SBC/Pacbell To Filter 90% Of alt.binaries Groups 253
An Anonymous Coward writes: "I received an email from PacBell.net (Pacific Bell's ISP), stating that they're transitioning their usenet services to Prodigy. They're making a few changes along the way."
He excerpts from the email: "In addition, after evaluating possible copyright infringement issues,
newsgroup usage and the cost of providing newsgroup access, we will no
longer offer some alt.binary newsgroups. For a list of alt.binaries that will no longer be offered, please refer to our FAQ at http://global.pacbell.net/usenet_update.html.' Note that the link currently doesn't go to the right place. After telephoning SBC, I was informed that upwards of 90% of the alt.binaries.* groups are going to be blocked."
Regarding newsgroups and ISP's (Score:5, Insightful)
when I buy internet service, I want IP routing, PERIOD. I don't *want* to pay for whatever wierd services they think they need to run. I'll do my own mail, dns, everything else.
If tehy don't want to waste resources (legal or technical) in carrying some newsgroups.. fine. I guess it sucks for their customers who like it....
but I've been paying for access to news-servers separately for years now. It just makes sense. They are far less likely to change policies and rip you off when it's their sole business.
Re:The 'net has moved on (Score:5, Insightful)
I say, let it die peacefully. The intelligent people left newsgroups a long time ago and the only remaining denizens are the pornographers and anarchists who don't deserve a voice in the first place.
Sort of a pity, realy, since NNTP is a protocal designed for distributed discussion groups. Now, instead, we're all stuck with web-based messaging systems, like this one, which, in a word, suck. Oh, some are better than others, but to my view, using a web browers for a discussion board is like using a hammer to drive screws.
Think about it: we're all stuck with the interface that the server has decided to implement. Whereas, with NNTP, we can each choose our own newsreader client, and yet still all communicate.
A pity that the Web Browser has become such the "killer ap" that now everybody uses it even when there are far better longstanding tools out there.
-Rob
They're not blocking content... (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as I see it, everybody is free to go to another news server, with all the binaries you could want. They're not about to block that. They just won't offer it anymore.
could backfire on them (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with this is that since the news is no longer kept within their own network, that all that traffic is going to have to pass through their mian connection to the internet. They could end up having to spend quite a bit more on bigger pipes as a result of this.
Should be interesting to watch.
Is "filter" the correct word? Nope... (Score:3, Insightful)
If they were really filtering alt.binaries.* newsgroups, you would not be able to access them from other 3rd party usenet providers.
Yeah so I'm nitpicking.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Heathen.
This is cute, too (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I'm glad you do. And when you can provide an airtight definition of what "the act of entering this site" means, and some explanation of how users can agree to something they haven't seen, then maybe I'll think about agreeing too... or not.
By the way, your reading this post constitutes your agreement to immediately pay $100 into the TomatoMan Gets A New G4 fund. Thank you for your contribution.
It's a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
A full newsfeed is 200 to 250 *GBytes* a day, of which only around 5% is text-based discussion. Just by dropping binaries and keeping the same amount of disk space, a news provider increases retention time for *real* discussions immensely. If I had to decide whether I want my ISP to serve incomplete binaries to alt.fan.britney-spears.blow-job or have six months retention for comp.lang.*, I'd prefer the latter (others might have different preferences, though
Get used to it: If you want binaries, pay for it. It's not that bad: 10 bucks a month, and you're in business. Go to Newsguy, Giganews, Supernews, uncensored-news.com, newsfeeds.com but don't expect your ISP to provide everything.
-Martin
Re:Regarding newsgroups and ISP's (Score:4, Insightful)
You're lucky that you're allowed to. Increasingly, ISPs are not allowing this, wanting to charge 5-10 times as much for business rates for customers that want such simple things as an e-mail address that will never change.
Re:Good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's also trash out all the Xerox Copiers, since they can be used for Copyright Violation. Better yet, let's destroy all tape recorders since they can be used for Music piracy! Oh god! The VCRs! We almost forgot them! Let's destroy them too! Oh yes, no CDRs will be allowed of course...
This is just ludicrous...
The Real Issue Here (Score:2, Insightful)
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
I would love to see the lameness ratio of USENET decrease due to lack of users that were using it primarily for binary transfer, and back to the state it was before the Endless September, and wish more ISPs took this route.
Re:Conduit/Content (Score:1, Insightful)
Specialization vs Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
When I contract with an ISP I want to be connected to the internet at the highest possible speed and reliability. If the ISP is spending time and money subsidizing usenet or free home pages it makes it even more difficult for them to provide me with the level of service I require. I want my ISP to focus their resources on the service I am paying for and that is connection.
At the same time, I subscribe to a commercial usenet service and I want them to focus their resources on article completion and retention. If my news service suddenly started offering connectivity to its subscribers without charging additional fees, the news service itself would suffer. Most people would find that unacceptable and yet they expect their ISP to offer commercial quality news service at no additional cost.
I realize their is a historical backdrop against which most ISPs offer email, home pages and news groups along with connectivity. But the internet market place is evolving and maturing into a more service oriented place. Some things are worth paying for and if you truely value usenet you will subsidize its existence by paying for a premium service.
On the other hand, if SBC is continuing to offer some binary newsgroups and not others than their move cannot be seen merely as a move to improve quality of service for their customers, but must be seen to some degree as censorship. After all, they had to use some criteria other than cost or quality of service to decide which groups to offer or not.
Under these circumstances I think that their motive should not be applauded even though it will almost certainly allow them to increase service levels.
