No More Newsgroups?

I just got an email from my ISP stating that they are no longer gong to have newsgroups starting next year. That’s kinda crazy, but I guess people aren’t using newsgroups much anymore. I pretty much just use them for downloading stuff. I wonder if my ISP is shutting them down from lack of use, or if they are scared of the piracy thing? You can pretty much find anything legal and illegal posted in newsgroups.

Back when I first got on the Internet, it was just basically newsgroups and email. Actually, next week will be my 13th anniversary of logging onto the internet. It’s easy for me to remember. The very first thing I saw when I logged onto Prodigy was the news that Jeffery Dahmer was killed in prison. After my free trial to Prodigy was over, I switched to AOL. There were very few ISPs back in those days. AOL was good because they had a bunch of their own content, but they didn’t have the web yet. The web was really small back then. I remember when AOL first got the web. I thought it was super cool, but too damn slow. Downloading images on a 14400 baud modem took just too long when you only had 20 hours a month online. I racked up some pretty big bills going over my 20 hours a month that AOL gave us. Now most people thing that the web is the Internet.

Times sure have changed, but I don’t think I want to give up newsgroup access just yet. I guess I will have to start looking around for a good newsgroup provider next year.