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#11
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Verizon blocking access to ALT groups
Marengo writes:
On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:54:01 -0600, Pramesh Rutaji wrote: Art wrote: Just received a notice from Verizon that starting June 24th all but the big "8" (which doesn't include ALT) will be blocked. For what I read, they are not blocking anything. What they are doing is not providing a service that they had previously provided. It's not that simple. They've been pressured by the New York attorney general into enforcing government censorship. No need to go into details, google the new stories. It's true that there's pressure involved, but that doesn't make it censorship. Their customers can still use Usenet; it just won't be provided as part of their Internet service package anymore. They can even use it for free through horrible interfaces like Google Groups. That's no more censorship than the fact that my library doesn't carry every book and magazine I want. It's not censorship if they choose to spend their grant money on Dickens instead of Penthouse. Internet providers have to choose which services will cater to the most customers and make the most profit. Running a full-feed Usenet server is expensive, and with only a tiny percentage of customers accessing it, it just doesn't make fiscal sense to keep it up as an internal service. In the olden days of online communications, when the Internet was pretty much restricted to government installations, online services like AOL, Compuserve, and GEnie provided *all* services internally: chat rooms, forums, games, e-mail, everything. As the Internet made it possible to distribute those services to anyone from anywhere, the online services were replaced with ISPs, which have continued to cut back on the internal services they provide. Some don't even run a mail server anymore; they just supply an Internet connection, and send their customers off to Gmail or somewhere if they want a mailbox. It's still kind of skeevy for some politician to push this, but kind of irrelevant too. It's a little like shutting down the buggy whip factories after everyone's already bought a car. -- Aaron -- 285/247/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz |
#12
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Verizon blocking access to ALT groups
Aaron Baugher wrote in message That's no more censorship than the fact that my library doesn't carry every book and magazine I want. It's not censorship if they choose to spend their grant money on Dickens instead of Penthouse. Internet providers have to choose which services will cater to the most customers and make the most profit. Running a full-feed Usenet server is expensive, and with only a tiny percentage of customers accessing it, it just doesn't make fiscal sense to keep it up as an internal service. Yep, I could almost guarantee that it has everything to do with money, and very little to do with *social good.* Cheri |
#13
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Verizon blocking access to ALT groups
Cheri gserviceatinreachdotcom wrote:
Aaron Baugher wrote in message That's no more censorship than the fact that my library doesn't carry every book and magazine I want. It's not censorship if they choose to spend their grant money on Dickens instead of Penthouse. Internet providers have to choose which services will cater to the most customers and make the most profit. Running a full-feed Usenet server is expensive, and with only a tiny percentage of customers accessing it, it just doesn't make fiscal sense to keep it up as an internal service. Yep, I could almost guarantee that it has everything to do with money, and very little to do with *social good.* Exactly! I'm betting ISPs have been hoping for this moment for a long time. It's a HUGE expense to support Usenet servers that carry binary groups. Now they can cut costs and blame it all on someone else. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to see other ISPs jumping on the bandwagon now that the NYS AG office has made itself the perfect scapegoat. -- Jeri "Change is inevitable, except from vending machines." |
#14
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Verizon blocking access to ALT groups
Jeri wrote in message ... Exactly! I'm betting ISPs have been hoping for this moment for a long time. It's a HUGE expense to support Usenet servers that carry binary groups. Now they can cut costs and blame it all on someone else. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to see other ISPs jumping on the bandwagon now that the NYS AG office has made itself the perfect scapegoat. Yes, I give it about six months until the others follow...right after they put themselves in the position to be a *paid provider.* Cheri |
#15
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Verizon blocking access to ALT groups
"Cheri" gserviceatinreachdotcom wrote:
Jeri wrote in message ... It wouldn't surprise me a bit to see other ISPs jumping on the bandwagon now that the NYS AG office has made itself the perfect scapegoat. Yes, I give it about six months until the others follow...right after they put themselves in the position to be a *paid provider.* UseNet is too low budget for that. With individual.net charging 10 Euros per *year* it takes thousands of subscribers to justify one junior engineer running the servers and tens of thousands of subscribers to build a server farm. Even charging $10 per month as an extra service few can justify the head count. |
#16
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Verizon blocking access to ALT groups
And they would be entering a market that already has some topnotch news
server operations. Doug Freyburger wrote: | | UseNet is too low budget for that. With individual.net charging | 10 Euros per *year* it takes thousands of subscribers to | justify one junior engineer running the servers and tens of | thousands of subscribers to build a server farm. Even charging | $10 per month as an extra service few can justify the head | count. |
#17
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Verizon blocking access to ALT groups
Doug Freyburger writes:
"Cheri" gserviceatinreachdotcom wrote: Yes, I give it about six months until the others follow...right after they put themselves in the position to be a *paid provider.* UseNet is too low budget for that. With individual.net charging 10 Euros per *year* it takes thousands of subscribers to justify one junior engineer running the servers and tens of thousands of subscribers to build a server farm. Even charging $10 per month as an extra service few can justify the head count. And there's just no reason for it. When connections were slow and bandwidth expensive, it made sense to have a newsfeed trickling in all day so your users could connect to your local server at a decent speed. I used to run my own news server at home for that reason. (Still do; but that's because I'm a geek, not because there's any reason to now.) At today's speeds and pipe sizes, users can't even tell a difference between connecting to news.my-own-isp.com or news.somewhere-else.com. With nationwide ISPs, the latter might even be closer or faster than the former. It doesn't really make any more sense now to offer your users a local Usenet feed than it would to offer them a local copy of wikipedia. -- Aaron -- 285/244/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz |
#18
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Verizon blocking access to ALT groups
On Jun 17, 4:45*pm, "Art" wrote:
Just received a notice from Verizon that starting June 24th all but the big "8" (which doesn't include ALT) will be blocked. Here is a excerpt from their email: Dear Verizon Online Customer, As a Verizon Newsgroup service user, we wanted to let you know about some important changes that we will soon be making to our Newsgroup service. On June 24, 2008, we will be modifying our Newsgroup offerings to only offer groups in the Big-8 Newsgroup hierarchies, which are listed below. *The 0.verizon.* newsgroup hierarchy will also continue to be available. *Users will not be able to post or download from any other newsgroups using our Newsgroup service. comp.* humanities.* misc.* news.* rec.* sci.* soc.* talk.* More details regarding the Big 8 newsgroup hierarchies is available at:http://www.big-8.org/. yes, ROADRUNNER followed suit, and we have no newsgroup service either! i can get use to GOOGLE i guess! rosie |
#19
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Verizon blocking access to ALT groups
Free and cheap newsservers:
http://usenet-news.net/ http://www.news.astraweb.com/ www.teranews.com http://www.motzarella.org/ www.aioe.org http://www.albasani.net/ readandpost wrote: | yes, ROADRUNNER followed suit, and we have no newsgroup service | either! | i can get use to GOOGLE i guess! | rosie |
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