http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9964895-38.html BLOCKED::http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9964895-38.html

Brian Kelsay

________________________________

From: Monty J. Harder Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 10:50 AM

Does this mean TWC will no longer run news servers, or that it will block attempts by its customers to access news servers run by others?

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 10:09 AM, Kelsay, Brian -

wrote:

Guy at work sent me this.

If thine eye offends thee, cut off thy head: "Time Warner Cable said it will cease to offer customers access to any Usenet newsgroups, a decision that will affect customers nationwide.

Leo Mauler wrote:

--- On Thu, 6/12/08, Monty J. Harder mjharder@gmail.com wrote:

...

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 10:09 AM, Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO brian.kelsay@kcc.usda.gov wrote:

...

Guy at work sent me this.

If thine eye offends thee, cut off thy head:

"Time Warner Cable said it

...

will cease to offer customers access to any Usenet

newsgroups, a decision

...

that will affect customers nationwide.

Does this mean TWC will no longer run news servers, or that it will block attempts by its customers to access news servers run by others?

TWC will no longer offer a Usenet server, but won't block access to other Usenet servers. Since blocking all Usenet groups to block 88 of those groups is stupid and silly, clearly TWC has been wanting to get rid of Usenet for some time now, and got their excuse from the New York Attorney General.

I'm told Everest will not be blocking Usenet, and if you have to keep TWC, TWC will not block your Supernews, Giganews, and Usenet.com Usenet subscriptions. Which makes their efforts largely immaterial: people who were getting their "child porn" from Usenet will just keep paying TWC for Internet and pay some other company for Usenet access.

---

Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug

This sucks! I have used Usenet for years and years and still do. A wonderful internet resource that most don't even know exists. Kinda like FTP. Mention FTP or Usenet (Newsgroups) to most Windows users and you will see a nice blank stare as their eyes glass over with confusion.

Anyway, looks like I have to find another Usenet server. I have never had to shop Usenet servers before. You mentioned Supernews, Giganews, and Usenet.com. Does anyone have a suggestion on which to use?

it is just a text only archive

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 9:37 AM, Jim Herrmann kclug@itdepends.com wrote:

I thought Google had Usenet in Google Groups. Am I wrong on that? Is that just an archive?

Peace, Jim

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 8:36 AM, Ty Unes riverty@kc.rr.com wrote:

...

Leo Mauler wrote:

--- On Thu, 6/12/08, Monty J. Harder mjharder@gmail.com mjharder@gmail.com wrote:

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 10:09 AM, Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO brian.kelsay@kcc.usda.gov brian.kelsay@kcc.usda.gov wrote:

Guy at work sent me this.

If thine eye offends thee, cut off thy head:

"Time Warner Cable said it

will cease to offer customers access to any Usenet

newsgroups, a decision

that will affect customers nationwide.

Does this mean TWC will no longer run news servers, or that it will block attempts by its customers to access news servers run by others?

TWC will no longer offer a Usenet server, but won't block access to other Usenet servers. Since blocking all Usenet groups to block 88 of those groups is stupid and silly, clearly TWC has been wanting to get rid of Usenet for some time now, and got their excuse from the New York Attorney General.

I'm told Everest will not be blocking Usenet, and if you have to keep TWC, TWC will not block your Supernews, Giganews, and Usenet.com Usenet subscriptions. Which makes their efforts largely immaterial: people who were getting their "child porn" from Usenet will just keep paying TWC for Internet and pay some other company for Usenet access.

---

Kclug mailing listKclug@kclug.orghttp://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug

This sucks! I have used Usenet for years and years and still do. A wonderful internet resource that most don't even know exists. Kinda like FTP. Mention FTP or Usenet (Newsgroups) to most Windows users and you will see a nice blank stare as their eyes glass over with confusion.

Anyway, looks like I have to find another Usenet server. I have never had to shop Usenet servers before. You mentioned Supernews, Giganews, and Usenet.com. Does anyone have a suggestion on which to use?

