SBC/Pacbell To Filter 90% Of alt.binaries Groups

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."

bummer

[CodeMonky]

we had to do the same thing at our University connection simply becuase the newsfeeed was using a ton of our bandwidth trying to keep up with the alt.binaries.* group. Sucks that upstreams are doing the same thing though.

Conduit/Content

[Satai]

The idea of filtering based on content is what is important here. I was under the impression that as long as the ISP "only provided the lines" - that is, was merely a conduit to the Great Big Internet - they were allowed to get away with lots of illegal stuff going on; but as soon as they began to make value judgments based on legality, they were responsible for all further illegal activity. I could be wrong, but that's the impression I was under (sounds reasonable to me, to be honest.)

Filtering based on bandwidth isn't a new thing - this is why we have such a proliferation of Usenet Providers [yahoo.com]. Lots of ISPs filter to keep down the cost for such a relatively small 'payback' in user satisfaction/use.

But, again, I'm curious - does this make them liable for the illegal content that does get through, since they are now officialy filtering based on legality?

The 'net has moved on

[Dr. Prakash Kothari]

I can't say that I blame PacBell for filtering alt.binaries newsgroups. At one point in time, around ten years ago, newsgroups were the pinnacle of the digital age. Scholars from colleges and universities from around the globe could virtually congregate, and dissiminate a vast wealth of knowledge almost instantaneously.

If PacBell were filtering newsgroups ten years ago, I would be upset, and cry "Censorship", but sadly, in more recent times, the quality of content in newsgroups has gone straight down the crapper. The only content you'll find nowadays is Get Rich Quick spam, bomb recipes, and pr0n. There's no worthwhile content to protect.

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.

This is nothing special...

[RKloti]

My ISP (Cablecom/Swissonline, a Swiss cable ISP) stopped carrying ALL binary groups a while ago, since they taking up too much bandwidth. AFAIK all the text ones are available including practically all of the national and supranational heirarchies - uk.* de.* fr.* it.* ch.* at.* africa.* , and some specific heirarchies, like gnu.*, as well as some commercial ones too, like microsoft.*, intel.*, corel.* . I'd guess their newsfeed is pretty large - not all of these groups are really that relevent. In fact, most of them are filled with spam, which sadly seems to have been the fate of Usenet.

bullshit

[unformed]

i can see dropping binaries, simply because 90% of it is illegal and it's taking 90% of the bandwidth ...just like the "5% of society own 95% of the wealth"

However, of the actual discussions, newsgroups are still very useful. I've used various alt.comp.lang.*, microsoft.vc.public.language, to help fix problems in my code

i've used rec.skydiving and rec.aviation.hang-gliding to find information on both sports (r.s gets at least a hundred ON-TOPIC posts a day)

and i've used various other discussion groups to get a quick answer to something that i couldn't google.

newsgroups -are- still useful. Sure, 90% of it is crap; there's a lot of spam going through them. Just take about ten minutes of your day, and apply a few kill-filters.

And the discussion groups that I regularly visit get very little to no spam at all.

Fine print: too much trouble

[TomatoMan]

This is one thing that irritates me about slashdot... everybody is posting "oh my god I found this horrible thing on line 126144 of the TOS"...

Whatever, I pay $10/month and get NNTP access to some 90,000 groups and have never had a single problem... period.

So yeah, somebody in their legal department put some shitty things into their terms of service... but if it never actually means anything to me as a user then I can let it slide...

Exactly the attitude their legal department hopes you'll have. "Sign here, and here, and - HEY! DON'T READ THAT! - sign here, and here..." (Berke Breathed)

As long as you never have a problem, then you'll never have a problem. If you do, the first thing you'll have to do is find out what you agreed to, with your fingers crossed. Then don't act surprised at the results.

No great loss

[torgosan]

As a DSL subscriber to SBC this is no great loss. The binary NG coverage was okay but the fact they cap download speeds at ~30K or so is the real insult; I'll continue to use outside news servers and never miss a beat [no pun inteneded].

Re:Uncensored newsgroup access

[Talla]

For professional newsserver providers like these, uncensored generally just means they don't try to filter out spam. Other than that, they will not remove anything, except for Newsguy, which will remove the message, and end your subscription (giving you a refund for the remaining days), if you write a message saying anything bad about them. I doubt these services will like to filter for copyright, as it's generally the only reason people will pay for their services.

Re:Uncensored newsgroup access

[Troed]

I'll jump along with UseNet Server [usenetserver.com] then :) I've used them for years and can only say good things ... _extremely_ fast response times when mailing support ...

I'm a little surprised!

[erroneus]

For years on end the discussion has come up about usenet news and all the piracy and such. For as many years, ISPs who host news services have been looked upon as "common carrier" services and are not required to censor. There have been rulings in the past regarding that responsibility and ISPs have historically won all of these based on their status as a common carrier.

I have also read that if they take ANY measure to censor, then they remove their rights to claim the status as a common carrier. This means if people simply create new news groups in order to slip the material through more easily, any given copyright holder can then hold the ISP responsible for letting it through.

If I was a lawyer, I wouldn't be here... so much for that disclaimer.

So is it possible that now they are not to be considered a common carrier and will be therefore liable for the information that passes through their servers? Or instead because their approach is to simply block "known channels" that they can maintain the common carrier status that has historically protected them? Any legal experts want to field this one?