What's so bad about Highwinds?

[zot]

Can anyone claim that it benefited customers when Highwinds bought up many of the formerly-independent newsgroup providers such as Easynews, Newshosting, UsenetServer, Eweka? It indeed seems to have benefited copyright owners, who can get a movie or show taken down across many different NSPs with a single filing.

I think that one reason Highwinds is disliked is the same reason that big corporations like Microsoft, Yahoo, and Symantec are resented by a lot of people.

They're big and monopoly-seeking, they buy out their competition, and then often run those companies into the ground. Being big also means bureaucratic.

Case in point: Easynews. This service once had an extremely loyal following, with quite a few people who had been customers for many years. A couple of years after Highwinds bought Easynews, the service went through a period of serious problems that rendered easynews virtually unusable for 6 months or more. Most of the original employees had left, and soon most of the customers would leave too, fed up with being strung along with empty promises month after month. Their discussion board, which had been up for a dozen years, was closed down (to public view) after it became a giant bitch-fest.

Newshosting has also apparently lost customers, as its ranking on top1000.org is today far below its level of 5 years ago, before Highwinds bought it, when it ranked near the top. A few months ago Newshosting announced that they would discontinue (or was it raise the price of?) their $15/mo unlimited plan, only to soon reverse that decision after a groundswell of complaints.

Highwinds was gobbling up usenet companies left and right during 2005 - 2006 (and even had the highest retention of any provider for a short time in late-2006) but they've since switched gears and they're now concentrating on branching out into the content delivery network (CDN) business.

see http://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea...-98015544.html

It's interesting that while Astraweb (which started out as a web-hosting company) has dropped it's other businesses that are not strictly NNTP-related, in order to concentrate on running its usenet service, Highwinds (which started out writing NNTP server software) has lately gone in the exact opposite direction - away from the usenet business. The fact that a big company like Highwinds, with its immense resources, has chosen to drop out of the "retention war" also says something about Highwinds goals.

Just my opinion, but I think that Highwinds sees "the writing on the wall" and is following the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" philosophy. They undoubtedly know that due to copyright issues usenet is on a path destined to be a victim of its own success, and that's why they're hedging their bets by buying up more "mainstream" (i.e., Hollywood-approved) companies.

Highwinds once-dominant position in the usenet provider business appears to have been eroding in recent years. Companies such as Newshosting, UsenetServer, and Easynews seem to have a smaller footprint in the overall industry than they did when Highwinds bought them years ago, while companies such as Astraweb and Readnews have a larger footprint. Independent usenet resellers that flocked to Highwinds in 2005-2006 are reversing course these days. Blocknews/UsenetNow dumped Highwinds a year ago, as did Ngroups/Usenet-News a few months ago. If other resellers such as Newsdemon/Thundernews follow suit, this could spell the beginning of the end for Highwinds as a dominant usenet provider.

[Hypatia]

zot
its a very nice article=)

that due to copyright issues usenet is on a path destined to be a victim of its own success,

There are simple ways to avoid DMCA takedowns. Once posters are not that reckless it'll be all fine

but since the majority of them use nowadays Astraweb which doesnt comply with DMCA , these days of recklessness will not be gone for a while

[tesco]

There are simple ways to avoid DMCA takedowns. Once posters are not that reckless it'll be all fine

Can you give an example?

[Hypatia]

Well,

1)Scene releases - use only scene names. Thats quite enough especially if they have nFO
Too many times i noticed how scene stuff going by a full title was removed yet the one without it on the same NNTP provider was left intact



2)Scary and complex rapidoor method once popular on a certain site dedicated to High Def movies. Google it) Personally i dont really like it that much mostly because it relies also on third party file hosting sites like rapidshare, megaupload etc

3) Easy, simple, efficient
check it out or something very similar to this one. You get the idea..

They cant do thorough search in automatic\semi-automatic mode, you know..at least for now.
And the real bitch is they have to fill manually all those letters


And if at some point they invent something else, we can always find a countermeasure

PS perhaps we'll be forced to use simple 'passwords" like "password' in the future for the most releases out there lol just to avoid archive scanning feature( the one mysterbin has) because, you now, it wont take much time for them to set up something like this in their 'lair" lol.


of course all this cant guarantee you that this stuff will be there 100%

But it will certainly make it more difficult for these lazy( and you know , those members of copyright mafia are really lazy, just look at how they do things shaking down poor old ladies for hundreds thousands of dollars for nothing ..) bastards

[tesco]

Well,

1)Scene releases - use only scene names. Thats quite enough especially if they have nFO
Too many times i noticed how scene stuff going by a full title was removed yet the one without it on the same NNTP provider was left intact

Isn't a scene name like this:
Fair Game 2010 BRRip XviD AC3-Rx

I've never seen a scene name not include the full title.

Or maybe I misunderstand completely.

3) Easy, simple, efficient
check it out or something very similar to this one. You get the idea..

So the NFO would get taken down, but the rest stays up because it has a different subject?
What I don't like is that it's harder to find this stuff using search engines like binsearch or supersearch.
For example in supersearch I usually watch the file sizes of collections to find what I want, in this case all I would have to go on is an nfo and I would then have to type in the new subject to even get a glimpse at the files to see if I would want it.

[Hypatia]

Isn't a scene name like this

i meant like this "cowry-vw", for example

Unfortunately more and more stuff is released under the full title..back in the day mostly all of them were like this one..

So the NFO would get taken down, but the rest stays up because it has a different subject?

and different title for all those rars\par2 files. which u can find out looking at this small file\subject

t's harder to find this stuff using search engines like binsearch or supersearch.

How's that? Uw ant a movie titled Blabla, you type it in a search field and get this subject\file that has all the information u need.

I usually watch the file sizes of collections to find what I want

u mean blind search? Sometimes i use only size filter myself. =) for spotting blurays especially
It plays nicely on every day basis..

to type in the new subject to even get a glimpse at the files to see if I would want it.

maybe i didnt get you.. Doesnt this given subject\nfo have all the information you need to now to be sure if you really want it?
Like title, quality(Bluray rip, resolution ?