Is there really anything on newsgroups you can't find somewhere else on the internet? Because I guarantee that as soon as somebody gets something off of there, it's going up somewhere else.
A lot of older, less popular music that wasn't commercially released.
The advantage of newsgroups over torrents is the same as the advantage rapidshare et al. have----the content is there ready to be downloaded--how fast you downloaded is dependent on your connection, not whether or not seeders are on.
The advantage of newsgroups over torrents is the same as the advantage rapidshare et al. have----the content is there ready to be downloaded--how fast you downloaded is dependent on your connection, not whether or not seeders are on.
Yeah, it's just faster and more efficient. It allows one uploader to basically seed for everyone, within however long the retention period is.
I don't know. I just never got into newsgroup stuff because of the ridiculous "split everything into 20 rar files, and then split each of those into 80 smaller files" thing.
Htown on
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RoshinMy backlog can be seen from spaceSwedenRegistered Userregular
Wait, can't you always access the posts at least through google? Or does this somehow block that too?
I didn't know much about newsgroups either, until I stumbled upon two equally "outdated" game genres there: roguelikes and text adventures. Newsgroups are practically the internet base of these topics. Designing them, playing them, etc. So this is frustrating for some of us to see this happen.
The child pornography thing was a thinly-veiled excuse to drop the entire alt.binaries.* tree because it takes up well over half of USENET's bandwidth all by itself.
I mean, hey, whatever. Verizon's customers will just switch to BitTorrent, which'll probably cost Verizon more in the long run. But USENET's getting a bit long in the tooth anyway.
Daedalus on
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RoshinMy backlog can be seen from spaceSwedenRegistered Userregular
edited June 2008
I was introduced to the internet through usenet years and years ago and I do miss it sometimes.
So far we've had people admitting to pirating pornography, music and TV shows.
Talk about emulation though? That's a ban.
What you just said happened a lot on the newsgroups. Gigantic chunks of illegal stuff goes down on the newsgroups and no one gave a shit. I for one, am glad someone is finally doing something about it.
So far we've had people admitting to pirating pornography, music and TV shows.
Talk about emulation though? That's a ban.
What you just said happened a lot on the newsgroups. Gigantic chunks of illegal stuff goes down on the newsgroups and no one gave a shit. I for one, am glad someone is finally doing something about it.
Verizon cutting their complementary newsgroup binary service to curb bandwidth costs is hardly a step towards combatting newsgroup piracy. My post was mostly a comment on how everyone seems to regard pirating music, tv and porn as somehow less heinous than movies, games or software. Particularly porn.
So far we've had people admitting to pirating pornography, music and TV shows.
Talk about emulation though? That's a ban.
What you just said happened a lot on the newsgroups. Gigantic chunks of illegal stuff goes down on the newsgroups and no one gave a shit. I for one, am glad someone is finally doing something about it.
Verizon cutting their complementary newsgroup binary service to curb bandwidth costs is hardly a step towards combatting newsgroup piracy. My post was mostly a comment on how everyone seems to regard pirating music, tv and porn as somehow less heinous than movies, games or software. Particularly porn.
Man, I refuse to pay for porn until that industry learns a little bit about quality control. Even when you're willing to pay, good porn is almost impossible to find. Every video I've seen is filled with several boner-killers sprinkled throughout. Are you forgetting what your videos are for, porn makers? Making boners! Quit killing them!
So far we've had people admitting to pirating pornography, music and TV shows.
Talk about emulation though? That's a ban.
What you just said happened a lot on the newsgroups. Gigantic chunks of illegal stuff goes down on the newsgroups and no one gave a shit. I for one, am glad someone is finally doing something about it.
Verizon cutting their complementary newsgroup binary service to curb bandwidth costs is hardly a step towards combatting newsgroup piracy. My post was mostly a comment on how everyone seems to regard pirating music, tv and porn as somehow less heinous than movies, games or software. Particularly porn.
Who steals porn? Isn't there's enough of it freely viewable on the Internet?
PeregrineFalcon on
Looking for a DX:HR OnLive code for my kid brother.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Newsgroups work fantastically well if you pay for the service, a la Easynews.
So well, in fact, that I chuckle at people using torrents. They may be "new" and "free", but they're most definitely not superior to a pay-for-newsgroup service.
Newsgroups work fantastically well if you pay for the service, a la Easynews.
So well, in fact, that I chuckle at people using torrents. They may be "new" and "free", but they're most definitely not superior to a pay-for-newsgroup service.
