Usenet is a way for the ordinary person to be able to talk unfettered to other ordinary people - without a need for a central authority, without the approval an

Usenet is a way for the ordinary person to be able to talk unfettered to other ordinary people - without a need for a central authority, without the approval and shilling of advertisers etc. So, after decades of the taxpayer funding R&D to create the Internet, when the Internet was handed over to corporations in the early 1990s, the question is not if such a resource was going to go away, but when. News stories like this marked Usenet going away - http://www.cnet.com/news/riaa-tries-to-pull-plug-on-usenet-seriously http://www.cnet.com/news/riaa-tries-to-pull-plug-on-usenet-s... It's a confluence of forces. The old Bell monopolies get a stranglehold on the last mile, and then wireless transmissions as well. They become so bold as to lobby to end net neutrality so they can pump more money from content providers with their monopoly. A vast infrastructure is being built to monitor what people say on the network (like the NSA's Utah Data Center) which makes the Stasi look like Inspector Clouseau, in a country quite different than the one whose Secretary of State said in the 1920's "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail". The RIAA/MPAA oligopolies are not busy yet trying to extend their 95 year copyright lease which is kicking in again in 2019, so they can try to shut Usenet down as well. After all, it's one of the rare mediums of distribution of content they don't control. I'm surprised the powers that be haven't cracked down on Internet Relay Chat yet, it's one of the last remnants of the old, distributed, decentralized, noncommerical Internet.