This article is from Beta News:

AOL Pulls Plug on Newsgroup Service
By Brian McWilliams, Guest Columnist
January 25, 2005, 9:50 AM
PERSPECTIVE The world's largest ISP is cutting off direct access to one
of the oldest, coolest -- and strangest -- parts of the Internet.

America Online has quietly announced that it will discontinue providing
member access to Usenet newsgroups next month. In recent days, AOL
subscribers who access keyword "Newsgroups" are greeted with a pop-up
message informing them of the change: "Please Note: The AOL Newsgroup
service will be discontinued in early 2005."

According to a notice on AOL's Web site, the newsgroup shut-off will
occur in February, severing subscribers from the thousands of
discussion groups that make up Usenet.

AOL officials weren't immediately available to explain the newsgroup
shutdown. The ISP's pop-up message advises subscribers that newsgroup
services are available from third-party providers. The message also
notes that users with separate high-speed connections may be able to
arrange newsgroup access through their broadband provider. AOL users
can read newsgroups over the Web using Google Groups, the message said.

The Usenet dates back to around 1980. Now that blogs and instant
messaging have supplanted older Internet technologies such as
newsgroups and IRC, it's unlikely that AOL users will create much of an
uproar over the decision. But the event nonetheless represents a
milestone in Internet history.

The AOL newsgroup shutdown comes almost exactly eleven years after the
service first unleashed its members on the Usenet. In early 1994,
seasoned newsgroup participants complained of the sudden influx of AOL
newbies, who appeared to know little of Usenet etiquette. One dismayed
user likened AOL members to drunk drivers on the Information Super
Highway.

Others compared the stream of AOL users to freshmen arriving at college
in autumn, and described the resulting decline of newsgroup discourse
as the Eternal September. Perhaps not coincidentally, the first Usenet
spam -- known as the Green Card Lottery spam -- appeared right around
the same time.

Besides text-based discussions, Usenet newsgroups today are also used
for the distribution of binary data, including images, MP3 music files
and software programs. But the technology is much slower and more
cumbersome than peer-to-peer networks for accessing such data. As a
result, copyright holders and associations such as the RIAA and MPAA
have been less aggressive about policing piracy on Usenet.

It's not clear whether such legal issues led to AOL's decision. Last
summer, the ISP settled a long-running lawsuit brought by author Harlan
Ellison. The science fiction writer had complained that AOL was partly
to blame when one of its users posted digital copies of his published
work in Usenet newsgroups. AOL argued that, under the DMCA, its
liability for the actions of members was limited.

AOL's Usenet implementation was non-standard from the start. The
service doesn't allow members to connect directly to its network news
transfer protocol (NNTP) servers. Thus, AOL subscribers are forced to
use the service's internal and poorly designed newsgroup reader rather
than the array of better third-party programs.

But AOL did help to launch scores of local-interest newsgroups known as
AOL Neighborhood Newsgroups. The future of those newsgroups, which
contain job listings and personals ads, is unknown.

The newsgroups flame wars will certainly continue without the
assistance of AOL members. And alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die and all
the other bizarre newsgroup forums will no doubt survive the loss of
participants from the big ISP. But the Usenet will nonetheless become a
smaller, less interesting place once AOL turns off its newsgroup
servers.