flog

<a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/12/0014200&from=yourmom">Frankly</a>, I've been amazed for years at Usenet's continued slipping under the radar. It's interesting that these days it's considered a kind of advanced or very geeky part of the internet, when in the old days it was often our first foray into global networking (after FIDOnet, of course!).

Increasingly, it seems like Usenet is being hosted by a few large, dedicated Usenet providers, and ISP's just subscribe to them for their users, which is understandable. Who wants to maintain an NNTP server?

Only problem is it makes it easier to take down.

The stupids, now that they are starting to finally grasp the true power of the internet, are naturally keen to see it destroyed...because they're stupid. We gotta remember who's right in this struggle, and the importance of protecting unpleasant and unpopular speech--including filez, warez, movies--everything. If you can keep me from sharing data you don't want shared, you can control what I say. There's no two ways about it, you can have one or the other--free speech or control over content.

In the meantime, some free new servers:
http://ecalame.tripod.com/free.html

ah, usenet... I don't even know how to get on it anymore...

alt.flintstones.bondage and alt.sex.grassclippings are quality groups.

My personal fake, er, fave was alt.sex.u2.

There are free servers a-plenty as it turns out, but very few of them offer binary access. Not surprising.