FAQ 2 Part I: Information on news servers and where to find them

If you choose to use an ISP, then your best choice depends on your location and interests.

• In the US, reviews generally agree that Mindspring is the best ISP. It's newsfeed is very good, though in an attempt to reduce spam, they only carry binaries in the alt.binaries.* newsgroups (so groups like japan.binaries.pictures.anime don't carry binary posts, while alt.binaries.* groups carry them almost perfectly).
• Other ISPs in the US I've heard are good would be Earthlink and Sprintnet.
• In the UK, many people agree that the best ISP is Demon. While AOL in the UK is £16.95 pounds a month, Demon is only two thirds that cost. Be sure to factor in local toll charges, if applicable.
• In Japan, it's hard to say because there are several good ISPs with good newsfeeds, and it would really depend on your location. If you have a specific location in mind, contact me and I might be able to help out. You probably also have to factor in local toll charges as well.
• Many other countries that are still developing the Internet do not have the bandwidth luxury that many of the more modern countries have, and so good ISPs that carry a full newsfeed are not as common.

If your ISP does not provide you with a good newsfeed and you do not have a good free server, you can try pay servers. Here are a few such servers:

Airnews http://www.airnews.net/
Newsfeeds http://www.newsfeeds.com
Newsreader http://www.newsreader.com
Randori http://www.randori.com/
Easynews http://www.easynews.com
News Service http://www.news-service.com/
Omeganews http://www.omeganews.com/

Other servers also include:

Newscene http://www.newscene.com
Supernews http://www.supernews.com/
Altopia http://www.altopia.com/

You can find a list of Pay servers at:
http://www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Internet_Services/Usenet_Servers/Commercial/

For an idea of what Easynews looks like, you can try a similar demo service that I describe here.

If any of you have used one of these news servers, please comment on them as they are useful in helping future users determine which server is best for themselves.

Airnews

Airnews is a pretty good pay server. It's $20 US dollars for the first month and $10 US dollars every month afterwards.

Their webpage is at http://www.airnews.net.

You can see a list of their newsgroups at:
http://206.66.12.200:89/newslist/home2.html

If you would like to try a demo of airnews, you can use a gust login/password of theresa/theresa using the server "library.airnews.net". However, please do not abuse or overuse this login because it is only meant as a demo for potential customers.

Newscene
This server has once again reinstated several groups.

You can search a list of their newsgroups at:
http://www.newscene.com/find_news_grp.html

You can find their official FAQ at:
http://www.newscene.com/Faq.html

If you aren't good at using newsreaders, you can always try Easynews. Note that the web version of Easynews lacks some groups that the Easynews news server has.

9/20/98 - Easynews had some technical difficulties and is missing several groups. When it goes back to normal I will make note of it.

You can see a list of their newsgroups at:
http://www.easynews.com/groups.dat

They also have a list of newsgroups in general, but Easynews will not provide access to most of these because only some of them actually have pictures:
http://www.easynews.com/groups.list

Easynews is not nearly as good as the other pay servers because it misses the vast majority of posts (but that still means they get a ton). Also, easynews only provides images, not movies or other filetypes. Also, easynews only supports binary newsgroups - it does not support the vast majority of newsgroups that are meant for discussion.

Supernews is now renamed to RemarQ.

Newscene
I haven't tested this one out personally.

$30 per 3 months or $90 per year.

Their webpage is at http://www.randori.com/

You can see a list of their newsgroups at:
http://www.randori.com/randori/alt.html

News-Service
I haven't tested this one out personally.

$30 per 3 months or $90 per year.

Their webpage is at http://www.news-service.com/

You can search through their list of newsgroups at:
https://secure.news-service.com/search/index.html

Note that this search will also tell you how many posts they currently have in that particular group.

Omeganews
I haven't tested this one out personally.

Their webpage is at http://www.omeganews.com/

You can search through their list of newsgroups at:
http://www.omeganews.com/grouplist.html

Note that this search will also tell you how many posts they currently have in that particular group.

Supernews

You can find a list of it's newsgroups here:
http://status.supernews.com/groups.dat (559kb)

Others recommend Altopia. I don't know much about it.

There are several reasons I give as to why I do not recommend Pictureview:

1) Cost. You're paying slightly more just to get a tiny fraction of what Easynews provides, since Pictureview doesn't carry many of the good newsgroups.

2) Spam. Some groups are 100% spam last time I checked. I tried finding one real post, but either I looked at a bad time or they simply don't exist.

