Cox Discontinues Usenet, Starting In June

Existential Wombat was one of several readers to note that Cox Communcations customers have been put on notice that their Usenet access will soon dry up, unless they want to pay a monthly surcharge for it. From the note that subscribers received: "Effective June 30, 2010, Cox Communications will discontinue Usenet service to our subscribers. Declining newsgroup usage in recent years has highlighted the need to focus our resources on other priorities, such as increasing our Internet speeds and providing new services, including Cox Media Store and Share. We understand that our newsgroup subscribers may want to continue accessing Usenet. Therefore, we have worked with leading newsgroup service provider Giganews to offer special pricing for Cox subscribers." Gripes Existential Wombat: "$15++ a month for something Cox provided as a part of the service? Of course they will be reducing everyone's monthly tariff by the value of the service they no longer provide. Yeah, right."

Comments

Who cares?

[LostCluster]

The "newsgroup" service that Usenet was designed for is now superseded by Google Groups (who absorbed DejaNews, the site that aimed to archive every Usenet post ever), zillions of web forums, blogs, comment friendly sites like, um, the one you're reading this on called Slashdot... get the point?

What's left on Usenet is the "dark allies" of porn, spamming, and illegally shared copyrighted files. The average "$100 for a limited time for a Triple Play of Internet, TV and Phone" user doesn't know it exists and wouldn't use it anyway. So, if you really want it, pay for it. The pay-for Usenet providers exist because the ISPs wanted to limit or eliminate this service and have have done so for years.

This is a price hike for those who want to use an obscure feature that should lead to better service or lower costs for those of us who care about those things more than a supply of illegal content. If you want to get one HBO show... this price will likely make it more cost effective for you to get HBO through your TV pipe, a reduction of traffic on the Internet that should make your community's connection work better.

Re:Who cares?

[Dan667]

better service? That is naivety or a blatant false statement.
The fact that they will not be charging less even though they are providing less service hits the nail on the head.

Re:Who cares?

[Enderandrew]

Bingo.

It doesn't cost Cox that much to provide the service. They're dropping it basically because no one needs it, except for piracy and such. This is more of a move to cover their asses in the wake of the ACTA treaty.

Re:Who cares?

[NecroPuppy]

I would state it as, "they're providing a service that 99% of their customers don't use, or even realize is there".

So, for those 99% of the customers, there isn't a visable loss. Cox thus views it as, "they weren't using it before; why should their payments go down. If they want to use it now, their payments will go up."

Capitalism in action.

Re:Who cares?

[Random Data]

"Superseded" normally implies improvements. While Google/Deja provide a long term archive and searching support, they're nothing like as useful as a dedicated client to a newsgroup server for actually taking part in discussions. It's similar to the reason people use mail clients rather than just Gmail: you have more control over how you interact with others.

Re:Who cares?

[0100010001010011]

And I'd wager most customer's don't even know their ISP provides e-mail. They use gmail, hotmail, etc.

Heck I own my own domain and I don't even use my ISP's e-mail (other than SMTP), but if they canceled e-mail service I'd sure as hell want a discount.

Re:Who cares?

[thittesd0375]

I believe it is more accurate to say that they are not raising the price on everyone to keep an outdated service active for a few.

Re:Who cares?

[rfuilrez]

Really, it's a better idea IMO to use a 3rd party email service. Either a paid service, or a free one such as gmail/hotmail/yahoo. This way if you move, change ISPs for whatever reason, no longer need the ISP etc, you don't lose your email address. I've had my gMail account since it was invite only beta like 5 years ago. In that time I've moved and cancelled / signed-up for ISPs probably 6-7 times.

Re:Who cares?

[JustNiz]

Wrong wrong wrong.
Yours is a pitiful argument. Just because you or even the majority of users don't use some aspect of the internet is not a good excuse to make a blanket assumption that no-one uses or wants it.