Yes, but you'll always get the hurr ur payin for ur piratez crowd who refuses to shell out any more than the absolute minimum necessary.
PeregrineFalcon on
Looking for a DX:HR OnLive code for my kid brother.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I know I'm not any sort of mod, but we prolly should direct the discussion a bit more constructively. Such as the discussion of what will be lost that is legal, such as text adventure development. I know a lot of text adventure stuff is certainly found elsewhere online (and I'm speaking of newly developed, non-licenced/published, so legal stuff), so what made the newsgroups a good place for discussion? Has it moved elsewhere recently given that many don't even know what newsgroups are?
schmads on
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ViscountalphaThe pen is mightier than the swordhttp://youtu.be/G_sBOsh-vyIRegistered Userregular
I know I'm not any sort of mod, but we prolly should direct the discussion a bit more constructively. Such as the discussion of what will be lost that is legal, such as text adventure development. I know a lot of text adventure stuff is certainly found elsewhere online (and I'm speaking of newly developed, non-licenced/published, so legal stuff), so what made the newsgroups a good place for discussion? Has it moved elsewhere recently given that many don't even know what newsgroups are?
You really need to have been on the newsgroups to know what its all about. I found it back in the AOL days looking for free porn. There is also Rec.games.video.arcade.collecting which i sometimes go back to for arcade machine parts. There is still some use but for the most part the ALT.BIN.* doesn't have any real use except piracy and IP theft.
(Please note, yes this is my first post, yes I lurk, I do not troll which is why this is my first post here, I am a PA fan and have been for a number of years.)
Whose ox gets gored. Those four words were what my PolySci Prof opened my first PolySci course with. All politics, and every thing that involves two or more humans is political in nature, comes down to whose ox gets gored.
Reading through this thread I was reminded, yet again, of that singular fact. The responses I've seen here have run the gamut from, I use it and therefor care, to I don't so I don't care, to Huh?, and my personal favorite, well it's used for purposes I personally don't approve of so maybe it's a good thing.
After all who can defend child porn, racism, homophobia, misogyny & misandry, rape, S&M, or terrorism for that matter? All of which come up on usenet with a regularity that is highly disturbing to someone somewhere at sometime, the so called "powers that be". Note, this is not restricted to the left, right, middle, or vertical for that matter, everyone has something they would like to see eliminated.
Now, lets take Verizon's excuse, "Used for Child Porn." <GASP> I agree, we should monitor, limit, censor, or plain old get rid of every method used on the Net to distribute child porn. So, that would cover, Email, the Web, P2P, IRC (which is where most of the child porn freaks fled to when they left Usenet about 10 years ago), and of course Usenet, hell I would be surprised if Telnet isn't also covered. Before someone says that is a ridiculous statement, I'll agree, but then these are ridiculous times. We have people of every political stripe trying to censor, monitor, control, and track, something that they don't like, and of course the Net is the single biggest threat to them there is. (Note to those on the left, the left is just as bad today as the "Christian Right", they just have a different set of Ox'es.)
As a business model this is absolutely brilliant on Verizon's part. Imagine an Internet where you pay an ISP for a link, nothing more just the pipe. Now if you want Email, Web, P2P, VoIP, Usenet, IRC, or good ole Telnet, then you buy them from a provider. Email sold on Cell phone plans with all that lovely spam counting against your plan of course, it's not the ISP's fault after all, the Web for only $19.99 a month, oh wait you want UNCENSORED Web, well that's $199.99 a month the provider has liability, for which they have to be insured of course, to be concerned about, and let's not even discuss P2P costs unless you are willing to have P2P approved by the MPA and the RIAA, two name only two of a large host.
Again, as you read this and think I'm being an extremist go read the DMCA, the Patriot Act, the most recent FCC rulings, and the EFF's home page, and then come back and tell me that it couldn't happen. (Second note, P2P, IRC, WWW, Email, and Usenet are being used for traffic that is illegal, should be illegal and needs to be illegal, and they do need to 'have something done about it", however I am prepared to say that throwing the baby out with the bath water is NOT that something.)
I think there are two relevant quotes that relate to the core of Verzion's action:
First, my love of freedom is only truly tested when I am required to defend something with which I adamantly do not agree.
Second, and I think this should be read to every school child every day until its lesson is pounded irrevocably into our collective consciousness.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
Right. Except...
- Less than 1% of the subscriber base uses it.
- The protocal is verging on obsolecense.
- There will always be 3rd parties allowing access. Google's text-based access has always been much more convienant that a newsgroup reader for me, even through it excludes binaries and images for (presumably for) archival space reasons, and there are others offering the whole package for a small fee.
