The newsgroups have been under attack in recent months, led by NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. His efforts have forced a number of ISPs, such as Comcast, Verizon, and RoadRunner, to eliminate or significantly curtail access to the binary newsgroups. This action, it seems, has not dampened interest in the newsgroups.
I haven’t used Usenet in ages, but had been worried nevertheless that this important internet medium was dying …
But according to this news item about the growth of Usenet provider Giganews, this is very far from being the case.
Here’s their explanation:
“The newsgroups are one of the oldest mediums of the Internet, with an existence dating back to the late 1970s. Over time, the newsgroups have evolved from a bulletin board type messaging system to one of the premier avenues for file-sharing. Users of this network will often times argue of its overwhelming supremacy over rival BitTorrent.
With lawsuits, bandwidth throttling and politicking consuming the P2P community, the newsgroups are becoming a more attractive source of information. Because of the defined roles in the newsgroup community and secure transmissions, lawsuits against individuals are virtually non-existent. Unlike P2P, the end user is not required nor encouraged to upload material. Instead, dedicated users with the know-how and experience are responsible for providing content. And according to Giganews, those individuals and those posting messages are taking the newsgroups by storm.”
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:58 am
Gignanews and other provider growth is probably related to the ISP closings. The ISP’s usenet-ers wanted access and it was taken away so….. Off they went to a pay provider. I just don’t see us loosing this vast amount of knowledge / data, whether it be alt.sci.chemisty or alt.binaries.erotica. In my opinion it’s far better than the blogs and forums of today, it just takes a little know how and user savvy to use it. It will always be here maybe overshadowed by the www but here nonetheless.