Many of you, myself included, are subscribers of a Usenet newsgroup service provider of one name or another. However, Giganews is usually the one most choose due to its lengthy data retention period of some 500 days.

If that wasn’t enough, for a limited time only Giganews‘ “Diamond” package includes an additional FREE VPN service.

Called VyprVPN, the service is part of a collaboration with Golden Frog, a “new global software developer from the creators of Giganews.”

Users will be able to encrypt their true IP address and protect themselves from the prying eyes of identity thieves, hackers, or especially irate copyright holders.

VyprVPN works by:

• Replacing your IP address with a VyprVPN IP from one of our many worldwide VPN Clusters
• Encrypting all of your Internet traffic (including web, e-mail, instant message, and newsgroup traffic) between your computer and the VyprVPN Cluster

VyprVPN encrypted tunneling provides you with:

• Private web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, newsgroup reading, and more — totally secure from ISP, wireless or neighborhood eavesdropping
• The ability to choose a US or European online identity
• Protection from data snooping and identity theft on public Wi-Fi hotspots, iPhones, PDAs, and cable Internet
• The same access to all of your favorite applications you enjoy today

It’s really not a bad deal if you’re already a Giganews subscriber or are looking for a reason to jump ship.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

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ALSO READ: How to Download From Newsgroups

*Post Updated 1/1/10: Retention time changed from 400 to 500 days.

The Usenet community Fill Threads Database (FTD), the Netherlands’ largest, first sued Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN back in May of this year over inflammatory accusations made by BREIN president Tim Kuik to a Dutch newspaper

“Although they [FTD] are not carrying illegal content on their servers, what FTD does is simply criminal,” he said.

FTD responded by suing for a retraction of the libelous statement by Kuik and demanding that the courts declare their activities legal.

Not be outdone, BREIN countersued, arguing that FTD is a “criminal operation” that “organizes and promotes” (mostly) illegal Usenet content, and that unless it closes it wants a penalty of 50,000 euros ($70,000) per day imposed until it does.

“With terms like ‘Access Key’ and ‘directions’ BREIN tries to cover up what really matters: ordinary Dutch people reporting what they see on Usenet, so that others (legally, for own use) to download,” now says FTD’s attorney Arnoud Engelfriet. “There is no providing hyperlinks, torrents, NZB-files or other technical possibilities to download works. BREIN basically says that it should be forbidden to talk about downloading material.”

FTD is rightly angry that BREIN is going to such great lengths to stifle mere discussions of possibly downloading copyrighted material, and so should us all.

Imagine if simple bulletin boards and discussion sites, or even the forums here at ZP for that matter, were found to be complicit for mentioning where to find copyrighted material as is currently the case when people mention their favorite BitTorrent tracker sites, etc..

It’s scary to say the least.

Stay tuned

For a guide on Usenet check out my guide “How to Download from Newsgroups.“

jared@zeropaid.com

Verizon is the latest ISP to discontinue newsgroup access following a “landmark agreement” reached last year with NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to “shut down major sources of online child pornography.”

Starting September 30th it will join ISPs AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint in eliminating free Usenet access, specifically to the alt.bin and alt.bain newsgroup hierarchies that provide actual data files, in order to fight child pornography.

Oddly enough, Verizon makes no reference to fighting child pornography in its reason for discontinuing newsgroup service, saying instead that it has to do with reduced demand.

From Verizon:

Newsgroups were initially developed as a text-based way to share information on the Internet. Today, demand for newsgroups is much lower, since most users have switched to more exciting ways of getting and sharing information via the Web, such as social networks, email and sites such as our Verizon Central Newsroom.

Because of the reduced demand for newsgroups, on September 30, 2009, Verizon will discontinue its USENET newsgroup service. Subscribers will not be able to post or download material from the Verizon newsgroup service after this date.

It’s probably not a big deal for most because true blue newsgroup users subscribe to dedicated services like Giganews for their Usenet access.

Either way, it’s another example of ISPs offering you less while charging you the same price or more.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

[Hat Tip]

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FYI Giganews is offering several special pricing options to affected Verizon customers:
•       50% off for 3 months of Giganews’ most popular, unlimited Diamond Plan.
•       20% off for 3 months of your choice of other Giganews plans, ranging from value to premium plans

For added reference here’s a few links:

• Giganews
• How to Download from Newsgroups
• How to Configure a Newsreader
• Newsgroup Reviews (prices/reviews)

Thanks to pressure from NY Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, AT&T will soon join ISPs Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint in eliminating free Usenet access, specifically to the alt.bin and alt.bain newsgroup hierarchies that provide actual data files, in order fight child pornography.

