etc/leafnode/config|awk '{print $NF}'
news.cnntp.org
forums.opensuse.org
news.dommel.be
news.motzarella.org
news.sunsite.dk
newszilla.xs4all.nl
news.xs4all.nl
fb1.euro.net
news.readfreenews.net
nntp.aioe.org
news.news4us.nl

There are many more out there.

Premature

[clang_jangle]

The obit is premature. Usually when a service "dies" it would mean it's no longer available, but anyone can still buy usenet access here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or here.
And that is by no means a complete list. If anything, usenet may actually return to a more usable medium again, now that it won't be free for all the spammers and trolls anymore. Then again, it may well not -- it's not like all the illegal traders will just give up and go away, so I guess it depends on how much money the **IA, the BSA, and the morality police want to spend on "eradicating the problem".

Re:Premature

[maztuhblastah]

Even better, I'd recommend Motzarella for totally free Usenet access. Well over 40K groups, and although they don't carry binaries, retention and fill on the text groups is outstanding. Oh, and they support SSL, even SSL on port 443 (for those at work behind "fascist firewalls.")

alt.terrible.news.horrify.cringe.wail

[kahei]

alt.beloved.usenet.gone?.withered?.dead?
alt.black.day.is.is.ever-shall-be

alt.thoughtful.pause.pause.pause.pause

alt.brief.check.make.perform.check
alt.noble.usenet.remains!.lives!.cheers!
alt.brave.usenet.!surrenders.!bows.!gone!

alt.silly.blog.!informs.!researches.!educates
alt.dumb.blogger.drools.mashes-keys-at-random.drools
alt.credulous.slashdot.reports.dramatises.alarms

alt.trusty."alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb".remains.endures.twinkles

Article summary

[operagost]

"Before the Eternal September, but after the Great Renaming, I learned about sex on Usenet."

No need to read any further...

USENET always had a lot of porn

[CPE1704TKS]

Back in the early 90s, there was this one classmate who was a brilliant programmer. He wrote a pascal program that somehow continuously downloaded porn from newsgroups, ie. alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*. This was in the days of the 9600 baud modems, and before the Internet was even a household word. I didn't understand at the time what he was doing, or how he was doing it, but enjoyed the fruits of his labor. This was even before video on computers was prevalent, so it was all just images. Actually I remember downloading one "video" that was really just an ascii-fied version of a pr0no. sigh.. the good ol' days.

Glory days

[Rob T Firefly]

One thing I love about reading old Usenet posts is how innocent and safe it all seemed before the Internet boom of the 1990s. People often had their full names and even phone numbers in their sigs. You could sign into a worldwide network and still be trading messages in your own little clique of a dozen or so people who shared an interest.

Then Eternal Spetember happened, and chased most of the decent discussion to quieter and more moderated email lists and web forums.

Usenet's current status as a haven for spam and pirated binar^H^H^H NOTHING ELSE is a far cry from what it used to mean to a lot of people.

Uh...

[snarfies]

From TFA: "It's the porn that's putting nails in Usenet's coffin."

That would seem to fly in the face of everything I know about both human nature and the internet.

For me, the reasons my (once extensive) Usenet usage dropped off was 1) insane amounts of spam, and 2) ease of use of torrents (at least with regards to binaries).

I'm speechless

[4D6963]

Wow, I don't even know what to say to this. This is probably the most stupid, irritating and infuriating article I've ever not read.

Mind boggling. USENET. Dead. It doesn't even need an explanation as to why it's retarded, at least not to someone who has interesting (technical) discussions there on a regular basis.

Re:Pffft, been dying for years.

[Rainer]

Probably has something to do with message boards with much friendlier interfaces

I'd say dumbed down interfaces. A good newsreader is much friendlier than a webforum. The problem is that you have to install it first.

Somebody's got to say it

[Oloryn]

"Imminent Death of the Net predicted. Film at 11."

