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   XPost: rec.arts.tv   
   From: kalelfan@yanospamhoo.com   
      
   "Bert Hyman"  wrote in message   
   news:Xns9E5CA15D3D88CVeebleFetzer@216.250.188.140...   
      
   > In   
   > news:0e264f82-26d5-4cba-ae3f-b0a347225ccc@j25g2000yqa.googlegroups.com   
   > Scott Eiler  wrote:   
   >   
   >> Actually, that's about what Google Groups is doing with Usenet.  So   
   >> many ISPs have given up Usenet newsfeeds, Google practically owns   
   >> Usenet now.   
   >   
   > ISPs have dropped USENET support ostensibly for legal reasons (NY   
   > then-Attorney General Cuomo claiming it was a conduit for child porn),   
   > but it's more likely financial; there's no money in it for most of them.   
      
   In AOL's case there was also a lawsuit that Harlan Ellison brought   
   against them, after an AOL user posted his work on a newsgroup.   
   AOL won the main part of the case for purposes of our discussion   
   here, which is that they were a "passive conduit" as defined under   
   the DMCA.  But there was some other part where they lost and   
   rather than appeal that part of it they settled with Ellison.   
      
   Again for purposes of the discussion in the thread title, the child porn   
   issue and copyright violation and the ISPs dropping Usenet and so on   
   are all part of Usenet's rep of having a cesspool barrier.  That, and   
   the more sterile "signal to noise" description of the same kind of   
   problem, is the root cause of Usenet's decline.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)