foo wrote:
Usenet user wrote:
Time-Warner corporate is dropping usenet news as of June 23, 2008.

Please help by asking them to keep it. The person to call works for
the TW president:

Barbara Burroughs phone 203-351-2281

email:

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
On june 24, Verizon removed many of the usefull groups. You think they
did this collaboratively?

My guess is that they think no one uses UseNet anymore, and as the spam and
flames go up and the content goes down as people post using googlegroups,
yahoo groups, etd., so they are just
saving a bit of money. Here is their announcement:

Dear Verizon Online Customer,

As a Verizon Newsgroup service user, we wanted to let you know about some
important changes that we will soon be making to our Newsgroup service.


On June 24, 2008, we will be modifying our Newsgroup offerings to only
offer groups in the Big-8 Newsgroup hierarchies, which are listed below.
The 0.verizon.* newsgroup hierarchy will also continue to be available.
Users will not be able to post or download from any other newsgroups
using our Newsgroup service.

comp.* humanities.* misc.* news.* rec.* sci.* soc.* talk.*

More details regarding the Big 8 newsgroup hierarchies is available at:
http://www.big-8.org/.

This change will not affect your Internet access service. If you would
like to subscribe to newsgroups other than those we offer, you will need
to subscribe to a separate commercial news service. Please note that
your use of any such service is still subject to our Terms of Service and
Acceptable Use Policy.

There are no changes required to your software, but you will need to
unsubscribe from all Newsgroups other than the Big 8 hierarchies and the
0.verizon.* hierarchy noted above. The following link explains how to
subscribe and unsubscribe in Outlook Express:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/171190

IMPORTANT: If you continue to subscribe to unsupported newsgroups, you
may experience poor computer performance and slow throughput speeds.
Failure to unsubscribe may also interfere with the functioning of the
Verizon network or use of the network by other Verizon users, which is a
violation of our Acceptable Use Policy.

We appreciate your business and look forward to continuing to serve you
in the future.

Sincerely,


Verizon Online

To which I replied:


Over the years you have increased the cost for service, and now you are
decreasing the newsgroups to which I can subscribe. This is no way to
indicate that you appreciate my business.

They have not bothered to reply. Surprise? Also, as a large ISP, they are
remarkably ignorant, since UseNet _is_ part of the Internet, so it will
definitely interfere with my Internet access service.


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