Your points sound similarly misguided to the malicious blurring that the RIAA and MPAA are trying to make around P2P, in that all P2P is by definition illegal regardless of the fact there are many legitimate P2P sites and P2P is simply an efficient distribution protocol, not a DRM circumvention mechanism in itself.

I use USENET legally and Google Groups and other free sources just don't provide what I want. Firstly, they dont cover binary groups and secondly they aren't nearly as easy/convenient to use, so your argument that other things have superseded USENET is entirely wrong.

In real terms it probably costs Cox next to nothing to have a USENET server sat in a rack, so the real savings of cutting it off are going to be minimal, probably just the electricity for an old server box that they've already re-tasked from other upgrades.

I'm surprised you really expect to see any noticeable improvement in other service areas as a result of Cox no longer suporting USENET. I seriously doubt it. All that this will mean is (probably literally) a few tens of dollars of extra corporate profit that we the users will never see the benefit of.

Personally I hate the idea that ISPs are being allowed to redefine "internet service" to just mean port 80 traffic. Cox's own advertising confirms I paid for an internet connection not just a web connection. I don't see why I should now be obliged to pay extra to keep the same level of service that I've had for the last 5 years.

Re:Who cares?

[VGR]

"Capitalism in action" implies customers who are displeased with the change can take their money to a different, roughly equivalent service.

Re:Who cares?

[mcmonkey]

What's left on Usenet is the "dark allies" of porn, spamming, and illegally shared copyrighted files.

What you describe is not just most of Usenet, but most of the Internet itself. Would you be OK if Cox discontinued all Internet service, but continued to bill customers?

In fact, 1) Usenet is lot more than the dark alleys of the internet.

2) What does Google have to do with it? So what about Google Groups? What about options? There is Gmail, does that mean there should be no other email option?

3) What about all the things my newsreader does that Google Groups does not? Saving threads for reading off line, killfile, etc.

4) You contradict yourself. If Usenet is such an obscure feature used by very few, why would removing access result in a measurable reduction in traffic?

The truth is Usenet does some things better than your "zillions of web forums, blogs, comment friendly sites."

Re:Who cares?

[Hognoxious]

They rank right near the top is customer sanctification.

Well that's a small blessing but it's not the holy picture.

Re:Who cares?

[brentrad]

The big cost in running a usenet server is the hard drive storage space. Although Cox only had 3-4 days retention, so that expense probably wasn't too bad. But if usenet is a service you provide according to your TOS, you have to pay someone to keep it running, provide refunds if the service is offline, then you have to deal with the headache of copyright violation take-down notices, and the possible legal liability of having copyright violating files (and child porn) residing on servers you own. I'm actually surprised they didn't shut down their usenet service before now. The writing has been on the wall for ISP-provided usenet for 5-10 years now.

Re:Who cares?

[carp3_noct3m]

Seriously, just because the stereotype of usenet is "dark alley hackerspace" anyoen who has ever even semi-used it knows thats not true. A friend of mine uses usenet combined with RSS feeds to get all kinds of information (IT Stuff) that you just don't get anywhere else. I bet the GP has never even used usenet. and yes, we should be upset that ISP's drop a service without at least a gesture of reconciliation, like a coupon for $7 off giga or something. As a matter of fact, I have a strange feeling giga dealt with cox in some closed doors meetings and said," look, you drop costs by dropping usenet, and we get customers, win win, now go screw your users over" and cox, being your classic greedy corporation jumped.

Re:Who cares?

[GreatBunzinni]

There's so many better, richer alternatives out there now for connecting with masses of people with the same interests.

Name one and I'll explain to you how it sucks and how in contrast usenet is far better and has been for decades.

Besides, usenet has become a huge pornography distribution network with a few anecdotal, non-porn topics anyway

That's very odd. I've been a faithful usenet user for around 5 years and I never saw porn on the newsgroups I subscribe. On the other hand, newsgroups such as comp.lang.c constantly get over 3 thousand posts a month, comp.lang.python also gets around 2500 post a month, comp.lang.c++ gets over 1500 posts a month and those are one of many newsgroups dedicated to specific details regarding a measly programming language. There are countless newsgroups dedicated to APIs, protocols, programming paradigms and any sort of hobby you can imagine and some of them do keep a pretty respectable post count. And yet, with zero porn on it. How is that possible?

who really gives a sh*t if isp's are getting a little tired of carrying it.