- No freedom of speech is being stifled.
- There will always be people speaking out on behalf of the internet, whether it needs it or not.
- And finaily, last and least, we've established that when alt.* is used, it's mainly for illegal activities which use up a lot of bandwith. They will move elsewhere, like the rest of the world has. Woo.
I'm an open source freak and a supporter of network nutrality, but I really don't think this the huge issue you're making it out to be. Yes, that 1% could expand and start rolling up bittorrent, darknets, etc, but that's a highly alarmist additude and it's not very supportable aside from "what if"s about the Patriot Act, etc. and a famous quote about Nazis. I'm extremely unconvinced that any move by an ISP against net nutrality would hold up in court.
Also, Goodwin's Law. We're just about this far from comparing Verizon to Hitler. *cough*
Thank you for the nicely written reply. A couple of points though, I wasn't trying to imply anything about Hitler and Verizon, the process is the same however and that is a process I see this as only the latest move in. The fact that the poem was written for the Nazi's not withstanding it applies just about every where these days.) It's erosion that is the enemy here, erosion is why the EFF tries fighting on so many fronts at once, because it is thorugh erosion that "final victory" can be had. (sorry about the reference I couldn't resist.)
As another example take note of Comcast & AT&T's new pricing model, after all only 5% of their base is effected, I assume Verizon will follow suit as soon as the bad PR subsides and assuming they don't lose market share because of it. (Given that the number of broadband providers is limited that is highly unlikely.) I don't see these as separate issues, as they both represent attempts to limit access, or add enough expense that the average user has to give them up. Are either of these in and of themselves important, nope you're right they aren't, but now were back to that pesky poem, its point is that no single thing ever is, at least not until it's far to late to make a difference.
I agree no freedom of speech is effected, nor am I concerned about it, anything like freedom of speech has been dead on the Net for years now, if you don't think so gore an ox and you'll find out pronto. ( I can name you 10 things you can't say, in any venue for any reason, right off the top of my head.) No don't, I'd hate to see you banned. I do not agree that there will always be people to speak out, stifling of decent has been on the rise world wide, and in the US no less then many other places. (I would include in that all of the EU, and Canada as well.)
Verizon stated that, at least for the time being, their users are free to seek 3rd party providers, hence my point about breaking out each service, and then tiering them based on how much content you want, the nature of that content, and the great mythical pygmy only knows what else.
To me the 1% being effected and the fact that we THINK all Usenet is for is illegal content, which sounds exactly like what is said about P2P and IRC, which also have illegal use going on. (In fact, as I mentioned Usenet hasn't been the transport of choice for illegal porn, not just child there are large categories of porn that are illegal, for some time now. IRC is where you want to look as the focal point for that activity. Take note that the all the major FBI & Interpol busts since around 2000 have been from IRC.)
I would say that the 1% for Usenet, 5% for P2P, are just as important as the 99% for Email, because it's only a mater of degree not kind. That Usenet is not popular, and that it is an easy target, make it the perfect example of the point I'm trying to make. In history repression always begins with the smallest minority, the unpopular group, here it is first, Usenet, then P2P, then IRC, none of which have that large a base, then sooner or later they will gore my ox.
I'm making this a separate reply because you mentioned net neutrality, against which this whole discussion truly is a tempest in a teapot, though as a bell weather I still find it disturbing.
I just wanted to say that I dearly hope you are right about the strength of the legal arguments, because the depths of one's pockets seems to have more weight then depth of one's argument, in our current system of jurisprudence, though sadly there is less and less that is prudent about it.
AT&T's new pricing model? Are you talking about charging based on bandwith throughput? While I agree that it would make more sense to base the pricing on what your max bandwith would be, it's not an unreasonable move. Bittorrent uses a lot of network resources and can slow up the line for other users who have just as much right to an equal connection speed to the 'net.
Also, as you said, this new scheme affects something like 5% of users. The average user is not in that five percent.
Freedom of speech isn't dead on the net. Sure, individual communities have rules about what can and cannot be discussed, but in a pinch we could move someplace else to discuss porn, emulation, etc. (Hi mods! :-D). It's simply a matter of having a host who won't yank your stuff as soon and there's murmurs of legal threats, same as in Real Life. Even if you do get pulled down, if what you say is popular or controversial, it'll pop up on sixteen different mirrors. Look at HD-DVD and the Digg rebellion. ;-)
Additionally, I'm not sure that just because something could be discussed that it should be discussed; sort of like how yelling "Fire!" in a movie theater isn't a free speech issue.