---

Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug

---

Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug

IIRC, there's one ISP that just tells its users to use GMail

--- On Fri, 6/20/08, Ty Unes riverty@kc.rr.com wrote:

Anyway, looks like I have to find another Usenet server. I have never had to shop Usenet servers before. You mentioned Supernews, Giganews, and Usenet.com. Does anyone have a suggestion on which to use?

I had an instructor (2006) who had a Supernews account, and she liked it a lot. Of course, she used it mostly for the "binaries" groups, and would sometimes be running a news binary downloader during class to take advantage of the college's much faster bandwidth, but surely Supernews has the full set of newsgroups.

kclug could run a members-only usenet server; perhaps the CCC would like to take that on

Ty,

Something I had to learn about back when I was running a public BBS was something called the "AOL Ruling".

If you monitor and control the content of a BBS, a chat room, a forum, a mailing list, etc. then you are responsible for what is in that channel, even if you didn't catch it. If you do _any_ monitoring or filtering, you become responsible for _all_ of the content.

If you _don't_ monitor or censor it, then you are not liable for any illegal content there (it is understood that you will remove anything illegal if notified of it).

This is why TW and the rest of the providers are taking a "shotgun" approach, whether it's removing all of the "alt" groups where the majority of offenses are found, or removing the whole thing.

As to running a Usenet relay - it's a very expensive thing to do. It's a LOT of data and a LOT of traffic. Most usenet servers, I believe, are still run on multi machine clusters. This is why subscriptions are so high, why ISP's are eager to shed the burden, and why you don't find local guys who used to run BBSs running their own Usenet servers.

Compared to the amount of benefit that any small group of users like our LUG would get, the traffic of a Usenet server would mostly be wasted - but it would cost a lot.

Yeah, to be honest USENET is a dead-end technologically. It doesn't scale well at all, and the larger USENET got the worse it became. EVERY post is sent to EVERY USENET node. Think about that. It was designed at a time where many systems and networks had Internet access infrequently, and every server needed a local copy. That's no longer the case, no longer needed, and no longer a good idea.

I appreciate people's nostalgia for it, but personally I think USENET should have been taken out back and shot ten years ago, while it was still relevant, as it's now devolved into a repository of malware and bad porn and it's a shallow and sad husk of what it once was.

Jeffrey.

On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 2:39 PM, Leo Mauler webgiant@yahoo.com wrote:

I agree it would cost a lot if the private KCLUG Usenet server ran a server with the whole set of newsgroups. However, existing Usenet servers can choose not to accept certain newsgroups and even entire hierarchies.

Would the cost be the same as a "full-set" Usenet server if the KCLUG Usenet server only included those text-only newsgroups specifically requested by KCLUG members? It would seem to me that, for example, 10 text-only newsgroups would use a heck of a lot less hard drive space and processor power than 10,000 newsgroups.

-- <someone else> wrote:

Further, I don't understand how child pornography can't use other mediums than usenet? If anything, this should be the headline:

AT THE BEHEST OF NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL ANDREW QUOMO, TIME WARNER CABLE FORCES CHILD PORNOGRAPHY ON TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB

because that's all that can happen. And the worst part? goodness! web sites can easily be encrypted to prevent access by law enforcement.

There are good reasons why the World Wide Web hasn't become a haven for illegal child pornography, due to a basic difference between Usenet and websites (even encrypted ones) which boils down to two words: "paper trail".

Usenet is practically a public service. Anyone can use it, and it is incredibly anonymous thanks to its decentralized nature. Thanks to "common carrier" laws, ISPs deliberately ignore everything you do on Usenet, so a single guy can upload terabytes of child pornography from some public or insecure Usenet server. Usenet even allows the one uploader to upload his files exactly once, saving him time and money, and also meaning that by the time the record of his huge upload is discovered on the "unintentionally public" Usenet server, he's long gone. Lots of other people all over the world can then download those terabytes of child pornography on their own ISP's Usenet server, secure in the knowledge that their ISP isn't taking an active interest in their Usenet downloads.

