Usenet

[Jonathan Hutchins]

Something nobody's mentioned here, given that most of our distinguished 
contributors are admittedly ignorant of what _is_ on Usenet news groups, is 
the fact that many of them carry binary copies of music and video.  One can 
pull whole TV series off the news groups.  Time Warner's main business is NOT 
providing internet service.  It is "intelectual property" - a market they 
desperately want to control.

I can get British TV series off of Usenet that I can't get through BBC America 
or other "legitimate" sources, and I can get them without them having been 
edited, dumbed-down and censored (supposedly to better appeal to American 
tastes).

We tend to think censorship goes one way, that it's material from the U.S. 
that gets censored for other countries.  Nothing could be further from the 
truth.