“The pervasiveness of child pornography on the Internet is horrific and it needs to be stopped,” said Attorney General Cuomo in a press release from last year following the agreement.  “We are attacking this problem by working with Internet Service Providers to ensure they do not play host to this immoral business.  I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry.”

This new “model” begins next Wednesday, July 15th, for AT&T and means Usenet users will have to begin seeking an alternative if they want to continue downloading actual content.

“Please note that on or around July 15, 2009, AT&T will no longer be offering access to the Usenet Netnews service,” reads a post on AT&T’s Usenet site. “If you wish to continue reading Usenet newsgroups, access is available through third-party vendors.”

That last part reiterates the idiocy of AG Cuomo’s efforts. All he’s really doing is forcing people to purchase 3rd party premium Usenet services like Giganews. The creeps who traffic child porn will just pony up the $3 to $30 bucks a month and go on with their lives, resulting in a probable net zero effect on the trafficking of child porn. The lack of free child porn certainly won’t deter them, and it’s pretty disheartening to learn an educated man like AG Cuomo thinks it will.

“AT&T takes its obligation to protect its customers from child pornography very seriously,” adds AT&T in a message on its Usenet’s “system status” page. “We’re working with public officials and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the effort to help prevent the distribution of this harmful and illegal content.”

It really had to begin discontinuing free Usenet access to alt.bin and alt.bain because it couldn’t effectively filter child porn. After AG Cuomo uncovered “88 different Newsgroups that contained a total of 11,390 sexually lewd photos featuring prepubescent children, and in some cases photos of children being raped and sexual activity involving animals” the writing was on the wall.

“While we will continue to provide access to newsgroups as part of our Internet Service Offerings, we will no longer include alt.bin nor alt.bain hierarchies because of the possibility of child pornography in those particular groups and the difficulty in ensuring that no child porn reappears in them.”

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

______________________

NEED AN ALTERNATIVE USENET PROVIDER?

The one preferred by most is Giganews, myself included, for it has more data, or “binary retention” (365), available than any other Usenet provider. It even boasts that Usenet members upload more than 5TB of new discussions and content on a daily basis.

Others include:

• Binverse
• PowerUsenet
• NewsDemon
• Newshosting
• NewsgroupDirect
• UseNetServer

]]> http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86599/att-quits-free-usenet-access-july-15th/feed/ 24 http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86516/how_to_download_from_newsgroups/ http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86516/how_to_download_from_newsgroups/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:54:34 +0000 Jared Moya http://www.zeropaid.com/?p=86516 An easy-to-use reference guide for those looking to get started with Usenet newsgroups.

Usenet is one of the oldest computer network communications still in use, having been first conceived way back in 1979 by a pair of Duke University graduate students to basically post messages as a sort of public bulletin board system.

As I’m sure you’re aware it’s evolved greatly since then, a way having been devised to encode data into the same ASCII character set used to previously post simple text messages.

See in the diagram below how the process works, moving from the original content file, be it a .ISO, .AVI, .XVID, file etc. to the final, encoded pieces ready for upload to a newsgroup server. A newsgroup describes the hierarchies that messages are posted in, of which there are 8 major hierarchies referred to as the “Big Eight” (comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, and talk).

Now to access newsgroup servers and to “read” or download messages or content we first need to do a few things. It’s pretty straightforward, and may actually cause some of you to switch over from BiTorrent considering the security issues associated with the oftentimes open nature of a BitTorrent swarm.

1. Usenet Newsgroup Service Provider

Some ISPs offer very basic access for free. However, many ISPs in the U.S., such as Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, and AT&T, have stopped offering any sort of newsgroup or usenet access.

Prices range from $3 to $30 p/mo, each service having a variety of pros and cons to take into consideration. Some have data caps others offer transport layer security (TLS) encryption. Data retention, the number of days articles are stored on a news server before being deleted must also be considered.

The one preferred by most is Giganews, myself included, for it has more data, or “binary retention” (365), available than any other Usenet provider. It even boasts that Usenet members upload more than 5TB of new discussions and content on a daily basis.

Others include:

• Binverse
• PowerUsenet
• NewsDemon
• Newshosting
• NewsgroupDirect
• UseNetServer

For a review of different sites, pricing, etc. visit Anchordudes and Newsgroup Reviews.

