Ladies and germs! If you’re an AT&T Broadband customer you should know that your ISP is shutting off access to Usenet at the end of the month. Why? Yup, it’s related to that whole smear campaign from last year. Some nonsense about illegal content that may or may not be there. Anyway, Giganews has a little sale for you guys: 50 percent off three months of the Diamond Plan and 20 percent off other Giganews plans.
The Diamond Plan, which includes 20 connections (plus SSL, which is sorta unnecessary, but whatever) and unlimited monthly bandwidth. That’s usually $30 per month.
Giganews is sorta the Ric Flair of Usenet access, which is sorta weird since it’s only 11 years old. (Usenet itself predates the Bronze Age.)
For the record, I use Newdemon. I pretty much live in alt.binaries.hdtv.x264. True story!
Thanks Nicholas- but really, Ric Flair? Yowsa :)-
If anyone out there has any questions on the special let me know. Also, look forward to some big news from Giganews in the coming weeks and more to follow in early Fall. Consider it a game changer.
liz@giganews.com
Giganews is desperate to keep customers from jumping ship to Astraweb, which offers virtually identical completion, retention, and speeds, but its version of giganews’ $30/mo plan is only $11/mo or $96 a year.
Hi Ed, Thanks for your feedback. In about 2-3 weeks you will see where Giganews is actually heading- I say heading because what is being announced will not be all, not by a long shot.
Newshosting announced an ATT special back in June–$13/mo for the NHXL plan for 1 yr. It’s been a solid service. I’ve got 30 connections, SSL, great speeds, unlimited transfers. Why somebody would choose to pay $15/mo for the first 2 months and $30/mo thereafter for Giganews’ comparable plan is beyond me.
Special until July 18, 2009 — Astraweb has Annual Subscription UNLIMITED for $96 (that’s $8/month). Check it out!
http://www.news.astraweb.com/specials/96-yearly.html
ATT customers: several example newsgroup providers where you can sign up:
AT&T-newsgroup-specials.html
It seems more likely that AT&T made that move because Usenet was found liable for at least 4 different types of Copyright infringement in Federal Court on June 30, 2009. The timing seems far more likely and much more of a CYA move by AT&T.
Jim, Usenet.COM, a single company, was found guilty.
-They ignored takedown requests (which other Usenet providers accept)
-They tried to use takedowns as a defense, the fact that they ignored them defeated that defense
-They also tried to use the Betamax case as a precedent- Betamax equipment is physical, Usenet is a service- not applicable.
-They destroyed evidence
-They sent employees to Europe so they couldn’t testify
AT&T dumped Usenet because very few people use it.
I am angry with AT&T stopping my usenet access and will close my account as soon as I can. Also, living in New York I won’t forget Mario’s Cuomo’s son that was responsible for squelching this free speech resource. Typical Liberal hypocrite.