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."
bummer (Score:2, Interesting)
Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:5, Informative)
However, a good alternative for newsgroup access I have used for a while is:
uncensored-news [uncensored-news.com]
The upgrade regularly and I have never had problems accessing them or finding a group. And now they have a special server just for multimedia and binaries...
Just a thought for any of you who want a solution other than an uphill battle with your ISP...
Josh
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting licensing terms [uncensored-news.com] over at uncensored-news [uncensored-news.com]:
Having dragged the link from the parent post [slashdot.org] onto my desktop, I somehow managed to accept terms to a service about which I had not even read. We do live in strange times, don't we? :\
Seriously though, no refunds, hostile chargeback policy, etc. It's being run as an 'adult service' but if it nets me a better feed of the rec.games.roguelike groups, maybe I'll...
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:2)
yeah, I was thinking the same thing. pulling a gig a day at $35/mo seems ok - but their TOS seems to prohibit running suck-like programs.
and the worst part is that they will append a tag-line advert. to all posts. hey, if I'm paying for service, I don't want to have any edits done to my posts. and that includes appending.
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.
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:2, Informative)
If you just want to read text groups, I imagine (though haven't personally checked) that groups.google.com has a fairly complete feed. The downside is that you can't use a traditional NNTP client. However, their web-based threaded reader isn't all that bad.
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:2)
Not because it isn't worth supporting easynews, but I just don't want tons more people signing up to the best usenet provider I've ever had and slowing them down
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:2)
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:2)
What if I start typing the URL and my browser completes it for me?
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:2)
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...
Josh
Fine print: too much trouble (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:2, Informative)
This also sets a bad precedent. If one ISP filters newsgroups in an attempt to stop possible Copyright violations, how long will it be before others follow suit? How long will it take before the RIAA starts threatening ISP's with lawsuits because they allow their users access to forums known to violate Copyright protections?
The sad part is the RIAA will do this all in the name of the DMCA! Which means the ISP's will have no choice but to comply or face an ugly lawsuit...
If this keeps up, the DMCA will make it illegal to even access the internet!!
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:3, Interesting)
filtering? censoring? huh? (Score:2)
A spool subscribes/peers/whatevers to carry the groups it wants. They tend to do this by customer interest. It is very rare to find a place that carries *all* of the newsgroups--and it is likely that noen exist at all. As a matter of fact, I'll bet against finding one that carries both the psu.* and iastate.* heirarchies . . .
Each newsgroup carried requires resources, both in disk storage and bandwidth. Cutting high-bandwidth groups saves on both.
Finally, the realistic groups which get cut off? It's the naked.bimbo.* heriarchy--which after a recent audit, a big player found consumed more than 90% of the resources for usenet . . .
hawk, who still thinks allowing mime on usenet was a bad idea
Re:Uncensored newsgroup access (Score:2)
ARCHIVES.
Maybe alt.binaries.anime.vomitsex.with.anal.cows.moo.mo
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: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:Regarding newsgroups and ISP's (Score:2)
But yeah, the workaround is just to pick up a shell account somewhere and use that... or perhaps mailandnews.com would be helpful.... but there are ways.
--
The Net inteprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
-- John Gilmore
Conduit/Content (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Conduit/Content (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately these kinds of cases never get to court in any way that would force a change of this type of crap because of the purposefully vague and specious language describing what exactly you're paying for in that same damned ToS.
Basically it still boils down to whether your lawyer(money) can beat up their lawyer(money), though the size of the ToS "backdoors" & loopholes can help
Re:Conduit/Content (Score:1, Informative)
DMCA, Napster et al.
Things have changed, brother. Common carrier status don't mean jack anymore. If you can restrict the flow of copyrighted materials, you are legally bound to now.
Re:Conduit/Content (Score:5, Informative)
Thank goodness RoadRunner still offers most, if not "all", of the alt.binaries.* tree...
DennyK
Re:Conduit/Content (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Conduit/Content (Score:2)
interesting question.
far as I know, it still hasn't been litigated. Certainly there are no appeals court decisions on the matter.
when dealing with new legal issues, of which there are plenty in the electronics world (hell - there've been software patents since the late '70s, and there still isn't a single infringement case), lawyers tend to be cautious and advise their clients that things which might be illegal in fact are.
the DMCA's common-carrier clause is rather complex, and has yet to be tested. something to watch out for.
Re:NO! Don't talk about GARY CONDUIT (Score:1, Funny)
~~~
Ok... (Score:2)
Re:Ok... (Score:1)
Re:Ok... (Score:2)
Several years ago I was a fan of Usenet (for conversations and getting information, not download binaries), but it's been ruined by the spammers. I havn't used it in quite some time now.
The 'net has moved on (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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
Re:The 'net has moved on (Score:1)
Re:The 'net has moved on (Score:2)
Hum. You can read slashdot via pseudo-NNTP interface.