Usenet isn't completely illegal traffic. However, a huge proportion of the bandwith used on it is.
IRC is going to be significantly harder for ISPs to kill or limit. A massive amount of open source developers (myself included) use it. I could see them trying to block file transfers over IRC though, I guess.
P2P has already been killed in various forms like three times, and the whole witch hunt looking for users downloading illegal material gets more ridiculous every day. Didn't some researchers set up a networked ink jet to receive a cease and desist letter a few weeks back? It's not going anywhere.
Edit: Also, anyone else care to put in your two cents? I feel like I'm debating something in a Slashdot subthread. ;-)
if Time Warner adopts this policy I will be forced to subscribe to a premium usenet service. I've been a heavy newsgroup user for years. It is FAR faster and more reliable than torrents.
Edit: Well, moderate newsgroup user. I'm not downloading gigs and gigs everyday. More like every couple weeks I jump on and use up some bandwidth. But I definitely could not see myself without it.
I think you're right about how the internet is being changed slowly into something much more, for lack of a better term, content police-able, without most people really realizing what's going on. Shutting down alt.* while keeping their own Verizon specific newsgroups should spell things out for everyone. If bandwidth was a concern, cutting access to *.binaries or attachments altogether would seem like a far more practical solution.
It sucks to be the guy who sounds like a nut, but you can't take a good look at the world political system today (especially in the west) without noticing that there's an awfully large amount of overlap between people in high positions in industry and people in high positions in government. And it's hard to take a good look at industry without realizing that it's become frighteningly consolidated. What were hundreds of companies fifty years ago are tens of companies today. 5 business make everything that you watch on TV including the news, all policed by the FCC... which is staffed by media industry lawyers.
Politicians and Big Business are put at risk by something like the internet, where people can go and talk to not just a few dozen other people, but millions, and get someone they like a presidential nomination over the party favorite. Where someone can make a desired product that entirely bypasses all the middle-men and usual 'fees' of the industry it's normally associated with (music, video, software) but still make money for it's creators. Where people can exchange facts and generally dispense with bullshit spin and find out what's actually going on in the world. Where 'well you just read that on the internet' is now less derogatory than 'well you just heard that on the news.'
Telcos specifically are on the chopping block if there's an open high speed internet in this country. Two way voice is a trivial thing to send over a broadband network. If telcos couldn't block or intentionally degrade competing VOIP services you'd see a pricing war drive the cost of telephone service down so far that we'd just suggest free phone calls within the nation be a public service, like clean tap water. If content producers could sell television shows directly to consumers over broadband, who would bother paying 50$ a month for cable service?
Breaking the internet into a set of controllable data paths that aren't a threat to your profit margins (or at worst, replace the profits lost from obsolete services) is a sensible business solution, when you're in charge of the backbone.
Thanks to all for the replies, I'm sorry if I came off sounding like a nut! (I don't think I am, but then if I was how would I know?)
The real point I was trying to make is that it is a really bad idea to eliminate something for reaons of censorship, mainly because it never works and because 451'ing anything tends to have a ripple effect. Precedent does matter.
Yes Usenet is still there, but Verizon is censoring it, and Verizon is a MAJOR node, the whole damn Net is based on unbiased packet passing, lose that and we're all in trouble. For example note the number, and type, of service interruptions based on various countries attempting to filter packets for content. Of course they always say it was an accident but, well let's just say my confidence level in China's, much less the Middle East, veracity is a bit below par.
I also think it is a bad idea to blow off something that is happening to somebody else just because it doesn't effect me, or almost as bad is to say it's only some small percentage of whatever.
For example, an earlier reply mentioned that IRC was safe because of the high percentage of developers that use it, but I would point out that it's been a very long time since we have been anything other then a small percentage of the any ISP's client base. (I think we lost that the first day I saw a "me to" from some AOL'er, around '93 give or take.)
I would put money on it that the number of developers using IRC is a smaller number of users for Verizon, for example, then P2P users, which are "only 5%" so it really isn't effecting" etc etc etc. Not that I want anything to happen to IRC! It's my Ox as well, but everyone has a tendency to think that their ox represents a larger interest group then it usually in fact does.
Last, but not to me least, is the whole child porn BS Verizon is passing. A member of my family was abused by a day care provider years ago, fortunately that piece of human excrement removed himself from the planet shortly after we got a conviction against his ass, he confessed after 2 years of calling everyone in the world a liar. So my child abuse button has a very low threshold behind it, BUT, I would rather see 100, to paraphrase Jefferson, of his ilk roam the Net then to see the Net itself curtailed as a result of someone using their crimes as an excuse. Too often in my lifetime I have seen people surrender freedom on the alter of security only to find, in the end, that they lost both.
