By Ian Urie

Nowadays there is much talk about piracy and P2P networks. You may recognise some of them. Starting it off was Napster and Gnutella, with Kazaa coming into it as well. Further along we now have BitTorrent and its clones. The RIAA and MPAA are suing both networks and users to try and slow the growth down. They are being held back by the exponential rise of fast net connections. A film can be downloaded in an hour from a fast network and songs in a few seconds.

However, back in the days of analog modems and connections that were described as fast if they could manage 28k, there weren't any of these type of worries.

Users swapped material using either bulletin boards or newsgroups.They seem to have been forgotten about ....or have they?

In olden days , most ISPs might have a newsserver, but you could practically guarantee that they didn't have the binary newsgroups. And that's where all the files were. So, you either took out a subscription to Usenet or tried to find one of the free newservers that did have binaries.

As I said, times have changed. Most ISPs now carry a full newsfeed, including the binaries. So, what do you need to access them?

Well, you'd be better with a newsreader! Outlook Express just doesn't cut it, I'm afraid. Try Download. Com or any of the big freeware/shareware repositories and you'll find a plethora of newsreaders. Most can be had freely. On Windows, I used FreeAgent which was a cutdown version of Agent, surprisingly enough.

On Mandrake, I use Pan.

 

To show what was available, I subbed to a few music groups. There are groups linked to specific eras, different genres etc..

Downloading is as simple as clicking on a file and telling it where to save when the requester asks. Be prepared to google quite a bit , if you aren't conversant with lots of different filetypes. Although songs can come down as mp3s, they could also appear as flac, ape, ogg, or even as part of a rar archive or zip, and this is not a definitive list. Google is your friend in this case and there's lots of information about different players and converters/decoders on the net.

Now, music isn't the only thing available.... ...

You can also get games...............

all the porn in the world appears to be stashed here as well.....

And, of course, movies.

So, lots to search around in.

So, how do you get your sweaty little hands on all these goodies?

First, get yourself a newsreader!

Next, install it and put in your ISP's news settings. In most cases this will news.your-isp.co.uk. If it isn't, check your ISP's site. This will usually give all your settings. When you set up with your provider, they probably mailed you a list of settings.

Next, download the list of newsgroups available.......even on broadband, this can take a little while, especially if your ISP has a decent newserver. A likely total of groups is above 30000. Now, simply browse the groups available. Hopefully, your ISP will have a full newserver and will include the ones with attachments. A giveaway will be the name of the group, it will normally have binary in the name......

And that's it!

If your ISP doesn't have binary newsgroups, I'm afraid you're down to looking for free newservers, which can take quite a bit of time . On the other hand, use a decent ISP and you'll have one, or you could always take a package out with another ISP that does have a full service. Claranet, for instance, does a package that allows any user to access their newsserver. Download limits apply dependant on package taken.