In article <0001HW.D197DC8A001BB7D7B02919BF@news-europe.giganews.com>,
Claymore <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:
> What's happened? I haven't seen any new posts for quite some time.
> Is it me? Is it Giganews? Grouse - are you out there?
I sure hope that Grouse is OK and that nothing bad has happened to him.
After all, so far he's only up to the letter D. :-0
A while back, Indexxer was saying something (ISTR) about being tired of
it all and intending to take a long break from posting. Or maybe even
retire? A pity, if so. Thanks for all the goodies, over the years.
There are also some external forces that have been drastically reducing
the amount of non-spam Usenet binaries traffic. A lot of people have
given up on the groups (which might be seen as old and boring and
low-tech these days) and have moved elsewhere (swarm, swarm). And
there are a number of copyright holders who employ packs of psychotic,
rabid law-school graduates to threaten and intimidate fils-sharers,
sometimes extorting money from them. Mostly Bittorrent, but also some
Usenet. (There's news in general at the torrentfreak.com web site, but
nothing about Usenet lately that I can remember. But you can do a
search there for "usenet" to find some old articles that will give you
the idea.) In general that has a "chilling effect", as they say, even
if only a small number of posters are directly hassled by it, because
the word gets out and a lot of other people decide to play it safe from
then on, and who can blame them? Who needs that huge hassle and
expense? I don't even *know* a lawyer, let alone have the money to pay
one to defend me in court.
In recent years, Usenet binaries groups have no longer been able to fly
under the radar. Our good old days hereabouts were, in fact, over long
ago. I think now it has become a matter of scrounging, taking what one
can get, and not expecting too much. It's just the way it goes.
Thanks again to all of the posters, as always.
> Let it be like yesterday
> Please let me have happy days
> Won't you tell me
> Where have all the good times gone?
Or ...
"Let a man come in and do the popcorn."
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