3) Usage. Pictureview you must manually download pics. With Newscene you can use a newsreader and sleep while downloading.

4) Content. Pictureview only carries pictures. It does not have movies or discussions like other news servers.

Other people cite reasons such as censorship and quality.

There are many pages that list free news servers.

Lord Byron has such a page at:
http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/fortune/561/index.html

King Tut has such a page at:
http://www.angelfire.com/de/KingTut/index.html

Using programs like Newshunter, you can search for free newsgroups yourself.

Uncle Willy's made his own program to do this, and you can find it at:
http://members.tripod.com/~The_Uncle_Willy/

You can also search for news servers at these pages:
http://www.jammed.com/
http://www.muenz.com/
http://home1.gte.net/docthomp/servers.htm
http://www.reed.edu/~greaber/url-servers.html
http://members.tripod.com/~Robserver/servers.htm
http://home1.gte.net/docthomp/servers.htm

You can use Supernews for free web-based news.

1. Go to http://wren.supernews.com/index.pl
2. In the box type in a search phrase (for example, lt.binaries.pictures.erotica)
3. It will then display about 200 matches. You can then select the group you want.
4. Once you have clicked on the one you want, click on the "Read Newsgroup" icon.
5. If you plan on doing this often, I recommend you click on the "last" button so that you can work your way from the back to the front (newer posts are at the back, so this way you can go through all of the new posts without having to go through pages you've already seen (which would happen if you visited twice and read foward). Messages that have files attached (usually images) will have a thunderbolt icon to their left.

Easynews and Pictureview also offer web-based news, but they are not very reliable.

This section addresses privacy issues dealing with news servers.

Altopia relies on its users to follow the law. They do not review any messages that are on or have passed through their server as such an act is illegal. Furthermore, they are not in a position to know what is or is not illegal anyways.*

This is their policy for every legal question from warez to copyrighted material.

You can find their full policy listing here:
http://www.altopia.com/polfaq.htm

* Note: This is because laws vary from country to country, district to disctrict, and even city to city. This policy has been challenged numerous times in court and has prevailed every time. It reflects the policies of other servers in general.

"Articles posted by individual account holders do not contain an NNTP-Posting-Host header.* Our servers do not insert any information about the true identity of the poster. If a customer chooses to configure his/her newsreader in such a way as to conceal their identity, we do nothing to stand in the way of that."

This is significant because while few news servers keep information on those who read from their server, some servers do keep logs of those who post to prevent spamming. Supernews is one of the many that does not.

"Supernews only maintains logs to make sure we are providing the best possible service in the areas of Usenet that our customers are reading. Logs are only required by our systems administrators so that we can monitor overall usage volume and activity for particular newsgroups. The actually content of our user messages or of the newsgroups are of no concern to us."

In other words, Supernews only records statistics and system errors to figure out if they need to expand their system, adjust their filters, or fix something. Even if served with a search warrant, their logs would reveal no relevant information on those who read and little or no information on those who post.

Supernews adds that it does its best to esnure complete privacy and security of user identification data.

* Note: In case you didn't know, the NNTP-Posting-Host in most cases means your IP.

"We do not keep logs of our users reading and posting habits...In other words, we hold our customers' privacy as sacred and will not compromise your privacy if we can avoid it in any way...."

Reading from Airnews leaves no revealing logs. Posting to news is logged to prevent spamming and abuse. In the case of posting, Airnews will encrypt the IP of those posting through it.

"We do not monitor any news groups."

They go on to say that the only relevant logs they keep are of people who post (not read), and it is primarily to detect spamming (if the same user posts the same message 1000 times, etc..).

"We do log all posts but this is primarily to detect spamming and to protect ourselves in case of criminal acts. We never examine the logs unless a need arises. You will find that all services must log posts just a measure of protecting their business."

As you may have noticed, news servers are generally given significant legal protection in terms of privacy. Some servers even pointed out that monitoring customers who download from their news server would be illegal.

The reason why news servers in many countries do not have to censor posts is because laws vary widely from country to country and distrcit to district. For example, just because it is illegal in some countries to read or even talk about certain books (a reality in many countries even today), it does not mean that news servers have to censor such posts just because they are illegal in a few countries. If it is illegal to say a particular sentance (sadly yet another reality in some countries) news servers are not obligated to censor that sentence just because it is illegal to say them in a few countries.

I encourage you to verify all of the information on this page yourself.