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Time Warner Cable to Block All Usenet Access Nationwide
- tptacek 18y agoSeriously: as someone who has spent time competing on the Freenix list and hacking on INN --- good. fucking. riddance. People are still using Usenet? What year is it?
- smanek 18y agoI have found that, for example, comp.lang.lisp is active, vibrant, and helpful. Although, a lot of discussion seems to be taking place on IRC (freenode in particular) these days as well.
- wmf 18y agoUsenet has been in decline for years; I've heard that only 1% or less of Internet users access Usenet these days, and most of them are probably the "bandwidth hogs" that ISPs hate anyway. Time Warner used to have news server farms in each city then they outsourced their Usenet to one of the big providers. This just gives ISPs an excuse to stop wasting money on Usenet altogether.
- xirium 18y ago> most of them are probably the "bandwidth hogs" that ISPs hate No, these are the bandwidth hogs that ISPs love. When they're downloading with NNTP from an ISP's server, they're not incurring a single byte of bandwidth beyond the ISP's perimeter.
- wmf 18y agoIt depends whether the ISP's bottleneck is the last mile or the border. Also, Time Warner outsourced their Usenet service a few years ago so all the traffic goes over the Internet to Virginia.
- superchink 18y agoThis title is inaccurate. Time Warner does not say they're going to block access to usenet, but only that they plan to stop offering it as a part of their service; this is not the same thing, as you could presumably still use a third-party usenet provider, such as Giganews. "We're going to stop offering our subscribers newsgroups," said Alex Dudley, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "Some of the early press on this indicated we were going to block certain Web sites. We're not going to do that."
- rbanffy 18y agoSince bank-robbing is such a big problem, I suggest closing all banks. I also suggest preventing planes from flying with passengers inside, as they can possibly get killed if the plane crashes. The odds, in fact, of getting killed in a plane accident are probably bigger than the odds of the NYAG finding child porn in a random newsgroup posting.
- henryw 18y agocable providers don't have long retention dates anyways. use giganews with newzleech to download stuff.
- Oompa 18y agoActually, TWC has a rather good usenet service. Unlimited download, with no speed cap other than the speed you pay for, and about 100 days retention on binaries. Not bad service at all for costing a grand total of $0 a month.
- shawndrost 18y agoI DON'T LIKE that allcaps can have an EFFECT ON ME even though I constantly REMIND MYSELF that they're just visual spam.
- iloveyouocean 18y agoThis will not stop anyone from up/downloading child pornography. All but the stupidest child pornographers are using anonymous third-party Usenet providers. This is nothing more than a feel good headline for Time Warner. 'See guys, we did our part to save the children.'
- xirium 18y agoThis issue is being discussed on the Network Neutrality Squad Mailing List ( http://www.nnsquad.org/archives/nnsquad/msg01002.html http://www.nnsquad.org/archives/nnsquad/msg01002.html).