I would, if that was my ISP. Thankfully, my ISP has been providing usenet access since I've started using the net. I really hope they don't discontinue it.

There's better ways to distribute porn than usenet as well.

All you do is yap about porn. What a fixation you got there. That's all you do online? How did you got the time to take a pause from it to browse slashdot?

Usenet was one of those great protocols that came with this new-fangled internet thingy. Now its a little passed its prime and ready for pasture. Let it go.

How exactly does a protocol "passed it's prime"? And even if that made any sense at all, the Network News Transfer Protocol specifications were released in 1986 while the world wide web, along with the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) arrived in 1990. Does that mean that HTTP has already "passed it's prime"?

Please at least try to claim what you really wanted to claim: you don't use usenet (at least for something other than feeding your porn habits) and as you don't use it you believe it somehow sucks. Yet, that doesn't make it true, does it?

Re:Who cares?

[The Archon V2.0]

I was a big time usenet user, long ago. Lately, I've forgotten myself that it evens exists. Yes, I'm sure that there are die-hards who will take issue with this. To them I say "GET A LIFE". There's so many better, richer alternatives out there now for connecting with masses of people with the same interests.

So, your definition of "getting a life" is doing the exact same thing you're doing now... on a different part of the Internet.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, the service you were using for $15 per month (that you now want deducted from your service) did not cost you $15 per month.
It cost you (Bullshit Guesstimate) $1 per month. Because everyone that wasn't using it (also paying the $1) was subsidising your access to it.
If everyone on the entire network started using the service (and paying extra) I am sure the cost would either go to free, (or closer to the actual cost per customer - in my example $1).

An example for you.
there are 1000 customers on ISP lets call them "Dox".
Dox pays 1000 dollars per month for access to a service, lets call it Dudenet.
They pay this in time it takes to coordinate with Dudenet, (meetings etc to negotiate contracts or whatever), time it takes to maintain routing rules, and the estimated cost for repairs related to the service ETC. (you know, its not just pay usenet for access, its pay a dude at our workplace to remember how to fix it when it breaks etc everything).

To cover this cost, Dox charges each of its customers $1 ontop of their plan (or allocate $1 of their internet fee for the payment of this cost) and go on their merry way.

In the future, Dox find out that 60 people use Dudenet. 60 of their 1000 customers use a service that costs them 1000 dollars per month to operate.

So they STOP charging their 1000 customers for the right to access Dudenet. It wasn't getting them customers. It wasn't driving increases in revenue. It was just costing them 1000 dollars. (didn't add customers, meaning they spend that 1000 dollars they COULD have spent elsewhere, on dudenet for 60 people).
But, they want to give those 60 people NO access to dudenet, but it still costs $1000 to run it. So instead of charging 1000 people 1 dollar, they charge 60 people 15 dollars.

Wait cry the 60 people (and the other 940 that never used it, but heard about it on slashdot and can see a reason to try to get money back for a service they never used)! if it costs 15 dollars you should reduce my plan WITHOUT dudenet by 15 dollars so I pay the same amount later after I get Dudenet!

now, I have chosen these numbers for a reason.
dudenet in this situation will cost Dox 16.66 cents to operate for the 60 people.
So those 60 people are getting their dollar back. (and Dox is even absorbing 66 cents in lost profit from those 60 people!).
Dox is earning $1 more from 940 people. But this lets them spend 940 dollars on getting oh I don't know, an IPTV service. or I dunno, anything, hell making more profit. Either way. The 60 people that use Dudenet ARE getting their $1 back AND are paying the cost of access to Dudenet. Win Win for reality. 940 customers pay for stuff they might want (not dudenet obviously, though perhaps its just a more financially stable ISP - no one likes it when they go bankrupt) and 60 people learn the real cost of dudenet (not free).

