In article <jqqvnetgch3ou1vhq1li43lh4qhstd1504@4ax.com>,
SL <SerpentLord@Evil.Incarn8> wrote:
> It all came out in the wash. ;-)
That's good.
> binsearch seems to only search back a few(? I don't
> necessarily mean two ?) years.
I don't think it's a limit on the lookback time (I've found many things
there that are more than two or three years old), but the fact that
their database consists mostly of holes rather than entries. The same
is sometimes true of nzbindex.nl, but that one doesn't seem quite as
bad in *that* regard. However, nzbindex has only a very small list of
groups that it indexes, compared to binsearch, so it's often worthless
for that reason.
I suspect that one part of the problem is DMCA takedown requests.
Unfortunately, and IMO this is 100% stupid, a lot of laws, and/or a lot
of interpretations of laws by various courts in various places, say
that a link or pointer to a file is equivalent to the file and must be
taken down along with the file itself. So even an outfit like a Usenet
indexer that keeps *no* files anywhere is made a victim of the stupid
DMCA laws. There have been legal debates about whether the same thing
applies to web-searching engines. Some say yes, some say no. To me,
it's very clear-cut: any link anywhere is *not* ever a file. It's
merely a pointer, and it can't possibly infringe any copyright. But
try telling that to an ignorant fuckin' judge who has no idea WTF a
file is, WTF a link is, WTF a server is, or WTF Usenet is.
An analogy I like to use is that the stupid situation we've got now
with the laws and courts is as though I were to go around telling
people "Hey, folks, over at the northeast corner of First and Main
there's a guy giving away ripped copies of CDs and DVDs out of the
trunk of his car, so go over there and grab a few" ... and then I get
busted and put on trial for distributing pirated discs, just because
I've provided a pointer to them! Does that make any sense?
But I also don't think that takedowns are the only problem with
binsearch and nzbindex. I think they both just blow goats.
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