Isn't it ironic

[Mononoke]

This show of force by the morality police is actually going to help the pornographers make more money. How? Virtually all of the pornographic images posted to the .binaries groups were stolen from pay-to-view pornography sites, thus devaluing the images. Some of those who have had their 'free' source cut off will spend what it takes to continue their viewing habits.

Prohibition didn't work then, and it still doesn't work.

Irksome summary

[Verdatum]

I wish there was some indication in the summary that this isn't really news. It's just a lamentation of the bygone days of Usenet. The details about ISPs dropping alt.* have already been repeatedly reported on /.

As with all the other stories on this: Boo-hoo, ISPs aren't giving away free usenet. If you really want it, find a 3rd party usenet server. If my ISP took away email, I wouldn't notice because I use a different address. Verizon took away my usenet and I didn't notice, because I use a 3rd party usenet server.

And again if you haven't read it in the comments of previous postings on this story, a 3rd party usenet server is practically REQUIRED for anonymous viewing/posting of the illicit content they are trying to prevent. The pedos all sign up with offshore providers and pay for it with anonymously mailed money-orders, and access it through anonymizing proxies. The ones who don't are quickly and easily arrested with a single warrant to the ISP. The smart ones, who survive, and are thus the big-time posters, are not and can not be prevented in this manner.

alt.binaries.* isn't killed by ISPs, it's killed by spam and superior communication mechanisms.

So what was your favorite newsgroup name?

[smellsofbikes]

Coz your post is dead accurate about the whole usenet sense of humor.

I loved:
alt.fan.tonya-harding.whack.whack.whack
alt.sex.bestiality.barney.die.die.die
and all the many alt.*.whilst.wearing.rubber.knickers groups.

Not that I ever *read* any of them, but it made my heart warm knowing they existed.

Re:So what was your favorite newsgroup name?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

alt.swedish-chef.bork.bork.bork
alt.barney.die.die.die
alt.party-of-five.puke.puke.puke
alt.impeach.bush

Don't bother reading the article...

[fprintf]

Don't bother reading the article. It is a non-interesting opinion/blog piece with very little supporting data.

My own little anecdote, I was on usenet (rec.windsurfing) earlier today. If it wasn't for the overwhelming spam, I'd continue to use some of the other groups as the people who are left are a pretty committed and knowledgable group.

Just a bad summary

[fiannaFailMan]

TFA doesn't say Usenet is dead, just that it's past its best. It says:

It's hard to completely kill off something as totally decentralized as Usenet; as long as two servers agree to share the NNTP protocol, it'll continue on in some fashion. But the Usenet I mourn is long gone, anyway, or long-transformed into interlocking comments on LiveJournals and the forums boards on tech-support Web sites.

USENET will be around for a long time to come

[killmenow]

Hell, Gopher isn't even dead.

Hmm...Giganews and other services are still there

[sgant]

Oh, and look, they have all the alt.* forums there too!

So, unless the entire Usenet network gets taken offline..which is unlikely, then no, it's far from dead.

e-mail and YouTube to follow

[Quadraginta]

I think the same thing is happening to e-mail, at least e-mail over public mail servers. With the advent of new communications methods, it's just getting less and less worth the energy required to cope with the parasites (spam and such). People can still exchange interesting stuff via YouTube, but I bet that gets destroyed by spam soon enough, too.

It's probably some rule of evolutionary biology: if you create a pool of low entropy, a cloud of parasites will spontaneously arive, like maggots to meat, to eat it and destroy it. Then I guess you move on to the next thing, huh?

Pity we don't simply hunt down and destroy the parasites in our own midst, so that we can spend less time and cleverness keeping ahead of them.

USENET is doing just fine

[Animats]

Usenet is doing quite well. The programming-related newsgroups are in fine shape. "comp.lang.python", "comp.lang.javascript", and "comp.databases.mysql" have heavy traffic from knowledgeable people, including developers of the underlying systems. It's much faster to see the day's updates on Usenet than to page through the inflated dreck on a half dozen PHP-based forum systems.