Learn to think people. Why might they do this?

Re:Who cares?

[mitgib]

Are you unsatisfied, or unsatisfied if something cheaper comes along? Unfortunately most people chose the later,and then we wonder why so many jobs have left, when all we do if feed these crappy corporations in America, but wish to bitch and moan about them with the same breath. You, a collective, not personal you, need to truly take a stand, and if it means it will cost you more to voice your displeasure, it costs you more. I have not shopped at Wal-Mart in 10+ years, they are the main reason you go into any rural area you see blighted towns. I do not frequent fast food chains, or any chains for when I eat a meal out. If I do eat out, it will be a family owned establishment, if I need to by a product, it will be a hard search, but I will buy it at a locally owned, hopefully family owned business. Does this mentality cost me more? Sometimes it does, but I know I am helping to keep my neighbors employed and food on their families table, and usually at a reasonable wage.

Now for your television watching habits to be specific with your post. Do you even need cable? Are your viewing habits requiring it? I, like most in America, have few choices, local cable, one of the satellite providers, or over the air broadcasts. I've chosen over the air for the network shows, I do time shift them with my PC, then hulu or the networks themselves have their programming available over the internet with fewer or no commercial breaks at all. There is very little programing I do not have some type of free access to without stealing it. So I have no need to pay for cable, and I'm sure you could buy nothing as well. I do get my internet service from the locol cable company, and as long as I do not use their DNS servers, it works just fine, 99% of their trouble is they have no clue how to do something as basic as provide stable DNS for their customers. So again, how serious are you really? I was one of the mom and pop internet providers in the 90's, my (ex)wife and I provided good a living and respectable benefits to dozens of employees until the higher speed connections were becoming popular and the little guy really didn't have a viable way to compete with it. I've since moved to the east coast, and you see people acting desperate for an alternative to their local monopoly internet provider, but like yourself, they don't really hate them that much, as when a real alternative is provided, the majority would rather get that $5 bundled discount.

Re:Who cares?

[jc42]

There's so many better, richer alternatives out there now for connecting with masses of people with the same interests.

Name one and I'll explain to you how it sucks and how in contrast usenet is far better and has been for decades.

One point that is sometimes made about those "better, richer alternatives" is that they typically cause a serious problem that usenet has solved from the beginning: Most of them are web-based, and as such, every online forum has its own unique user interface. You have to learn a new GUI for nearly every one of them. With usenet, you can install one news reader and use it to read all the newsgroups that you subscribe to. Someone else can write a different interface, of course, but you don't have to use it if you don't like it. You can just continue to use the one that you like. With web-based forums, however, you must use the web site(s) that it's on, and they decide how the user interaction works. Many of them even require javascript, and they use it to break the browser's behavior, sometimes producing really bizarre, user-hostile behavior such as disabling the browser's Back button.

Now that the ISPs are abandoning usenet, we should be explaining how the open-source usenet software works, and restoring the older site-to-site distribution system. It's usually far superior to the browser-based forum implementations.

Re:Who cares?

[Daengbo]

It's past its prime.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

The other great thing about usenet is that there were so many fascinating discussions that happened there and to this day you can read any of them. The creation of linux is right there, for instance.

  Everything on every forum you've ever read disappears as soon as someone stops paying the bills. Someone could cure cancer, invent a teleportation device or make plans to colonize another planet. And no one will have any clue how it happened or what led them to this idea or that because the posts all got deleted when facebook went under...or the owner of the forum/website got busted for selling pot or whatever.

But now there is this walled garden thing happening. All correspondence is through certain channels like IMs, facebook, etc. Back in the day the entire internet looked at what MSN and AOL were trying to do and responded by turning them into a joke. It's starting to feel like we've rebuilt the stupidity of AOL and MSN intot he websites we currently use. The sad part is, all the smart people are pulled in as well. We no longer point at aolers and laugh and then go back to do something interesting. Now we tend their virtual crops and superpoke them back, and then we upvote or downvote their comments.