On a closing note, I used to use SCB/PacBell and their service is horrible anyway.
90% cut off?? YES!!! Er.. I mean... NOOOOOOO!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
In my world, inside my head, I thought 90% cutoff was a good thing because I was sure they talked about filtering useless spam in the newsgroups, I've rolled on the floor with joy like stimpy in an episode which I don't remember...
Then someone outside my world came in and explained to me that the 90% figure was in VOLUME not in # of posts... everything around me turned to grey, as I understood that this would filter the best content (p0rn) and leave only the spamming...everything around me faded, in a dark dark grey...
Homebrew to the Future? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm telling you -- and the moderators will think I'm just blowing smoke -- that the future of ISPs is that we will make our own.
After seeing this info about how to lay your own DSL line [pbs.org], and noticing this (clearly inflammatory but still interesting) piece about wireless grids [infoworld.com], it's becoming obvious to me that we are going to end up building some of the network ourselves. Maybe it'll just be the last mile, or maybe we'll be building a nice, humble network to replace the original internet -- a net on which we are not beholden to corporate and government evil.
I can see both sides of the issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Freedom (Score:1, Insightful)
Let me break it down for you:
Once upon a time the internet did not have mainstream businesses and clueless children on it.
Then, to the benefit of everyone, those groups arrived. With their arrival came competition, and accountability and responsibility. As a result, some pervert's easy access to porn and warez got turned off.
Awww. Well, if you want your porn or warez, find another way, and don't complain about the rest of society catering to their own values.
And guess what? If you can't figure out how to get what you want then you don't deserve it.
Too lazy to look for warez somewhere else? Natural response is to blame all the keywords (big-business, lobbying, lawyers, etc) for your own problems.
Southwestern Bell is also doing this (Score:3, Insightful)
FYI, this isn't limited to Pac Bell. I got a notice on July 27 that SW Bell is also doing this. The exact same message, in fact.
Which brings me to a question. How is it that I submitted this info on that date (7/27), and it was rejected for posting as an article here, but it gets posted today, over a month later. I realize Slashdot gets a lot of submissions, but still. If whether something gets accepted or rejected is based on chance, as it appears to be, what's the point in submitting?
defeating the purpose of alt groups (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, in a way, this defeats the
purpose of the alt.binaries groups, which
exist mainly to keep the stuff that floods
the alt.* groups from flooding the more
mainstream news hierarchies instead .
This will perform the marvellous feat
of getting the copyrighted material out of
the alt. groups and into rec.arts where they
really, really aren't wanted. Thank
you, Pacbell.
Not censorship... (Score:4, Insightful)
You should be bitching at the legislature that created the DMCA and passed it, and the courts that are ruling that the ISP's can be sued for the copyright violations.
And even then, you're sucking wind, because the alt.binaries newsgroups alone require something like two T1s worth of bandwidth alone to provide, and don't make a *DIME* of income for the ISPs.
So which choice should they make:
1) Start charging for Usenet access.
2) Stop providing Usenet access at all.
3) Drop alt.binaries in whole or in part, so that the rest of Usenet can be kept for a reasonable retention period at a reasonable cost.
They're not blocking outbound access on port 119, they're just declining to devote 3Mb/S of bandwidth and (150GB * number of days retention) to providing a service that 99% of their users don't even use, and a large number of the remaining 1% don't get from them anyway.
Re:could backfire on them (Score:2, Insightful)
They want to provide a "surfing service." (quote from @home tech support drone). Basically, sell broadband to the people that don't need it: the ones who check their yahoo mail accounts and chat on AIM... the ones who couldn't even saturate a modem connection... The ideal business plan consists of a mass of ignorant users all checking their email, stocks, sports, weather.
We see this with upload/download restrictions and transfer rate caps as well as the blocking of binaries groups.
Besides, in most places you don't exactly have a lot of freedom in choosing your broadband provider: they can do anything to you and you'll keep them because they're still better than a modem.
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
because web-based forums such as slashdot offer much better functionality than newsgroups.
You've got to be joking. Either that or you've never used a real newsreader.
With Usenet I get *real* killfiles, regexp based. I decide what scores high and what doesn't. I can highlight intelligent people and kill the trolls without ever waiting for a moderator. Nor do I have to worry about moderator bias: I can see what I want.
Since all the articles are local, I get blazing speed: hold down the space bar and 100 articles will flash by in a second. Reading /. is painful in comparision: half the time I sit and wait while some link is down.
No real editor for posting: I used to use something fast with full text editing support: not a HTML textarea.
/. and other web discussion boards just remind me of how far back we've regressed. USENET was 10x better than any web discussion board back when I started using it in the late 80's, and the newsreaders have only gotten better.
Eric
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
If "read at -1" is such a difficult concept, perhaps computers are not for you.
You don't get it, do you?
If I read /. at -1, I see endless crap posted by morons.
If I read USENET with my nicely tuned set of filters, I don't see crap. No Portman/hot grits. No first posts. No Archimedes Plutonium posts, even if the moderators haven't gotten around to modding him into oblivion. Nor do I see the effect of moderators with axes to grind: the only axe is my own.
/. is a truly pitiful discussion board: slow, few options, often busy patting itself on the back with endless "Copyright is evil: Open Source rules" posts that instantly are modded to +5. Its only saving grace is that the rest of the web boards are worse.
/. folks wonder why people use MS products when Unices were better ten years ago than W2K is today in many ways. I wonder the same thing about /.: why is anyone here when USENET with a modern newsreader gives speed, power and options that /. readers only dream about.