I was a bit disappointed when the C++ standards committee moved their discussions off USENET, but that committee isn't getting anywhere anyway.

Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the

[Lord Apathy]

Holy Shit! Usenet is dead. For some reason my Xnews, open right now, seems to not have noticed.

Death Of Usenet has been predicted since its birth. Nothing to see here.

Mourning the end of September...

[argent]

This bloke isn't mourning Usenet, he's mourning the end of the September that Never Ended.

Usenet's biggest problems really started when AOL joined Usenet. The other ISPs followed on from that... people said that September ended when AOL left... not so, it won't end until the last big ISP is gone. Then maybe it'll be time for Usenet 2.0...

alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die (sorry Wil)

[Anonymous Codger]

a.e.w.d.d.d had lots of imaginative posts on how Wesley should be done in, plus plenty of flame wars when people started conflating Wesley the character (yuck) with Wil the actor (cool frood).

It's not dead

[4D6963]

It's resting (sorry, had to).

But more seriously, where's the #1 forum to discuss C programming? comp.lang.c. Where's the #1 forum to discuss DSP? comp.dsp, so much that other DSP "forums" only provide an interface to it. Where's the #1 spot to tell people your new theory as to how FTL travel is possible using hidden dimensions in the aether? sci.physics.

So you see, it's not dead, or even resting, some of its branches died, some others are still thriving.

Response from alt.fan.monty-python

[g2devi]

> Just because mainstream internet providers are dropping it doesn't mean it is dying. Usenet is immortal,
> like Dracula, it will never die.

SPAM: [after SPAM's cut off both of the UseNet's arms] Look, you stupid Bastard. You've got no arms left.
UseNet: Yes I have.
SPAM: *Look*!
UseNet: It's just a flesh wound. ....
SPAM: Look, I'll have your leg. [Recieves a very sharp kick] Right! [Chops off one of the UseNet's legs]
UseNet: Right! I'll do you for that!
SPAM: You'll what?
UseNet: Come here!
SPAM: What are you going to do, bleed on me?!
UseNet: I'm invincible!
SPAM: You're a looney.
UseNet: The UseNet always triumphs! Have at you! Come on then. [Hopping on one leg towards SPAM]
[SPAM chops his other leg off, leaving his body upright on the ground.]
UseNet: Alright, we'll call it a draw.
SPAM: Come, Patsy!
UseNet: Oh, oh I see. Running away, eh?! You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!!

[Fade to black.]

Netcraft: Bring out yer dead. [Hits gong]
Mass Media: Here's one.
Dead UseNet: I'm not dead!
Netcraft: What?
Mass Media: Nothing. Here's your ninepence.
Dead UseNet: I'm not dead!
Netcraft: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Mass Media: Yes he is.
Dead UseNet: I'm not!
Netcraft: He isn't!
Mass Media: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Dead UseNet: I'm getting betta!
Mass Media: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
Netcraft: I can't take 'im like that! It's against regulation!
Dead UseNet: I don't want to go on the cart!
Mass Media: Oh, don't be such a baby!
Netcraft: I can't take him.
Dead UseNet: I feel fine!
[Mass Media knocks UseNet dead]

First Ammendment rights

[dpilot]

If we wanted to don our tinfoil hats, we could come up with an alternative reason for killing Usenet, instead of kiddy porn or the mafiAA.

Usenet may be one of the few remaining places on the Internet that might pretend to have First Ammendment protections. Here at Slashdot there are discussion forums, but Slashdot has some form of control/culpability for them despite any disclaimers. If I were to post the Secrets of Scientology here, the Church of Scientology would certainly be after me, but they'd first go after Slashdot to get those secrets removed. (Of course then they're inviting the Streisand Effect, and they'd have to remember the Wayback Machine, but I'm sure they'd try.) But the essence is that Slashdot is a commercial entity hosting contributed content on its servers. The same can be said about pretty much any weblog out there.