On second thought...if the result of the internet is to turn us all into one big glob of retard, maybe it doesn't matter how it happened or if it's preserved for historical purposes. We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn.

Re:Who cares?

[Binestar]

Ah, the old "rooting for inefficiency with my dollars" shtick. (The Amish should have patented that.)

I try very hard to not shop at Walmart either, but it isn't because of prices. I've found that buying clothes from walmart that they wear out much faster than buying from Kohls. I don't know if they use thinner threads or what, but I get holes in walmart clothes while they are still in relatively new condition.

As for Groceries, I could probably save a bit of money buying from walmart as opposed to Wegmans, but I have made a choice to vote with my wallet on business practices. Wegmans has been voted into the FORTUNE top 100 companies to work for every year from 1998-2010, with a first place posting in 2005 and 2010 was voted third. I am pretty sure most of those years were in the top10, but am not going to do the research.

Walmart on the other hand specifically hires part time workers and keeps their hours low so they do not have to provide benefits to them. Source.

Usenet is dead except for piracy...

[nweaver]

Usenet is pretty much dead except for piracy, subsumed by specialty web forums for those who are after communication rather than warez. And if you still want it for communication, Google Groups offers a free gateway IIRC.

EG, NNTP may still be a huge amount of some ISPs traffic (eg, see this paper, http://www.icir.org/vern/papers/imc102-maier.pdf ) but it is almost ALL binary transfers.

So its not a shock that Cox is getting rid of its Usenet servers, whats only shocking is that it took them so long.

Re:Usenet is dead except for piracy...

[Anonymous Coward]

If NNTP is a significant part of Cox's traffic, then it would be stupid to discontinue the service, because then each user (minus those who stop using it altogether) will cause a copy of the traffic to become external, where it puts Cox in a worse position for peering agreements. The store-and-forward nature of Usenet is a major relief on cross-network bandwidth, as long as users stick to network-local servers.

browser is not the best tool for every job

[ChristTrekker]

News readers are a lot more lightweight than web browsers, can deal with the format intelligently. That's what I'll miss when Cox (my ISP) drops Usenet. How big are browsers now, to make use of the all the funky Ajax features, that basically just simulate what I could do with trn in a terminal window 20 years ago?

Re:browser is not the best tool for every job

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea I love my 386 as much as any other retro nerd, but damn man it sits next to a 2.8ghz multicore with more ram than my 386 has hard disk space

spend the 100$ to get a machine made within the last 5 years

Re:browser is not the best tool for every job

[houstonbofh]

Yea I love my 386 as much as any other retro nerd, but damn man it sits next to a 2.8ghz multicore with more ram than my 386 has hard disk space

spend the 100$ to get a machine made within the last 5 years

And yet the 386 with a good newsreader is faster than a 8 gig 64 bit i7 mambo nuclear system with bad ajax. Where is the progress again? And why do I want to pay for that?

Re:browser is not the best tool for every job

[microbee]

So, the GUI is too slow for you, but I hear the computer says that it still runs faster than you can read.

Re:browser is not the best tool for every job

[betterunixthanunix]

Try browsing some threads on Usenet using your 386, then try browsing threads on some Javascript driven web based discussion system, and see which is faster ;).

Re:Not that I'm actually TALKING about Usenet, but

[ChristTrekker]

I've been using Netscape and then Thunderbird for news since the mid-90s. What Cox provided has been fine for the past several years. Most other people have been drifting to web forums, so I've (reluctantly) followed. But I think NNTP is a lot simpler and can do the job just as well. Time was that Usenet wasn't a premium service, it was considered pretty basic, like email.

Allow me to translate.

