Verizon Drops Several Binary Newsgroups

[RealitY]

Verizon Drops Several Binary Newsgroups
February 19, 2004
Thomas Mennecke

Usenet, or the Newsgroups, has been a part of the Internet since the late 1970's. It also happens to be one of the oldest methods of sharing information and files. 

Verizon has long been known for being one of the better Newsgroup providers. In the past, it has kept an extensive collection of Binary newsgroups. Binary Newsgroups are the most coveted by file seekers looking for the latest DVD rips, X-Box/console games, mp3s and theatrical releases.

Citing bandwidth concerns, Verizon has stated that it will be removing several popular binary Newsgroups. You can read Verizon's statement on BroadBand Reports.com.

Due to extremely large growth in the Usenet service feed, we will be
removing eight (8) high-volume Usenet News Groups from our service tonight, February 12th, at 7:00 PM EST.

The following groups will be removed from our service:

alt.binaries.boneless
alt.binaries.cd.image.playstation2.dvdiso
alt.binaries.cd.image.xbox
alt.binaries.dvd
alt.binaries.dvdr
alt.binaries.misc
alt.binaries.nl
alt.binaries.x

In addition, we are immediately placing a temporary moratorium on the
creation of any new binary News Groups on our service.

We hope this will be a temporary condition. Over the coming weeks, we will be actively analyzing usage and feed data to determine an appropriate time to reinstate these groups.

We apologize for this inconvenience.

Best regards,

Rick - Verizon News Administrator

Slyck

I wish I was present at this retarded meeting, It is very simple to solve these bandwidth issues without deleting groups, my ISP which has a 3mb/s line must have seen this coming so they adopted a policy some time ago that all news groups are limited to 1.5mb/s speed allowing only 4 connections at a time, this is a very simple solution to limit traffic, of course they also have a monthly cap, which I feel is a little low but they don't complain unless you really abuse it heavily. Also as a good customer I do all my news group downloading at off peak hours, generally after 10 pm at night so that I am not fking my neighbors bandwidth when they are working on their connections...

[danne]

Well, another thing to keep in mind. It's not just the BW of the USERS who use the newsgroups, but also the BW used to keep the groups current and sync:ed.