How long will Newsgroups last

[spencer785]

so i was using a server on bittorent sites but that was costing me 120.00 us a month so i decided to give newsgroups a try so i signed up for giganews and i'm liking it so far but how long do you think newsgroups will last compared to bittorent in lifetime like how many years

[TOPDAWG]

Wait you were paying to use bittorent? Anyway torrent sites will be around for a good while yet.

[Skiz]

Wait you were paying to use bittorent? Anyway torrent sites will be around for a good while yet.

You would be shocked at how many bittorrent users shill out tons of money in monthly server fees. It's just disgusting, really. :dabs:

Bittorrent and newsgroups will both be around for a while still. Plenty of countries still do absolutely nothing about copyright infringement. The way it will end will be through the providers. AT&T has already throttled down bittorrent usage to almost nil.

[Pilferd]

people PAY to use bittorrent??? and $120??? sheeeeash!!!

and i think newsgroups have been around since the mid 90's ... shit i knew a dude back in 2000 gettin new music off of it ... he was a dick about it actin like it was a Super, top secret, 007, privileged , card holder only type of service ... took me months to get him to say the words "Newsgroups" ...

but i think newsgroups will be around for a good long time ... besides it wasnt started with the intent of sharing copyright materials ...

[4play]

well the oldest post google has cached is 11 May 1981 (http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html).

chances are newsgroups will long outlive any bittorent site your a member off by far.

[Daniel]

The Usenet has been around for a long time, I've been personally using it since the early nineties but without a newsgroup-provider to offer binary groups, that was limited to text groups via my ISP's server. Only recently I've begun to start paying for an external provider (because BT has become too popular and attracts too much attention) and already 3/4 of my downloads are done this way.

To answer your question: the Usenet will be around for a very long time to come but I don't know what will happen to those binary groups eventually. For the time being you're better off downloading this way because you gain a few advantages (most likely full download speed for everything even 199 days after it was posted, unlimited download traffic, no fear about ratios anymore, the providers are unlikely to log anything you download, you only download from one trusted ip, etc) ... and it certainly beats paying a monthly 120$ for a seedbox.

[Broken]

The oldest binary newsgroups have been around since 1985, that's 22 years and counting!

Usenet is like the cockroach of filesharing.
It's been around forever, and will outlive everything else.

[djkemp1]

i read somewhere that usenet cannot be closed down by anyone, is that correct?

[Skiz]

i read somewhere that usenet cannot be closed down by anyone, is that correct?

Read here - http://www.ecos.sourceware.org/ml/automake/2001-04/msg00420.html

[Broken]

i read somewhere that usenet cannot be closed down by anyone, is that correct?

Read here - http://www.ecos.sourceware.org/ml/automake/2001-04/msg00420.html

:huh:
I don't get what that has to do with anything.

[Skiz]

Read here - http://www.ecos.sourceware.org/ml/automake/2001-04/msg00420.html

:huh:
I don't get what that has to do with anything.

I covers legal liability of archives maintainers. That has everything to do with whether they "cannot be closed down by anyone".

[djkemp1]

so does this mean tyhey cannot be closed down or they can??

[wickedsick]

so does this mean tyhey cannot be closed down or they can??
what do u think?:01:

[Broken]

so does this mean tyhey cannot be closed down or they can??
what do u think?:01:


:frusty:

Usenet will be here tonight, tomorrow, and probably until the Internet becomes so warped that it won't be worth having.
And yes, I believe that day is only a few years off.

[Daniel]

One has to see the Usenet for what it was and still it below the surface of binary groups. Textgroups are a wealth of information and on a large number of topics I've experienced advantages to other ways of discussion/support (like web forums, mailing lists) because the Usenet has always had the most competent crowd.

With that hanging over the Usenet, shutting it down will not be in the interest of any industry. What can be done is what ISP's already do for their customers as they mostly offer Usenet access but don't list binary groups. What's left is completely legal content of thousands of posts per month.

But even if some Usenet access providers would consent to limiting their access to text groups (the largest ones in terms of number of posted messages/day are after all the large binary providers like usenetserver, giganews, newshosting, tweaknews, eweka, astraweb etc), that still would not bring the binary groups down. There are currently over 6000 usenet servers (so says Wikipedia anyway) and a good Usenet access provider should have direct infeeds from at least 50-100 other servers. Affecting all of them is hardly possible as they're likely to be all over the world.

[djkemp1]

Usenet will be here tonight, tomorrow, and probably until the Internet becomes so warped that it won't be worth having.
And yes, I believe that day is only a few years off.

why do you think and how do you think the internet will become 'warped'?

[Brenya]

Newsgroups will end when all forms of digital media ceases to be copyrighted. Isn't it obvious? Newsgroups are only viable because it is a safe haven for pirates.

The features of newsgroups, rather than that of other modes of file sharing (eg. bittorrent), incentivizes pirates with safety from anti-p2p sniffers; this incentive outweighs their slim monthly fee to users of newsgroups. However, if pirates should not need safety from the government, the newsgroups will not be worth the money.

(I intentionally left out the fact that newsgroups do not require you to upload. The reason is that once copyright infringement becomes essentially nonexistent, public trackers such as thepiratebay or demonoid will grow exponentially; so the aforementioned incentive is negligible.)

So when digital media can no longer be copyrighted, only then will newsgroups die out.