[Toze]

"We believe the group of customers that use this service is small enough to not be able to start a revolt, and large enough that we'll see some profit from charging extra. We would do this to the 'using Google' service if we thought we could get away with it. Please ignore how badly this conflicts with our claims that Net Neutrality would destroy the internet, and that we're a self-policing market who wouldn't dare charge people more for certain types or destinations of traffic."

Re:Allow me to translate.

[rdunnell]

I don't see how this translates to a conflict with net neutrality.

They aren't saying you can't use Usenet, that they are going to block it somehow or that you have to use their Usenet servers at a premium price. They're just saying they aren't going to host it and offer it as part of their service package.

Regardless of whether this is a nice thing to do or not, it doesn't have anything to do with net neutrality.

Re:Who Cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you've got Google groups, but they're privately owned and moderated by Google.

Usenet is the only distributed, unmoderated message "board" out there that isn't bound by one particular owner's or government's rules. It may not seem important now, but free anonymous and uncensored posts can be very important sometimes...

Usenet? That still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usenet has been heading the way of the dinosaurs for quite a few years. By today's standards, it's difficult to use (requires more than a web browser), has a somewhat cumbersome hierarchy and, especially in the case of alt.*, bloated with SPAM.

The resources required for an ISP to proved a full Usenet feed to its subscribers are enormous and provide very little (read: none) return for the ISP.

Some might balk at having to pay "extra" for Usenet access (mainly people that refuse to acknowledge that this is 2010, there are better alternatives, and providing access and storage for the behemoth that is Usenet costs a metric ass-ton of cash), I for one don't. At least with pay services, you get decent retention time and at least some assurance you are getting a full feed if that is what you are after.

And at the end of the day, the majority of people using the Internet today have no idea what Usenet is, or could give 2 shits about it.

"dark allies"

[nurb432]

To you perhaps it is, but others its not.

Also, while i agree there are things such as Google groups that are similar, its still not Usenet, and if you weren't a snot nosed kid, you would understand the difference. ( hint, one is distributed, another is a single point of failure/control, for starters. )

And ya, Usenet isn't what it used to be due to the dumbing down of the net due to the influx of idiots "oooh, click, its pretty", but it still has a place, especially as governments try to crack down on information freedoms.

Re:"dark allies"

[brunes69]

Google Groups *is* Usenet. They are just another Usenet peer. And their interface and searchability makes usenet more useable than any standalone client I have ever used.

Re:They should get rid of email too

[houstonbofh]

If the price was better, I would buy just a nekid connection with NO additional services. I can roll my own mail, web site, news... Just cut my price! What? You want to cut service, raise the price and shove some personal data-mining junk at me? Uh... Pass...

Re:Oh, Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only on Slashdot would that comment in this context be marked "Insightful"...

Upvote

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling the "who cares about usenet" geeks will change their tune when ACTA arrives and ISP's are shutting down their beloved torrent sites.

USENET is more than just a server in a rack

[poptones]

Perhaps one can serve usenet in a rack, but that's so very not likely. Daily usenet traffic is measured in the hundreds of gigabytes and maintaining a local cache of that traffic means hundreds of gigabytes of traffic even if NO ONE ACCESSES IT. Whether you have one subscriber or 1000 using that local cache of traffic, the very act of maintaining a local cache means more inbound /0 traffic, more overhead in the form of support costs and maintenance costs, and dealing with an ever spiraling demand for more space.

Anyone who thinks usenet is dead is seriously uninformed. Easynews has gajillions of subscribers and they provide access to binaries groups directly via the browser - no need to learn t use nzbs or nntp clients unless you really want to. Easynews, Giganews and even Astraweb provide access to usenet in a way no other local ISP likely has for a decade now. I understand Cox has had very good usenet service but that just makes the point ever more: it costs real money to provide this service! Cox also has the problem of serving as an illicit gateway - a good bit of the illegal stuff posted to usenet has come through rooted windows machines sitting on the Cox network. By eliminating their pool of nntp resources they shift that security problem off onto Giganews, an ISP that focuses directly on providing this service.