As to breaking service into descrete data paths, I've spent a lot of time thinking about that this weekend and I've come to the conclusion that not only are you right, but it's likely a desirable outcome. As you mentioned the competition level among the top level ISP's is nill, but if they divest themselves of everything except providing a pipe there would be room for a great deal of competition to evolve.
Take a look at the Usenet offerings out there, there are a LOT of providers. IRC would likely see the same, as would P2P, Email is free because someone found a profit model that doesn't require direct payment for it, I would bet the Web itself would go the same way, though the ad's would increase radically.
The only downside is that I can't see the ISP's lowering the price of the pipe, they have no reason to without any real competition and lacking a regulatory response, something I don't think I'd like to see.
But on the upside would be that privacy issues might be a bit better off, as anyone snoopin, for whatever reason, would have to go to the ISP to resolve your IP, then track you into a say P2P provider, while the ISP sat there saying, "hey we're just the pipe, we have no responsibility to satisfy the RIAA, MPA, or any other set of initials. Short of a court order I could see them saying, "you want an IP tracked that deeply then here is what it's going to cost". A thought that brings a real smile to my face.
Oh, P.S. Sorry to go off topic but I think this is part of what we are talking about from the business side.
I keep looking forward to the fight between media providers and the ISP's. Comcast & AT&T want to charge a buck a gig over some preset limit, ok; but I also keep hearing about how "the disk is dead" because everything is going to be pushed over the Net!
Hold up there hoss, if I have to pay a buck a gig over, pic a number, and I keep topping that out because of content downloads, read movies & TV shows, then I'm going to curtail the hell out of that right quick. Let's see, how much would a provider want for 1080P, not 1080I, content, then add to that a buck a gig, um with special features my D/L is around 10gig per, and good ole Comcast is giving me what, 20, 30 maybe even 40gigs for $40. Hmm, 3 or 4 movies a month, OR I can go rent them from Blockbuster for $5.00, or buy them on sale for $15 - $20, at retail for a lot more but who the hell pays retail? :P ( I said 1080P because I just got my BluRay player and it owns over 1080I On Demand!)
Of course Comcast doesn't WANT push content to succeed and neither does Verizon, because of course they aren't going to charge my "On Demand" when bought from THEM, against my Net cap! I think that's going to make MS and Apple just so very happy, I can't wait.
Posts
A lot of older, less popular music that wasn't commercially released.
Yeah, it's just faster and more efficient. It allows one uploader to basically seed for everyone, within however long the retention period is.
Does that include the binary groups?
I didn't know much about newsgroups either, until I stumbled upon two equally "outdated" game genres there: roguelikes and text adventures. Newsgroups are practically the internet base of these topics. Designing them, playing them, etc. So this is frustrating for some of us to see this happen.
Yes. I've frequently used their services for a month or so when I needed some older files. Verizon only had a 7day retention for binary files.
I mean, hey, whatever. Verizon's customers will just switch to BitTorrent, which'll probably cost Verizon more in the long run. But USENET's getting a bit long in the tooth anyway.
Talk about emulation though? That's a ban.
What you just said happened a lot on the newsgroups. Gigantic chunks of illegal stuff goes down on the newsgroups and no one gave a shit. I for one, am glad someone is finally doing something about it.
Verizon cutting their complementary newsgroup binary service to curb bandwidth costs is hardly a step towards combatting newsgroup piracy. My post was mostly a comment on how everyone seems to regard pirating music, tv and porn as somehow less heinous than movies, games or software. Particularly porn.
Man, I refuse to pay for porn until that industry learns a little bit about quality control. Even when you're willing to pay, good porn is almost impossible to find. Every video I've seen is filled with several boner-killers sprinkled throughout. Are you forgetting what your videos are for, porn makers? Making boners! Quit killing them!
Who steals porn? Isn't there's enough of it freely viewable on the Internet?
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
So well, in fact, that I chuckle at people using torrents. They may be "new" and "free", but they're most definitely not superior to a pay-for-newsgroup service.
Yes, but you'll always get the hurr ur payin for ur piratez crowd who refuses to shell out any more than the absolute minimum necessary.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
You really need to have been on the newsgroups to know what its all about. I found it back in the AOL days looking for free porn. There is also Rec.games.video.arcade.collecting which i sometimes go back to for arcade machine parts. There is still some use but for the most part the ALT.BIN.* doesn't have any real use except piracy and IP theft.
