It looks like the world’s largest ISP, America Online, is going to cut off access to Usenet newsgroups. Usenet, the 25-year-old distributed online conferencing system, was one of the foundations of many users’ experience of “virtual community.” It’s also extremely hard to censor.

From Brian McWilliams’s column at Betanews:

According to a notice on AOL’s Web site, the newsgroup shut-off will occur in February, severing subscribers from the thousands of discussion groups that make up Usenet….

The Usenet dates back to around 1980. Now that blogs and instant messaging have supplanted older Internet technologies such as newsgroups and IRC, it’s unlikely that AOL users will create much of an uproar over the decision. But the event nonetheless represents a milestone in Internet history….

I can’t pretend to know whether AOL’s decision prefigures some kind of “imminent death” of Usenet. That will depend on what other ISPs do. But I do know that if Usenet ever does die, my sadness won’t be assuaged even a little by the thought that my more intemperate contributions to flame wars will disappear. No such luck. Some high percentage of those vituperations have been preserved by Google, and will haunt me forever.

—–