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.”
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.