What is pseudo?
Can you point to a page that documents this?
-Rob
Re:The 'net has moved on (Score:2)
http://www.gnus.org/manual/gnus_173.html#SEC172 [gnus.org]
Re:The 'net has moved on (Score:2)
The disadvantage at least in the case of
Then again most of the comments you read on
Re:The 'net has moved on (Score:1)
Why would any group of people "not deserve a voice"? Perhaps you didn't mean it literally, but no matter how inane the average content from any group of people may seem, they still should be entitled to say what they have to say.
Re:The 'net has moved on (Score:1)
probably present seemingly very good reasons why *this is so wrong*, but what would probably bother them most is the lack of porn. What makes me sick very easily is how porn is often defended by claiming that we deserve free speech, free expression.. for these people I suggest how their future wives will feel for their addictive habit, think the correlation between pornography and faithfullness, and I wonder if they'll recommend porn for their future children (which they'll probably have at some stage).
It's only too bad that most of the porn is now on the Web instead of Usenet, and Usenet isn't filled with rubbish only. I subscribe to seven Usenet groups; two of them deal with Xemacs or Gnus, three with Perl, one with Adom RPG
Re:The 'net has moved on (Score:1)
Re:The 'net has moved on (Score:1)
No, I think Usenet is more of a "it is there if you want it" kind of thing versus "here's a dozen pop up/under ads for your viewing frustration, while you are looking for ".
It is GET (usenet) vs PUSH (we all know how well that went).
Moose.
My 2cents 2day = 4 now
Use the web (Score:1)
bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
comcast@home already censors (Score:2)
Re:comcast@home already censors (Score:1)
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.
Re:They're not blocking content... (Score:1)
It's been a long way down for Pacbel to think they can do better by farming out their usenet services to an outfit like Prodigy.
What about roadrunner? (Score:2)
Yep (Score:2)
So if you don't mind getting a hardware router to disguise your firewall dishonestly, by all means go with cable.
-Kasreyn
Who's shocked? (Score:1)
Third party news hosts may be in order for those who are going to miss the a.b.*.
so does google (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah so I'm nitpicking.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Heathen.
Its just a waste of badwidth (Score:1)
If the data is illegal, then the organisation has no reason to supply it. Get it from a less reputable source. If the data is legal, then it will be available virtually everywhere else as well, so you haven't lost anything.
And these groups take up a LOT of bandwidth. If everyone who wants the data were to download it, the net usage would probably be sufficiently lower, especially if they use a decent cache on their network.
Err... (Score:2)
Minority of interested parties != available everywhere.
Non sequitir. Human error detected.
-Kasreyn
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.
Re:could backfire on them (Score:1)
And to respond to the people crying censorship, they're not filtering anything. They're just not drawing some newsgroups through their newsfeed. If they stopped the news port at their border, then you might have a complaint.
Besides, if you want to download shady stuff, you really ought to be using an independent news service anyways.
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.
alt.binaries... (Score:1)
Re:alt.binaries... (Score:1)
It's easy enough to avoid large posts if you want to.
And apparently SWB wants to do just that.
This is not such a big deal (Score:1)
I really, really hate that ISP's block certain newsgroups that some people might find objectionable. Censorship is a very bad thing. But I have no problem with them refusing to carry the alt.binary.* hierarchy, we can't demand that they retreive these high-volume newsgroups as that would make the total cost for the service much higher than carrying only conversation-based newsgroups.
Bandwidth Capped on Newsgroup Access (Score:3, Informative)
This is an ugly trend...and (hopefully) may help pave the way for alternate ISPs and grassroots movements such as Guerilla Nets and FreeNets.
Re:Bandwidth Capped on Newsgroup Access (Score:2)
As others have mentioned, this may backfire by forcing most of the usenet traffic they carry onto their backbone links. I believe SBC is hedging their bets that most of the alt.binaries.* usenet readers are in the sub-18 demographic, and therefore unable to purchase a 3rd party usenet account. I believe this is a bad assumption. Anyway, I'm just guessing/talking out the auxiliary mouth positioned on the side of my neck at this point, but it does sound like some crap a PHB (and don't forget SBC provided the prototype for the PHB) might come up with.
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.
Its all the DCMA... (Score:2, Funny)
Exec #2: Well... what if we just dont let them read the groups at all?
Exec #1: Sure... why not... if we stop next to all access then we'll be safe..
Exec #2: Its not like anyone actually reads or posts there anymore...
Exec #1: Exactly.... So whats next on the ajenda?
Exec #2: Hookers?
Exec #1: Lets go..
Is it just me or is this similar to implimenting manditory removal of the human voicebox so that we cant potentially SAY anything bad... *sigh* DCMA...
