Why does my address appear as part of my name 2500

On 15 Nov 2005 01:03:25 -0800

Google is just a web site fronting a search engine, albeit a very busy web site with a well engineered search engine. The World Wide Web predates Google, the internet predates the web by several years and carries many services other than the HTTP, telnet, secure shell, email, ftp, USENET to mention just a few, USENET predates the internet and was carried world wide across the UUCP network well before it was possible to obtain an internet connection commercially. Those of us who have been using the internet longer than the World Wide Web has existed find the perception that the web is the internet strange and wrong (note not morally wrong but factually wrong the as the web is just one of the many services carried across the internet.

Big surprise Google could vanish tomorrow and very little of the internet would change (OK everyone would have to move their search habits to Yahoo! or Alta Vista or AllTheWeb or ...). Very little depends on Google in the internet.

Not at all - USENET is one of the many services carried across the internet, it is a distributed service with no centre. USENET is person to group discussions carried by the NNTP protocol between a very large number of servers.

Google is a commercial company that provides primarily search services and sells advertising - they have a number of sidelines too. Some people find it morally objectional that they are leveraging a freely available discussion service to boost their advertising revenue.

One valid objection (IMHO) would be that if the USENET NNTP services were to disappear in favour of Google (or any other single point of failure be it commercial or otherwise) then USENET would become vulnerable to sudden rest and amenable to censorship, currently it is not.

Not at all the web is just one of the many services carried over the internet, and one that I personally use very little.

Incomplete certainly and wrong in some respects.

It is a good thing that a robust global uncontrollable person to group communications medium exists.

Google gets large numbers of people visiting their site which enables them to sell advertising. Or did you mean what do the people paying for USENET services get ? If so they get access to a globally distributed uncontrolled person to group communications medium.

When ISPs are starting to shut down the USENET servers and tell people to use Google groups then that would seem to be a risk.

Better still try a real newsreader where the interface is implemented on your own machine.

I agree I consider a USENET archive to be a useful service to the world.

Some USENET news groups are used to distribute software that would normally require to be bought in some cases it has been modified to remove copy protection or license enforcement. Other USENET news groups are used to distribute loveographic material. It is an uncensored and uncensorable medium and it does get used for questionable activities. Personally I'm surprised that this still goes on in USENET because the peer-to-peer file sharing networks are probably better suited to exchange of this kind of material.

Because USENET is a globally distributed service not under anyones control and Google is a private corporation under the control of directors and shareholders.

You can be reasonably certain that none of them originated from Google although some may have been posted through Google.

I'm not sure if any copyright lawyer has ever been consulted on exactly what rights exist and in whose name for USENET postings. I suspect it would be ruled that a USENET post is in the public domain and anything goes, but it could also be ruled that it is copyright the author and they have the right to control dissemination. Certainly posting a file to USENET must be giving implicit permission for it to be distributed around the USENET network.

Note well USENET is not an organisation or a company any more than email or indeed the World Wide Web, it is a service carried mostly across internet connections using an agreed protocol and conventions.

There is nobody to stop Google or anyone else taking postings from USENET and doing whatever they will with them. Some companies take USENET postings and analyse them for email addresses and then sell CDs of these email addresses to spammers. It is a neat legal question as to the extent to which they have a right to do these things. I suspect Google at least have checked into the legal niceties carefully and covered themselves adequately.

Some do, many have probably never heard of NNTP sadly. Of course running a full feed USENET service takes quite a bit of effort these days and a lot of bandwidth.

-- The computer obeys and wins. A better way to focus the sun You lose and Bill collects. licences available see