The same isn't true of the World Wide Web, which is an incredibly centralized service. Yes, the Internet is decentralized, but web servers have physical locations (which can be raided) and, more importantly, cost money to run. Those two factors add up to requiring users of any encrypted child pornography web server to pay for their access. Thus the pedophile logging into the encrypted web server has a payment record on his credit card *and* a payment record on the child pornography website server. Anonymity is lost, and the pedophiles know this to be true, so it is a deterrent to starting such web servers. One snitch and one server raid, and everyone who is a member of the child pornography website has a lot of explaining to do on the way to their individual sex crime trials.

While there are more complicated but highly secure means of sharing data between systems, pedophiles' activities are condoned only by other pedophiles and thus they have no technical community to draw on for assistance. Unlike the music and movie pirates, whose activities aren't seen as major sins by most of the world.

However, condemning and ending Usenet because Usenet can easily be used to distribute child pornography is rather like condemning and ending Bittorrent because it can easily be used to pirate music and movies. Tools with both legal and illegal uses shouldn't be banned solely on the possibility that they could be used for illegal purposes.

I'd bet they are trying to cut down on bandwidth usage also. Comcast has tried to block torrents, they have cycled connections so big downloads die, blocked home servers, the list goes on and on. It's almost like they don't want intelligent customers that use the service. If they had competition, they'd lose customers and possibly go out of business just on their poor customer service to cable TV customers.

On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Jeffrey Watts <> wrote:

On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 1:33 AM, Leo Mauler <> wrote:

...

However, condemning and ending Usenet because Usenet can easily be used

to distribute child pornography is rather like condemning and ending Bittorrent because it can easily be used to pirate music and movies. Tools with both legal and illegal uses shouldn't be banned solely on the possibility that they could be used for illegal purposes.

Well, the excuse might be child pornography, but I can guarantee the the reason is due to expense. I bet the ISPs have been looking for a reason to jettison USENET for a long time now (sorry Adrian, can't do it any more).

Jeffrey.

--- On Wed, 7/2/08, Brian Kelsay ripcrd@gmail.com wrote:

I'd bet they are trying to cut down on bandwidth usage also. Comcast has tried to block torrents, they have cycled connections so big downloads die, blocked home servers, the list goes on and on. It's almost like they don't want intelligent customers that use the service. If they had competition, they'd lose customers and possibly go out of business just on their poor customer service to cable TV customers.

From a free market perspective what they are doing makes a lot of sense. They want people who use a lot of bandwidth all the time to pay for a lot of bandwidth all the time. They want people who want business-class home servers to pay for business-class service, not try to sneak business-class service onto a home-level service line after signing a T&C saying they agree to penalties for doing so.

Most of the T&C documents people have to sign to get "unlimited" Internet service, the ones that no one actually reads, include some form of provision which says that unlimited only applies if you don't max out your bandwidth all the time. Saying "whoops, didn't read that, so you can't hold me to it" isn't going to hold up anywhere, and means most of the complainers on basic "unlimited" Internet are, strictly speaking, demanding that their ISP do something the customer agreed the ISP doesn't have to do.

Lets face it, the concept of "unlimited Internet" was nothing more than a marketing gimmick for ANY Internet Service Provider. All Comcast is doing is adjusting its service to fit what they have always been able to do, as opposed to what they have never been able to do.

Comcast and TWC will never go out of business, because most users aren't the highly technical type of people who might try to sneak business-class services out of a home-level "unlimited" Internet account. Most people will cheerfully use a huge pipe for E-mail and YouTube, and never touch the untapped potential of the pipe. Those complainers who are technical and who have lots of money will simply purchase business-class service and cease to complain. Those complainers who are technical and do not have lots of money don't have the purchasing clout to be taken seriously. In the end, the people who will be annoyed and stay annoyed won't hurt the companies much, short or long term.