[ih] distributed network control: Usenet

[Dan Lynch]

Was/is alt.binaries mostly porn encoded or executable files being shared or stolen?  Or something else???

Dan

Cell 650-776-7313

> On Jul 31, 2021, at 9:15 PM, John Levine via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> It appears that Greg Skinner via Internet-history <gregskinner0 at icloud.com> said:
>> I’m surprised, given how popular the web had become by then.  How was this determined?
> 
> I'm not sure I believe it, but the amount of traffix in alt.binaries.whatever was and is very large.
> There's a lot of encoded video.
> 
>>>> On Jul 25, 2021, at 2:16 PM, Bob Purvy <bpurvy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> When I first joined Packeteer in 1998, Usenet accounted for an overwhelming percentage of the Internet traffic.
>>> 
>>> On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 2:08 PM Greg Skinner via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> <mailto:internet-history at elists.isoc.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Jul 20, 2021, at 3:45 PM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com <mailto:gnu at toad.com>> wrote:
>>>> The Usenet had no central point of control, and was contemporaneous with
>>>> the ARPANET and early Internet.  Its software was even rewritten several
>>>> times by different parties (e.g. A News, B News, C News, Notesfiles,
>>>> NNTP).  Its global discussion groups (net.foo) were evolved by mutual
>>>> agreement (comp.foo, sci.bar, etc) and then later successfully forked
>>>> (alt) when the primary sites feared hosting discussions that others
>>>> wanted to have (e.g. on sex and drugs).
>>>> 
>>>> Does anybody know the status of the Usenet today?  I got off it
>>>> years ago.
>>> 
>>> BTW, it’s available via Google Groups <https://groups.google.com/ <https://groups.google.com/>>.  Some newsgroups go back
>> to the early 1980s.
>>> 
>>> —gregbo
>>> 
>>> 
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