Final Fantasy XI -> Carbuncle - Samash
Whose ox gets gored. Those four words were what my PolySci Prof opened my first PolySci course with. All politics, and every thing that involves two or more humans is political in nature, comes down to whose ox gets gored.
Reading through this thread I was reminded, yet again, of that singular fact. The responses I've seen here have run the gamut from, I use it and therefor care, to I don't so I don't care, to Huh?, and my personal favorite, well it's used for purposes I personally don't approve of so maybe it's a good thing.
After all who can defend child porn, racism, homophobia, misogyny & misandry, rape, S&M, or terrorism for that matter? All of which come up on usenet with a regularity that is highly disturbing to someone somewhere at sometime, the so called "powers that be". Note, this is not restricted to the left, right, middle, or vertical for that matter, everyone has something they would like to see eliminated.
Now, lets take Verizon's excuse, "Used for Child Porn." <GASP> I agree, we should monitor, limit, censor, or plain old get rid of every method used on the Net to distribute child porn. So, that would cover, Email, the Web, P2P, IRC (which is where most of the child porn freaks fled to when they left Usenet about 10 years ago), and of course Usenet, hell I would be surprised if Telnet isn't also covered. Before someone says that is a ridiculous statement, I'll agree, but then these are ridiculous times. We have people of every political stripe trying to censor, monitor, control, and track, something that they don't like, and of course the Net is the single biggest threat to them there is. (Note to those on the left, the left is just as bad today as the "Christian Right", they just have a different set of Ox'es.)
As a business model this is absolutely brilliant on Verizon's part. Imagine an Internet where you pay an ISP for a link, nothing more just the pipe. Now if you want Email, Web, P2P, VoIP, Usenet, IRC, or good ole Telnet, then you buy them from a provider. Email sold on Cell phone plans with all that lovely spam counting against your plan of course, it's not the ISP's fault after all, the Web for only $19.99 a month, oh wait you want UNCENSORED Web, well that's $199.99 a month the provider has liability, for which they have to be insured of course, to be concerned about, and let's not even discuss P2P costs unless you are willing to have P2P approved by the MPA and the RIAA, two name only two of a large host.
Again, as you read this and think I'm being an extremist go read the DMCA, the Patriot Act, the most recent FCC rulings, and the EFF's home page, and then come back and tell me that it couldn't happen. (Second note, P2P, IRC, WWW, Email, and Usenet are being used for traffic that is illegal, should be illegal and needs to be illegal, and they do need to 'have something done about it", however I am prepared to say that throwing the baby out with the bath water is NOT that something.)
I think there are two relevant quotes that relate to the core of Verzion's action:
First, my love of freedom is only truly tested when I am required to defend something with which I adamantly do not agree.
Second, and I think this should be read to every school child every day until its lesson is pounded irrevocably into our collective consciousness.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
- Less than 1% of the subscriber base uses it.
- The protocal is verging on obsolecense.
- There will always be 3rd parties allowing access. Google's text-based access has always been much more convienant that a newsgroup reader for me, even through it excludes binaries and images for (presumably for) archival space reasons, and there are others offering the whole package for a small fee.
- No freedom of speech is being stifled.
- There will always be people speaking out on behalf of the internet, whether it needs it or not.
- And finaily, last and least, we've established that when alt.* is used, it's mainly for illegal activities which use up a lot of bandwith. They will move elsewhere, like the rest of the world has. Woo.
I'm an open source freak and a supporter of network nutrality, but I really don't think this the huge issue you're making it out to be. Yes, that 1% could expand and start rolling up bittorrent, darknets, etc, but that's a highly alarmist additude and it's not very supportable aside from "what if"s about the Patriot Act, etc. and a famous quote about Nazis. I'm extremely unconvinced that any move by an ISP against net nutrality would hold up in court.
Also, Goodwin's Law. We're just about this far from comparing Verizon to Hitler. *cough*
As another example take note of Comcast & AT&T's new pricing model, after all only 5% of their base is effected, I assume Verizon will follow suit as soon as the bad PR subsides and assuming they don't lose market share because of it. (Given that the number of broadband providers is limited that is highly unlikely.) I don't see these as separate issues, as they both represent attempts to limit access, or add enough expense that the average user has to give them up. Are either of these in and of themselves important, nope you're right they aren't, but now were back to that pesky poem, its point is that no single thing ever is, at least not until it's far to late to make a difference.
