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Usenet, a niche market?

Back in the old days, Usenet was a huge part of using the Internet. Usenet is VERY pre-world wide web, you know, it started out way back in 1980 as a varied collection of “discussion groups” that propagated throughout the Internet by copying itself, or syncing, throughout the various public, college, and government servers. (You can read about the history of Usenet, here.)

Each topic for discussion is called a newsgroup, and you use a utility called a newsreader to read the articles.

If you can think of something to talk about, there is probably an existing group already talking about it on usenet.

This is not all good though. Illegal software, music, and porn are oft times traded on the usenet network. It is basically an un-moderated network, although each server admin has the ability to lock out both groups and or posters.

It was predicted with the wide public availability of the Web and it’s various types of web based forums that Usenet would be coming to an end, “real soon now.”

Sort of. A lot of casual users did in fact migrate to the web.  Hardcore newsguys still struggle through the huge amounts of available data.

Time Warner, Sprint, and Verizon have all announced that they will no longer be offering Usenet access. I think that this decision stems from the fact that New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, has targeted over 80 newsgroups that contain child porn and is trying to get ISPs to filter. Rather than filter out those groups, in my opinion the above ISP’s have probably decided that it’s not worth the effort to maintain a service that they are offering free to less than 2 percent of the user base. Legal and resource issues both are probably contributing to this decision.

In fact, according to an article in Network Performance Daily:

Even so, removing the entirety of USENET seemed like overkill if the issue was a handful of groups, and there are certainly free speech implications. So we talked to Jeff Simmermon, Time Warner Cable’s director of digital communication. Simmermon said that the decision to eliminate newsgroups from their service offerings came down to three factors: “a. Very few customers use them; b. the technology is outdated; c. the risk is not worth the reward.”

I agree with the very few customers statement. Usenet is a niche market. Most Internet users don’t even know what usenet is, let alone how to use it, or even that it is there to use.

I don’t really think the technology is outdated. Internet message boards have been saying that “We are the end of usenet” for a while. I don’t agree. Apples to oranges.

According to the above article, as long as an ISP does not edit the service it is NOT responsible for what is on that service. Usenet is a common carrier.

However, what a lot of blogs have been saying is that these ISP’s are going to be blocking usenet access. This is NOT true, at all. They will no longer be offering the service to their users.

Just another reason to get a usenet account thru GigaNews. Sign up, get me a referral credit. It’s fast, uncensored, and easy to set up with any newsreader that you want to use. Be aware, however, that Usenet does have a steep learning curve.

Stay tuned for more articles talking about the wonder that is usenet.