Re:Its all the DCMA... (Score:1)
If filtering, responsible? (Score:1)
On the other hand, as
Quite obviously, IANAL... but I'd like to hear from a lawyer or someone who has some real knowledge about this. By squelching ANY newsgroup, are they responsible for what gets posted?
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:It's a good thing (Score:1)
One service provider sets up a peering relationship with another service provider for usenet traffic. Among the large ISP's & universities there is still a large amount of traffic being relayed back and forth.
When one provider cuts it's feed - it cuts it's feed for that arm of the branching tree
Just to prove this
download 1 message that correctly made it to your server.
Turn off header suppression
As far as $10US for a commercial usenet provider
The ones I've looked at have a $10 per month service plan
Keeping up with even a small subset of groups will blow this away without any problem. try alt.binaries.anime and alt.binaries.multimedia.anime
$10 just doesn't cover it
Satsuke
Re:It's a good thing (Score:2)
The only thing that will be missing is Pacbell customers who cannot upload warez and porn through their ISP's newsserver (that is, until they find out that by crossposting to alt.test, they can even post to uncarried newsgroups
Regarding $10 services, I am quite satisfied with Newsguy. They have a cap of 500 MBytes a day, so for you VCDoholics that's quite a limitation; for me, it's more text-based groups than I could ever possibly read.
-Martin
This is nothing special... (Score:3, Interesting)
This has been a long time coming (Score:4, Informative)
And it wasn't because of alt.bin* style groups. Just plain discussion groups were affected to.
Here is a short timeline of SBC / PACBELL usenet service.
Once upon a time SBC operated several usable usenet servers.
Each one had acceptable retention times and a good varity of groups to see.
news.swbell.net
news.pacbell.net
news.flash.net
There was also a server in prodigy-land that had a horrible retention rate and skipped articles left and right
Than SBC instituted rate capping at 128K down
SBC than noticed that customers were leap frogging from server to server. In order to pull together each and every single piece of a multipart binary this was required sometimes.
Up until this point the service was still relativly stable
Than there was some large crash
After his point there was barely a single multipart article that came across properly.
So they're service became unusable and at that point I left as soon as my contract expired.
Now I'm using RR in Kansas City
This cut of content is just par for the course for SBC. Although I don't think it will affect many people though
oh
funny thing
Satsuke
The email announcement (Score:5, Informative)
To: deleted@swbell.net
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 11:20 AM
Subject: Attention Usenet Newsgroup Users - Important Information
Dear Southwestern Bell Internet Services Usenet Newsgroup Member,
If you are currently using Southwestern Bell Internet Services Usenet
Newsgroups, we have very important information for you. As you may know,
Southwestern Bell Internet Services has teamed with Prodigy®, a leading
national Internet service provider, as the Southwestern Bell Internet
Services preferred source of Usenet Newsgroups and other Internet related
services.
On July 25, 2001, your newsgroup server, which is currently hosted by
Southwestern Bell Internet Services, will begin a transition to Prodigy. To
continue using Usenet Newsgroups after the final transition date of August
25, you must update your newsgroup software with new server information.
For instructions on how to change your Usenet software, please visit
http://global.swbell.net/usenet_update.html. After August 19, your current
settings will no longer be available.
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.swbell.net/usenet_update.html.
For Southwestern Bell Internet Services customer support regarding Usenet,
please call:
* 1-800-NET-HELP for Dial-up Access Customers
* 1-877-SBC-DSL5 for DSL Internet Customers
Thank you for using our service and for your attention to this matter. See
you on your new Usenet Newsgroup service!
Sincerely,
The Southwestern Bell Internet Services Team
Copyright 2001 Southwestern Bell Internet Services, Inc All rights
reserved. Southwestern Bell and Southwestern Bell Internet Services, Inc.
are registered trademarks of SBC Communications Inc. or its subsidiaries.
Prodigy is a registered trademark of Prodigy Communications L.P. Other names
may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Re:The email announcement (Score:2)
Don't you love their customer service?
pacbell has no customer service (Score:2)
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:Good (Score:2)
USENET is not a file-transferring medium; it's meant for discussion in plain/text and nothing else.
Who are you to decide that? Usenet is whatever an individual Usenet user decides to do with it.
Re:Good (Score:2)
Re:Good (Score:2)
However, this is only more good news for those of us that used USENET before 1995; I know I'm not alone in that following discussions is much easier via the USENET interface than the typical web-board interface. A good case in point is that I can go through my daily USENET feed without touching the mouse and excessive tab'ing; while even Slashdot requires you manuever around to follow discussions.
