Bill in Co wrote:


Just FYI. I just contacted Giganews, and they basically said they have -
and want - NO control over it. Here is a the "chat" conversation I had with
them just now:

Live Chat with Support

My chat note to them:
Binaries are now being posted on a text based newsgroup:
alt.windows7.general, which is a violation of your policy (aka spamming).
Specifically, some idiot is now posting binaries on the alt.windows7.general
newsgroup now, and it just started this week. Can you take care of this,
please? TNX
William

Hello, my name is Jared. Thank you for contacting Giganews Support! One
moment while I take a look at your request, please.
I apologize for the trouble, but we do not monitor or regulate any of the
content on our servers and thus can not remove any content
Please let me know if you have any other questions for me
Jared

Even if it violates your policy?
William

Yes even if it does. We can not be responsible for any content put on our
servers. This is in part so that we can take no responsibility to any
content that may exist.
Jared

I just thought there were rules that had to apply, but I guess not. So there
is nothing I can do, and I can't report it as spam, either, I guess?
William

No, Im afraid not. I apologize for the inconvenience
Jared

Is there anything that I could report that would constitute abuse, or is
this just a free for all? That's disappointing to hear.
William

No there is not. I am sorry. We can not regulate anything or then we have to
regulate everything which would prevent us from offering access to multiple
types of content.
Jared

OK then, sorry to hear that. Thanks.
William

If you have any further questions or concerns, please let us know. Please
remember that Giganews Support is available 24/7 including holidays.
Bye for now
Jared
Thank you for contacting us.
Chat session disconnected.

Unbelievable! They offer the "service" of providing a server, and *that's
it*. Period. But alas, I guess it's just yet another sign of the times,
with respect to "Customer Service".
At least L. L. Bean still offers good quality customer service (and perhaps
a few others), but I guess that's about it, these days.

https://www.giganews.com/legal/aup.html

https://www.giganews.com/legal/tos_personal.html

It's not worded like normal ones.

Normal ones say "we will respond to legal actions",
meaning a subpoena for addresses will be honored, up
to the event horizon of the server. In some countries,
even with anonymized headers, there's a requirement to keep
addresses for around a month or so. The giganews makes no
mention of what happens if they're served by law enforcement.
Maybe the employees hide in the lunchroom and sing kumbaya.

Since your reseller is Earthlink, maybe you can ask them
about whether they have a front end to the service. If you've
been given a sort of "news.giganews.net" style address, then at
a guess, their reseller relationship is really a "hands-off" one.
And I cannot imagine a corporation using the reseller method,
to give a rats ass about what happens. The sole reason for using
the reseller option, is so maintenance is "Earthlink-staff-free".

My previous ISP used to run their own news servers. And they had
admins who rode shotgun. (I almost got TOSsed for forwarding
a spammy advert for running shoes, with my joke at the end of it.)
And their excuse when they canceled the service entirely, was
that paying admins was too much trouble. And they also didn't
give a price reduction because of the loss of that service.

Moves like this by facilities like Giganews, is primarily about
DMCA. For example, at least one of the servers changed how it
handled headers, making it harder for their "opponent" to file
automated DMCA takedowns with a robot. So they really have
gone "underground" in a sense, buggering the service so it can
serve binary content (which pays the bills), with the least
possible DMCA kickback (from robots).

*******

Would giganews care if the rest of USENET issued a UDP ?

They might.

And flooding a group, no matter how insignificant, is how
you get that UDP on the radar. That's the nuclear option.
That's when the CABAL gets its act together, which is
less and less likely as time passes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_Death_Penalty

It's up to the abuse address on the originating source, to
respond to complaints. The admins on the free servers, may
choose to not respond at all, at least initially. You'll
get a "not my problem". However, if a few million longish
message increase the bandwidth bill for them, the CABAL
email system will spring to life. Money talks.

Paul