I agree no freedom of speech is effected, nor am I concerned about it, anything like freedom of speech has been dead on the Net for years now, if you don't think so gore an ox and you'll find out pronto. ( I can name you 10 things you can't say, in any venue for any reason, right off the top of my head.) No don't, I'd hate to see you banned. I do not agree that there will always be people to speak out, stifling of decent has been on the rise world wide, and in the US no less then many other places. (I would include in that all of the EU, and Canada as well.)
Verizon stated that, at least for the time being, their users are free to seek 3rd party providers, hence my point about breaking out each service, and then tiering them based on how much content you want, the nature of that content, and the great mythical pygmy only knows what else.
To me the 1% being effected and the fact that we THINK all Usenet is for is illegal content, which sounds exactly like what is said about P2P and IRC, which also have illegal use going on. (In fact, as I mentioned Usenet hasn't been the transport of choice for illegal porn, not just child there are large categories of porn that are illegal, for some time now. IRC is where you want to look as the focal point for that activity. Take note that the all the major FBI & Interpol busts since around 2000 have been from IRC.)
I would say that the 1% for Usenet, 5% for P2P, are just as important as the 99% for Email, because it's only a mater of degree not kind. That Usenet is not popular, and that it is an easy target, make it the perfect example of the point I'm trying to make. In history repression always begins with the smallest minority, the unpopular group, here it is first, Usenet, then P2P, then IRC, none of which have that large a base, then sooner or later they will gore my ox.
I just wanted to say that I dearly hope you are right about the strength of the legal arguments, because the depths of one's pockets seems to have more weight then depth of one's argument, in our current system of jurisprudence, though sadly there is less and less that is prudent about it.
Also, as you said, this new scheme affects something like 5% of users. The average user is not in that five percent.
Freedom of speech isn't dead on the net. Sure, individual communities have rules about what can and cannot be discussed, but in a pinch we could move someplace else to discuss porn, emulation, etc. (Hi mods! :-D). It's simply a matter of having a host who won't yank your stuff as soon and there's murmurs of legal threats, same as in Real Life. Even if you do get pulled down, if what you say is popular or controversial, it'll pop up on sixteen different mirrors. Look at HD-DVD and the Digg rebellion. ;-)
Additionally, I'm not sure that just because something could be discussed that it should be discussed; sort of like how yelling "Fire!" in a movie theater isn't a free speech issue.
Usenet isn't completely illegal traffic. However, a huge proportion of the bandwith used on it is.
IRC is going to be significantly harder for ISPs to kill or limit. A massive amount of open source developers (myself included) use it. I could see them trying to block file transfers over IRC though, I guess.
P2P has already been killed in various forms like three times, and the whole witch hunt looking for users downloading illegal material gets more ridiculous every day. Didn't some researchers set up a networked ink jet to receive a cease and desist letter a few weeks back? It's not going anywhere.
Edit: Also, anyone else care to put in your two cents? I feel like I'm debating something in a Slashdot subthread. ;-)
Edit: Well, moderate newsgroup user. I'm not downloading gigs and gigs everyday. More like every couple weeks I jump on and use up some bandwidth. But I definitely could not see myself without it.
I think you're right about how the internet is being changed slowly into something much more, for lack of a better term, content police-able, without most people really realizing what's going on. Shutting down alt.* while keeping their own Verizon specific newsgroups should spell things out for everyone. If bandwidth was a concern, cutting access to *.binaries or attachments altogether would seem like a far more practical solution.
It sucks to be the guy who sounds like a nut, but you can't take a good look at the world political system today (especially in the west) without noticing that there's an awfully large amount of overlap between people in high positions in industry and people in high positions in government. And it's hard to take a good look at industry without realizing that it's become frighteningly consolidated. What were hundreds of companies fifty years ago are tens of companies today. 5 business make everything that you watch on TV including the news, all policed by the FCC... which is staffed by media industry lawyers.
Politicians and Big Business are put at risk by something like the internet, where people can go and talk to not just a few dozen other people, but millions, and get someone they like a presidential nomination over the party favorite. Where someone can make a desired product that entirely bypasses all the middle-men and usual 'fees' of the industry it's normally associated with (music, video, software) but still make money for it's creators. Where people can exchange facts and generally dispense with bullshit spin and find out what's actually going on in the world. Where 'well you just read that on the internet' is now less derogatory than 'well you just heard that on the news.'
