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In an example of throwing the bathwater out with the baby, a number of ISPs are dropping the alt.* hierarchy, or Usenet altogether, ostensibly to comply with a demand from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that they rid the Internet of child pornography.

Some observers, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, believe that the ISPs are actually making the move to help save money on servers and bandwidth, and are using Cuomo's demand as a convenient excuse.

Verizon and Sprint are taking down the alt.* hierarchy, AT&T will block all alt.binaries.* groups, while Time Warner Cable and AOL are shutting down their Usenet service entirely, the EFF said.

The action was in response to a June ageement between Cuomo and three ISPs after his office threatened charges of fraud and deceptive business practices, because the ISPs told their customers that transmitting child pornography was not allowed but did not enforce it.

While, thus far, only New York is threatening ISPs -- though is also reportedly working on it -- the companies are dropping the Usenet groups across the country. Verizon and Time Warner Cable are two of the nation’s five largest service providers, with roughly 16 million customers between them, according to the New York Times. Some smaller ISPs -- such as panix.com in the New York area -- still offer Usenet, including the alt.* hierarchy.

The EFF said that while the New York investigation had found 88 newsgroups with child pornography, it was only 0.5% of the 19,000-group alt.* hierarchy. Previous attempts at controlling pornography, such as the 1996 Communications Decency Act and the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, were struck down by the Supreme Court on free speech grounds. But because the current efforts are considered "voluntary," a court challenge is unlikely, the EFF continued.

Usenet was established in 1980 to enable users on computers to exchange information with each other on a batch basis using "news software," and before the Web was developed, it was the primary public communications method. By volume of data transmitted, it is still widely used. Because Usenet isn't dependent on a single server, it has historically been a robust way of making information available to a wide variety of people.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by khess

Dani AI

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correctly flags the archival and free-speech cost of broad removals; is also right that many everyday functions of Usenet have moved to forums, blogs and social sites. Both observations matter: the web replaced a lot of visible use, but wholesale removal of hierarchies removes long-lived archives and niche communities that aren’t easily reproduced elsewhere.

A key clarification missing from the thread is the difference between text newsgroups and binary-heavy groups. Text groups are low-bandwidth discussion threads; binary hierarchies carry large files and are where storage and bandwidth costs concentrate. That technical split is why providers tended to target binary hierarchies first: the operational burden and the difficulty of reliably filtering illegal content are different for each class of group.

Practical steps for anyone affected: first, confirm whether your ISP still offers NNTP access and whether they are filtering only certain groups or the entire service. If you need continued Usenet access, options include subscribing to a third-party news service for binaries, relying on web-based archives for text groups, hosting or mirroring specific groups if you have resources, or migrating active communities to modern forum software with clear moderation. When evaluating a commercial provider, prioritize retention/completion, secure connections (SSL), allowed connections and a transparent abuse/DMCA policy. If preservation is the goal, regularly export or mirror important threads because archives can disappear without warning.

This boils down to a policy and infrastructure trade-off: reducing visible illegal material often reduces legitimate public resources too. A practical ask for affected users is to press ISPs for opt-in or paid NNTP alternatives and to preserve important threads before they vanish.

Member Avatar for khess

About time. Its useful life has kind of passed. That is, of course, my humble opinion. UseNet has been happily replaced by forums and blogs.

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