> but now I need to pay someone to get in There are free text-only gateways ( eternal-september.org being one that I used to use ). You generally only have t

> but now I need to pay someone to get in There are free text-only gateways ( eternal-september.org being one that I used to use ). You generally only have to pay if you want to access the binary groups, due to the TB of data invovled. You can still, in theory, set up your own server to peer with other Usenet servers but it's very rare nowadays. Centralisation isn't unique to the Web.