"Warren" wrote in message
...

It's been a while since you've been on AOL, hasn't it. Or do you not
have any personal experience, and are just perpetuating misconceptions
held dear by so many others who also really don't have any personal
experience?

Quite simplely the issue is that not enough people used newsgroups on
AOL to make it worth the expense. AOL may be one of the first to
completely dump Usenet because they had the additional costs associated
with their proprietary interface (or a choice of revamping the service
to allow real nntp traffic.)

Other ISP's are finding their costs too high even without an interface
to maintain. The first step, which is already pretty common, is
outsourcing their Usenet servers. Next will come limiting monthly
transfers to contain the costs of providing wholesale accounts to
customers. Eventually Usenet will be dropped completely. For many ISP's,
even if they lost every single customer to whom Usenet service is
important, they'd still come out ahead. And once their compeditors stop
offering unlimited Usenet, the likelyhood of losing any customers goes
down.

The bottom line is if every ISP dropped Usenet service tomorrow, it
might make the headlines at some techie websites, and it might be worth
a column inch or two on an inside page of the local paper's business
section, but it wouldn't even get a passing mention on the nightly news.
We Usenet users are a very small faction in today's gentified Internet
community.

--
Warren H.

Several strange reasoning-points seem to have gone into aol's decision:

AOL settled a suit last year brought against them by Harlan Ellison for
fascilitating usenet copyright infringement. It looks like AOL for
liability reasons, real or imagined, wants more of a Big Brother control
of its users. They could not easily control what their users did on
UseNet. For so long as AOL was storing newsgroups in their own system's
memory for AOLosers' access, they may have shared liaibility for
copyright-infringements.

AOL proprietary system was never particularly compatible interfacing with
usenet & their non-standard hook-up always cost them more to maintain.
Their incompatibility did not permit aolosers to use the majority of
third-party newsreader programs separate from or part of browsers (this
was partly the effect of their antique system, partly intentional to keep
AOLosers "coralled" & "stuck" with AOL). To hook up a third-party
newsreader from an AOL connection was unnecessarily complex or required
too much research for novice or would-be users of usenet to easily figure
out.

AOL's usenet binary access was so hamstrung & bug-ridden that it was
estimated the cost to the REST of the web in transmitting AOL binaries was
700 million dollars a year, & the poky system could actually crash FTP
sites. Many sites in consequence either denied access to AOL users, or
allowed only one-way access so that files could be obtained but not
deposited. When AOL finally decided to do something about this, it was
only because of the liability issues over copyrights, not because they
wanted in any way to better serve their own client base.

AOL is just flat-out an inferior service & their disdain for freewheeling
UseNet was always obvious. AOLosers should take this as their cue to sign
up with a local ISP that will provide better support all-round. AOL had
years ago cut back the number of groups they could access & attempted to
start an AOLosers-only alternative to UseNet so they could better control
their user-losers & limit user access to groups that were largely about
easy it is to get rid of AOL.

Because their own platform is second-rate & incompatible, UseNet access
was a major loss-leader for AOL in ways that are not true for other ISPs.
The service gave them no opportunities to increase their own profits
selling their own bulletin-board usenet-like service. AOL encouratges
pay-as-you-go packaged entertainment, & discourages freewheeling
independence. They have attempted to charge their client base for poor
versions of service that a free from any other ISP, but as this didn't pay
off positively, it was always an option that if they experienced a
financial pinch or needed to improve their bottom-line in a hurry, UseNet
would be one of the first cost-cutting measure.

AOL not only filtered & edited UseNet so heavily that continuity was
impossible for some users, but their own alternate to UseNet is even more
heavily censored. AOL's alternate to usenet was extremely adverse to free
speech, thus was populated by weanies. AOLosers (& for a while webTV
webbies, who're dying off now thank gawd) are the ones who turn up in
gardening forums asking, "Can I plant flowers in dirt?" or in book
collecting forums asking "how do I tell if my copy of JAWS is a first
edition ora book club?" -- lowering the intellilgence level of group after
group. AOL cultivates ignorance because only the ignorant would use AOL.
It is the opinion of some that denying the weanier AOLosers access to
UseNet is a good thing, but personally I believe in the full equal rights
of the mentally retarded.

That AOL is consciously adverse to free speech on Usenet was proven in
1995/96 when they interferred with news.groups.reviews due to intelligent
discussions that erupted there about the failings of AOL. AOL gave access
to this intelligent discussion under a new title imposed by themselves
"FLAMES of AOL." It was really very clever. It attracted flamers to the
group who didn't care about anything except flames, & the intelligent
warnings about AOL were soon lost among the greater bulk of trolls &
flamers encouraged by AOL to do this. The group soon ceased to be used for
anyone but trolls. Because AOL encourages ignorance, flaming & trolling is
all right by them, but intelligent discourse does not serve AOL interests.

As the overall worldwide use of the web & all e-services increases, the
percentage of that enormous population who accesses UseNet is a minority
that does not need to be well served by AOL which relies not on continuous
customer service but new novices continuously signing on unaware that
almost any ISP would be an improvement. By the time AOLosers figure out
how to get to UseNet, they have also begun to figure out AOL sucks, so
they're the least important people to cater to inasmuch as most of them
will be dumping AOL anyway.

In the 1980s & 1990s Usenet was frankly a more intelligent user-friendly
place. Many web historians credit 1993's AOL launch with the deterioration
of UseNet's slow deterioriation until, today, the sheer weight of trolls &
binary-group pornography weaken UseNet's overall value, inducing many of
the more sophisticated sorts of users to forge new communities in the
blogosphere instead. This is another reason some people thing cutting out
AOL will improve Usenet to become more of what it once was, but I don't
think AOL's initial destructive impact has been that big a factor in the
last three or four years. But AOL encourages the blogosphere while
discouraging UseNet because it sells packages for blogging & has more
options for AOL controlling dialogues.

The one component of the web that least serves corporate interests is
UseNet. Corporate as well as political interests do have full-time payed
bloggers to promote their agendas (although they cannot stop
counter-blogging, they can at least put up pages that have no unfiltered
responses). But Usenet is 100% worthless for corporate agendizing &
advertising, thus restricting UseNet is something AOL has always
attempted. Their enemy is "community," any community which they cannot
control. Imagine what would happen if AOL spammed UseNet the way they send
junkmail to every resident on earth with a mail box. Every special offer
from AOL if inserted onto UseNet as "news" would be followed by hundreds
of angry flames & helpful ex-AOLosers eager to tell fellow UseNet users
about the oh-so-many better choices. AOL's deserved thrashing on UseNet
(as well as in the blogosphere) has been one of many years duration,
encouraging AOL's longstanding censorship of & eventual ditching of
UseNet.

AOLosers should be able to get access by checking out easynews.com or
usenet.com at least until they work up the gumption to get a QUALITY isp
that doesn't censor & does provide all services. Remember the world wide
slogan, AOL SUCKS:
http://pages.sbcglobal.net/cybersaur/aol_sucks.htm

Why AOL is not a wise choice:
http://geocities.com/tara_d8/aolsux2.html

-paghat the ratgirl
--
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"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden
people maintaining a free civil government." -Thomas Jefferson