Telcos specifically are on the chopping block if there's an open high speed internet in this country. Two way voice is a trivial thing to send over a broadband network. If telcos couldn't block or intentionally degrade competing VOIP services you'd see a pricing war drive the cost of telephone service down so far that we'd just suggest free phone calls within the nation be a public service, like clean tap water. If content producers could sell television shows directly to consumers over broadband, who would bother paying 50$ a month for cable service?
Breaking the internet into a set of controllable data paths that aren't a threat to your profit margins (or at worst, replace the profits lost from obsolete services) is a sensible business solution, when you're in charge of the backbone.
The real point I was trying to make is that it is a really bad idea to eliminate something for reaons of censorship, mainly because it never works and because 451'ing anything tends to have a ripple effect. Precedent does matter.
Yes Usenet is still there, but Verizon is censoring it, and Verizon is a MAJOR node, the whole damn Net is based on unbiased packet passing, lose that and we're all in trouble. For example note the number, and type, of service interruptions based on various countries attempting to filter packets for content. Of course they always say it was an accident but, well let's just say my confidence level in China's, much less the Middle East, veracity is a bit below par.
I also think it is a bad idea to blow off something that is happening to somebody else just because it doesn't effect me, or almost as bad is to say it's only some small percentage of whatever.
For example, an earlier reply mentioned that IRC was safe because of the high percentage of developers that use it, but I would point out that it's been a very long time since we have been anything other then a small percentage of the any ISP's client base. (I think we lost that the first day I saw a "me to" from some AOL'er, around '93 give or take.)
I would put money on it that the number of developers using IRC is a smaller number of users for Verizon, for example, then P2P users, which are "only 5%" so it really isn't effecting" etc etc etc. Not that I want anything to happen to IRC! It's my Ox as well, but everyone has a tendency to think that their ox represents a larger interest group then it usually in fact does.
Last, but not to me least, is the whole child porn BS Verizon is passing. A member of my family was abused by a day care provider years ago, fortunately that piece of human excrement removed himself from the planet shortly after we got a conviction against his ass, he confessed after 2 years of calling everyone in the world a liar. So my child abuse button has a very low threshold behind it, BUT, I would rather see 100, to paraphrase Jefferson, of his ilk roam the Net then to see the Net itself curtailed as a result of someone using their crimes as an excuse. Too often in my lifetime I have seen people surrender freedom on the alter of security only to find, in the end, that they lost both.
As to breaking service into descrete data paths, I've spent a lot of time thinking about that this weekend and I've come to the conclusion that not only are you right, but it's likely a desirable outcome. As you mentioned the competition level among the top level ISP's is nill, but if they divest themselves of everything except providing a pipe there would be room for a great deal of competition to evolve.
Take a look at the Usenet offerings out there, there are a LOT of providers. IRC would likely see the same, as would P2P, Email is free because someone found a profit model that doesn't require direct payment for it, I would bet the Web itself would go the same way, though the ad's would increase radically.
The only downside is that I can't see the ISP's lowering the price of the pipe, they have no reason to without any real competition and lacking a regulatory response, something I don't think I'd like to see.
But on the upside would be that privacy issues might be a bit better off, as anyone snoopin, for whatever reason, would have to go to the ISP to resolve your IP, then track you into a say P2P provider, while the ISP sat there saying, "hey we're just the pipe, we have no responsibility to satisfy the RIAA, MPA, or any other set of initials. Short of a court order I could see them saying, "you want an IP tracked that deeply then here is what it's going to cost". A thought that brings a real smile to my face.
Oh, P.S. Sorry to go off topic but I think this is part of what we are talking about from the business side.
I keep looking forward to the fight between media providers and the ISP's. Comcast & AT&T want to charge a buck a gig over some preset limit, ok; but I also keep hearing about how "the disk is dead" because everything is going to be pushed over the Net!
Hold up there hoss, if I have to pay a buck a gig over, pic a number, and I keep topping that out because of content downloads, read movies & TV shows, then I'm going to curtail the hell out of that right quick. Let's see, how much would a provider want for 1080P, not 1080I, content, then add to that a buck a gig, um with special features my D/L is around 10gig per, and good ole Comcast is giving me what, 20, 30 maybe even 40gigs for $40. Hmm, 3 or 4 movies a month, OR I can go rent them from Blockbuster for $5.00, or buy them on sale for $15 - $20, at retail for a lot more but who the hell pays retail? :P ( I said 1080P because I just got my BluRay player and it owns over 1080I On Demand!)
Of course Comcast doesn't WANT push content to succeed and neither does Verizon, because of course they aren't going to charge my "On Demand" when bought from THEM, against my Net cap! I think that's going to make MS and Apple just so very happy, I can't wait.
Fuck...