I don't see USENET ever disappearing, neither by outright blockage at the ISP level or by intervention of other groups to block it from copyright concerns. I do see the end of free-ranging alt.* (or any other big 7 heirarchy) groups without charter or fully-reconginzed acceptance of existence. (Yes, at one point, you were supposed to follow procedure to get new groups, but lax ISP NNTP admins allows addgroups to go through without check). But again, this would only remove much of the crap from USENET and revert it to a form that has increased S/N ratios and improved performace for those that prefer that medium over others.
But if anything, if your typical USENET dies, there's always USENET 2 (http://www.usenet2.org/), which explicity disallows binaries groups, and other mistakes that have been introduced into the original USENET structure. It's only that the number of USENET2 servers is quite small compared to USENET at this time.
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.
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.
Re:Specialization vs Censorship (Score:2)
Personally, I think it's wrong that the DMCA makes the ISP's liable for the violations that get transferred through their systems, but I can hardly see how the vast majority of the alt.binaries.* heirarchy is defensable in any legal or moral sense (and by that I don't meant to judge the CONTENT of any photographs, but rather the fact that the distribution rights belong to someone else).
Re:Specialization vs Censorship (Score:2)
So....if I publish something digitally, that means any l33t script kiddie should be allowed to copy it to everyone who has an internet feed then?
While I think the current industry claims to need absolute control of every fleeting byte of their "content" are bullshit, there is some merit to the idea that if nobody gets compensated for creating content, a significant portion of the best quality content is going to dry up. If you're a programmer, even if you work on Open Source, I don't suppose you're working without a paycheck...you do something to make ends meet. Some people are lucky enough to work for corporations who want to and can donate your time to The Cause, others simply hack in their free time. Some people feel that the recognition of the community is enough, I suppose. But none of these people work for absolutely nothing.
The alt.binaries.* groups are for the most part all about taking other people's work in one form or another, and spreading it far and wide without compensating the author(s) with minimal accountability for doing so.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to decide not to carry them, and the real shame is that I'd bet the main reason for the decision is not that the copyright violations are occurring, but that suddenly the ISP's might be held accountable for them. In case you missed it, I am against the part of the law that says the latter.
Simple solution (Score:2)
alt.fan.oksana-bayul.small-tits is a good example.
This is also why people who do bin-cancels are total fuckheads.
No great loss (Score:2, Interesting)
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...
A step up from SBC's previous broken news server (Score:2)
(PacBell's miserable service has become a front-page issue in the local papers. The SBC merger has been a disaster.)
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)
ISPs, Usenet and Copyright (Score:3, Informative)
The only case I know of that hits the issue head on is ALS Scans v. RemarQ, from the Fourth Circuit. http://www.loundy.com/CASES/ALS_v_RemarQ.html
It's a good read. Flip through it and watch Judge Niemeyer try unsuccessfully to understand Usenet...
Just cancelled my PACBELL account (Score:3, Informative)
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?
no surprises (Score:2)
Hrmmm, but what is the criteria. (Score:2)
I'm seeing groups missing like the entire alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica.* heirarchy, which isn't suprising since those groups have huge amounts of traffic, but other groups that also have huge amounts of traffic still remain.
For instance, right now I'm seeing these groups still available:
alt.binaries.games
alt.binaries.vcd
alt.binaries.divx
All of which are 99% pirated material and all of which are extremely high volume groups.
I wonder if maybe someone at SBC has an interest in free movies and games. Who sets the standard?
I'm a little surprised! (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
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:Not censorship... (Score:2)
Gee, Forbes says it made 220 million dimes for them last quarter, and some guy on Slashdot who's afraid to attach his name to it says it didn't make a single one. Whom am I going to believe?
Re:Not censorship... (Score:2)
The other 90% of newsgroups use amount the same amount of space total as do 10% of the binaries groups.
That is much cheaper than I thought. Assuming $3000/month, a large ISP would not even blink an eye.
That's $36,000 a year to support 1% of their customers, and that's just the bandwidth costs.
The costs for the disk space, and the increased service costs of supporting twice as much data, and then the fact that in the current legal climate, they can be sued for the contents of the messages even if they didn't originate on their systems, amount to a hell of lot more.
Can you blame somebody for not risking millions of dollars in liabilities to support something that, again, is used by a tiny handful of customers?
Hell, maybe they should just take the 100,000 customers who use Usenet, and divide the costs among them. Another $100 a month should cover an insurance policy large enough to cover it.
Re:Not censorship... (Score:2)
Businesses don't think "oh, we have liability insurance, we can do whatever we want".
Liability insurance is in case you get sued for something you didn't think to mitigate. You still attempt to avoid the liability, for some of the same reasons you avoid traffic accidents even if you have insurance for that; your rates can go up, you can lose your coverage, etc.
A business that is constantly in court has costs that aren't going to be covered by the insurance.
And, liability insurance doesn't protect you against jailtime. Plus, will it cover you if the insurance company feels you should have know what you were doing was illegal?
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...