2. Newsreader

A newsreader is an application that allows you to “read” newsgroup articles on Usenet. There are several types, of which the text type, like Outlook Express or Mozilla’s Thunderbird, is only usable for reading/posting text, and others like the binary grabber type, such as Grabit or Newsbin, which are for downloading binary content.

Alt.binz (free) is the one I’m currently using, but there are a number to choose from. Some are free and some require purchase, the pay ones offering advanced features, upgrades, etc..

• Newsbin Pro ($35.00)
• Newsleecher ($19.99)
• Grabit (free)
• Pan (free)
• Xnews (free)

3. Usenet Indexing Sites

Now we need to be able to find content in the newsgroups to download. The easiest way is to use Usenet indexing sites which do just that, indexing newsgroup posts so that you can browse or search by keyword for a particular piece of content.

Some, like Newzbin for example, are private and require an invite, and some require basic registration.

• NZBMatrix (free, reg)
• Binsearch.info (free, no reg)
• MerlinsPortal.net (free, reg)
• Newzbin.com (paysite)
• Newzleech (free, no reg) – considered the best free site around
• Ngindex (paysite)
• Nzb.to (free, reg)
• NZBIndex (free, no reg)
• NZBs’R'US (free, reg)
• Nzbrus (free, reg)
• Prettyboo (free, reg)
• YabSearch (free, no reg)

(There’s also a program called NZBLeecher which allows you to search multiple indexing sites simultaneously)

What now?

So you’ve done all three steps, have begun browsing for content, and now want to know what to do. All you have to do is configure the newsreader to connect to whatever newsgroup service provider you’ve chosen, presumably a subscription one, with the login information they send you after registration. The last thing to do is to simply open the a .NZB file associated with the content you’re trying to download.

I’ll go over this process with more detail in my next guide, and will show you step-by-step how to configure a newsreader and download content.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

A quick note: It has been reported that a number of ISP’s are ending their UseNet services. If none of the articles are downloading, chances are, your ISP has discontinued their newsgroup services.

Intro
Why UseNet?

Usenet has become important to many who download content for a number of years, yet few know the potential of newsgroups. Some today may think, ‘well, I use BitTorrent and I get everything I want at max speeds. I don’t need anything else!’ Well, that may be all fine and true, but for some, a share ratio has always been a nagging issue. It’s probably important to note that even if you don’t use BitTorrent, UseNet offers a very useful resource to get content. For BitTorrent users, on Usenet, there’s no share ratio, yet it’s quite easy to max out your connection speed downloading. How is that possible?

How does UseNet Work?

Wikipedia explains, “Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers which store and forward messages to one another. These servers are loosely connected in a variable mesh. Individual users usually read from and post messages to a local server operated by their ISP, university or employer. The servers then exchange the messages between one another, so that they are available to readers beyond the original server.”

So basically, in a way, it’s like the eDonkey2000 network where there is a number of servers that hold the network together. The difference, of course, is the fact that users are downloading directly off of the servers instead of downloading from each other.

Users can post something on what is known as newsgroups. Each group is basically a “discussion”. The discussion is a hierarchy and the most well known major hierarchy is the ‘alt.binaries’ ‘Alt’ stands for Alternative. The discussions can continue down the line like ‘alt.binaries.music’, ‘alt.binaries.tv’, ‘alt.binaries.tv.FamilyGuy’, etc. Think of it like a file path on your computer – it’s generally the same idea.

The messages on the servers propagate to different servers around the world so everyone has access to what is being “discussed” This is one way that UseNet is decentralized.

So what is an NZB file?

An NZB file operates a lot like a .torrent file. It points to a file or number of files on the usenet network. With a newsreader, an application that reads the newsgroups, one can simply open the NZB file and the newsreader will then find the files on Usenet and download the files from UseNet.

Connecting
OK, what do I need to know to connect?

It is entirely possible that your ISP doesn’t offer UseNet, but most ISPs do offer UseNet. The easiest way to find out is via a Wiki on NewzBin that shows pretty much every ISP around the world what the respective situation is on UseNet from the ISP. If you’re going to connect to UseNet, these graphs offer critical information to connecting to UseNet.

How can I connect then?

