Death of Usenet, film at 11. February 25, 2005
Posted by Andy Roberts in : internet , trackbackA few weeks ago AOL pulled the plug on their news server, ending the perpetual September. By itself, this would not have a major impact on a system which was designed to survive continental nuclear destruction. Then came news that the university of Berlin free newsserver once called news.cfn.de and more recently news.individual.net and popularly referred to as ‘the german newsserver’ which has served usenet afficionados who can’t get a decent feed from their own ISPs, is to end the free service and begin charging, albeit a nominal 10 euros pa.
So although usenet continues to provide a useful service, including searchable archives accessed via googlegroups, many people seem to think that it belongs to the past and is on its way out.
Who would miss it?
Although I don’t take part in newsgroups a great deal at the moment I think it would be a terrible loss. The reason being that there is no other place on the internet where it is possible to create a discussion which isn’t ultimately owned by somebody with the power to interfere.
Much is made of the empowering nature of blogs for the individual, but any discussion taking place on a blog is only taking place through the grace of the blog owner. Articles by the owner/author are dominant whereas comments are secondary, and could easily be removed or amended. Even a wiki has to reside on someone’s web server and can be taken offline at a moment’s notice.
So the eventual demise of Usenet could mean losing the only piece of genuinely neutral territory on the internet, and would be a dangerous loss in my opinion.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
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