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So your ISP (Internet Service Provider) doesn't
have any adult or warez newsgroups. Are they exercising some sort
of moral censorship over your use of usenet newsgroups through their
servers?
For the most part, no. They are not trying
to censor your access to usenet. They are exercising good business
judgment. Think about it: while most of the content that their
customers see is hosted on outside sites and only passes momentarily
through their system (not accounting for system caches), newsgroups are
actually stored on servers owned or maintained by the ISP itself.
In many people's eyes, that means that the ISP has some sort of
responsibility to police the content. Whether you, or even the
courts, agree is inconsequential. What matters is some self-righteous
leader who leads a campaign against the company about content in adult
newsgroups, or a litigious lawyer who decides to take on a software
vendor's copyright claims over content in a warez newsgroup. And
while the courts will likely find in the ISP's favor, they will have to
pay for a lawyer and be distracted from their main business throughout
the whole escapade. For a service that less than 10% of the
customer base even knows about, it's not worth the hassle.
There is also the problem of basic
management. Keeping very high capacity servers running smoothly
requires additional staff, and generates some very complex support
calls. Again, for a service utilized by a small percentage of the
client base who want to download boatloads of binary files, it is just not worth the hassle.
Some ISP's solve the problem by outsourcing usenet
newsgroup server management to a third party like Giganews
or Supernews and bundles the cost into their normal access
charges. This allows them to continue to provide the
service for their clients who want it, but protects them from being the
target of complaints because they have no control over the
product. But, it's also an additional expense.
In many cases
ISP's either stop carrying all the adult and warez boards, or
discontinue usenet services altogether.
If you are interested in accessing newsgroups that
your ISP does not carry, protesting to your ISP probably will not change
their stance. Your best bet is to decide upon a commercial
newsgroup server company and try it out for a month or so. If it
meets your expectations, you can upgrade to a multi-month contract
so you don't have to worry about paying every month. When you
consider what you are shelling out for a DSL line or cable modem
service, the extra $10 to $15 a month is really a drop in the bucket.
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