The same cannot be said of Usenet. There is no single choke point for Usenet, like there is for a weblog. There is no single point to send a C&D letter to. Furthermore, it's fully possible that the author on Usenet is carefully anonymous, and is therefore untracable. Even finding the original feedpoint may be problematic, and require serious geek assistance.

On the other hand...

I was there on "Green Card Day". I remember seeing it the first time, then seeing it again in the next group that I followed, then again and again.... There may be something inherently unworkable about mixing anonymity with complete freedom speech. I suspect our founding fathers thought that we'd use our free speech more wisely than I do. I still believe that it is at times important to be anonymous, while at the same time retaining first ammendment protection, but I also believe that claiming those dual rights is FAR more important than Viagra or Nigerian bank accounts. I have no idea what a solution might be, other than to make some "cost of anonymity" great enough to prevent spam, but have no idea how to do that.

Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the

[click2005]

"The year of linux on the desktop"..
"The next search engine to beat google"..
"Windows is dead"..
"Usenet is dead"..

It seems like more and more people are making more and more outrageous predictions & claims.

I guess with all the noise out there people need a way for their blog to stand out.

If they're wrong its a case of "oh well, maybe next year" but if they're right they'll claim they're prophetic or something and use it to get more advertizing/readers/whatever... and yet nothing changes, the internet goes on.

Hold on.. http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/31/1316257 OMG!! the internet is gonna end.

Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the

[salmosri]

If you read the article you'd realize the writer was speaking "metaphorically"

it's hard to completely kill off something as totally decentralized as Usenet; as long as two servers agree to share the NNTP protocol, it'll continue on in some fashion. But the Usenet I mourn is long gone, anyway, or long-transformed into interlocking comments on LiveJournals and the forums boards on tech-support Web sites.

Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the

[paeanblack]

For some reason my Xnews, open right now, seems to not have noticed.

But have you checked the date? It's finally October 1st!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re:Netcraft is wrong; we need hard data

[synthespian]

It probably went down, because there's a whole generation that thinks PHP forums and Google will help you find *all* the answers when, in fact, early internet engineers were pretty smart guys and designed something in which you would go to one place to concentrate your searches. Furhtermore, the posting would be replicate to all servers.

Personally, I think googling for a technical answer in particular regarding programming languages is a PITA. Too many forums to search for. Usenet makes it much simpler, but witness the moronity level when Ubuntu and Apple don't propagate their mailing list to Usenet (which just about every other self-repecting OS crowd does - Debian, FreeBSD, etc.)

Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the

[Lord Apathy]

www.usenet-access.com. They are 6 bucks a month and you get 2 GB per day. An unholy shitload of groups with the retention from hell. I've been able to snag stuff going back almost 2 years. I know they are a reseller for someone, I just don't know who. I've been using them for almost 6 years and never had issues with them at all.

Possible issues are, well 2 Gb per day but hell that an average of 60 GB per month. And you can only have 3 simultaneous connections but hell they are only 6 bucks a month.

the web is dead

[TomatoMan]

It seems like more and more people are making more and more outrageous predictions & claims.

Sometime in the late 90s, Wired ran a cover story that contained an assertion that "the Web is dead."

That's about when I canceled my subscription.

Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the

[daniel23]

there is a way though it takes some preparation. On the other hand it may earn you some extra geek points.

1. get yourself a IPv6 tunnel and get it configured
2. after you saw the logo jump at ipv6.google.com, check IPv6 Newsservers
3. ...
4. free usenet!!! (incl. alt.*)

where the ... probably involves testing which of the servers actually work, not all of them did when I tried it, and adding one or more of them in pan. Not an ultra fast download but still an excellent reason to start with ipv6.

Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the

[einer]

Wait... So they're preventing AOL'ers and their big ISP ilk from accessing USENET? Is this a return to the golden age?

This is awesome for usenet.

Re:Dark Usenet?

[Just Some Guy]

I was a collaborative effort.

Tell your mom I said hi.