You’re newsreader will allow you to actually connect to the network. While there are a number of newsreaders available, it’s recommended that you use Grabit (no adware/spyware/malware). Once you install and configure it, you’ll probably see something like this when you open the program:

1. This will show the servers you use to connect to.

2. A nice feature that can tell you how much space you have left on your hard drive.

3. The ‘Batch’ tab will show you what you’re downloading and how many connections you have, etc.

Right away, you’ll want to click on ‘My Grabit’ that shares the same space as the ‘1.’ in it and click ‘add server’

In the above screen that pops up, just add th server name in the two places denoted as ‘1.’ and hit ‘ok’ The port number should be fine in most cases.

Downloading
Where do I get my NZB’s now?

There are a number of websites that offer NZB files. For the purpose of this guide, we’ll stick to an NZB search engine that scans UseNet for files and conveniently puts them into NZB files for us for now. This would be known as Binsearch. Unlike a number of other sites, Binsearch doesn’t index the NZB files, but it does create them for easy access. Simply do a search for what you want.

When you have found something you want, pay attention to the column on the far right that says ‘Age’. This will correspond with the retention you are allowed via ISP which can be measured in a mere few days. It’s important to remember that Usenet is like a river, there’s so many files going through the system that it’s impossible to keep them all. Eventually, files will get deleted from your provider strictly for the purpose of saving space and bandwidth. If the age is longer then your allotted retention on your service, you won’t get the file because it was already deleted off of the servers you can connect to.

Whatever you searched for, make an effort to try and find the release with ‘par’ or ‘par2′ files. While they also take up space, they are absolutely vital while downloading from UseNet in this fashion. More on that later. Tick the item you want and click on the ‘create NZB file. Now open that file with Grabit.

Number of Connections and Downloading

When Grabit opens the NZB, simply click on ‘Grab’ and the file will start downloading.

1. Number of connections

2. Area where your download will appear.

The ISP information directory will tell you how many connections you are allowed to have at a time, though this number is not known for every ISP. If all you see is a question mark next to how many connections you can have next to your ISP, the only thing you can do is experiment through trial and error. For example, if you have three connections, tick off 3. Setting the newsreader to download with the maximum connections will allow you to download more quickly – often allowing you to download at your modem limit.

You’re download will appear in the area occupied in the ‘2.’ area. The number of downloads in the “job” is merely the number of “lines” there are in the respective download. The release will download in whatever the download directory you set your client to download into.

Opening Files
Par Files

As you may have noticed, what you download is actually multiple files, even if it was suppose to be one file you were actually after. While there are multiple Rar and similar files, look in the folder (which should be named after either the nzb file or newsgroup) for some par or par2 files. These are what you’ll be needing to repair the release. The reason the release needs to be repaired is that there is a very good chance that the release was damaged at some point in the process.

To use the Par2 files, download and install QuickPar. Quickpar will take the Par files and repair the release if there is any damage. It’s usually a good idea to check the release before attempting to unpack it. For a more detailed guide on using QuickPar, check out the Binaries4All tutorial.

Rar and .r01, .r02, etc. Files

The release is separated into partial files. the reason for this is because there is a limited amount a release can have on a line. When a release is longer then one line, it’ll be split into multiple files. To make reassembly easier, the files are split into ‘.r01′, ‘r02′, etc. files. If you have WinRar installed on your system (demo or full), you can simply right click on the first part and click to extract the file. WinRar will reassemble the files into the release in it’s original form.

Download Quota’s

Many ISPs employ a binary quota. This means that there is a limit to how much you can download. The information is available on the NewzBin documentation site.

Troubleshooting
All I got were a bunch of text files, what’s going on?

This is probably one of the most common issues with using UseNet. If you got nothing but a bunch of blank text files, chances are, the files were removed from the server (typically because the retention ran out) The easiest thing to do is simply try and find a post that is newer and try again. Otherwise, you may be out of luck.

QuickPar says that I need more repair blocks still. Can I get more?

If you don’t have enough repair blocks, you can hope that the par files were posted separately. There is the occasion when using binsearch that a number of Par files were posted separately. Be warned though, sometimes those pars are for a different release and won’t work on the particular release you have downloaded. It’s not usually possible to find this though and you may not be able to repair the file, causing the whole download batch to be useless.

I can’t get what I’m looking for. Are there any other servers I can connect to for a longer retention time? / My ISP doesn’t offer UseNet, can I still use UseNet?

It may be possible to find a public server, but it’s unlikely it’ll be very good. This is why many users buy in to premium news services. The retention is far longer and the quota’s can even be unlimited. Unfortunately, this costs money. A few commonly recommended premium news services are GigaNews, EasyNews, UseNet Server and news.astraweb. While it may look strange to some to pay for such services, thousands do swear by premium news services.