downloading from newsgroups

which program is the best to download from newsgroups, i have tried uesnext & ultra leecher both which you have to pay for, i got to grips with usenext because it lets you subscribe to groups in the installation but no other one i tried did, any help would be good.

Thanks

 

Wrong forum; next down, I'd say. From what I hear, Grabit is a good free reader, As far as I know, Usenext is a server and I know of none that are free unless your ISP has one and then the retention is usually terrible. Look at Giganews, Powerusenet or Astraweb.

 

I'd suggest a program called Agent as your newsreader & a subscription to Giganews or another paid news provider.

 

In January 2006 I bought a block of 50GB of downloads
from Flashnewsgroups for about $20 or so. The thing I liked at
the time was that there was no time limit on the use.

Last week I got an email from them telling me I'd used it all and they
sent me a complete record of my downloads.

You may want to consider something like this if you're an occasional
user like myself.

 

Last week I got an email from them telling me I'd used it all and they
sent me a complete record of my downloads.

which will have been read by your isp no doubt.. XD

 

Of course not, for one thing it didn't identify the
downloads by name, (just date and quantity downloaded).
and secondly, I used my account at Yahoo, which is web-based.

 

depends where you are.. It's a guaranteed fact now in the UK that it will have been stored away against your ip for further reference any time they decide they want a hollywood payoff.

I only use web based email too.. doesn't make me trust governments and media businesses (isp's mainly) any more.

I'm waiting for the day the lawyers go after the newsgroup owners.. watch them squirm and hand over all the accounts and details of everybody who has ever paid them for content to avoid jail when they lose their millions of $$ spinning pirate empire. These newsgroup guys are real criminals.. they directly charge for stolen content.. there is no defence for the way they operate.

 

You make some interesting points. Let's face it, anytime
we download anything of questionable legality from anywhere,
we're putting ourselves at risk.

When the account I had was closed, they notified me that the account
itself had been deleted.

I took this to mean that they had deleted all the records, for our
mutual protection...

 

It's a perhaps tho Dave isn't it.. As people in business know.. for tax reasons accounts of financial transactions have to be kept for 10 years. Even if the company goes bust those papers go somewhere (I know because as MD of a business that went to the wall I was held accountable for supposed vat evasion 7 years after it ceased trading.. luckily I could prove I wasn't the last owner of it)

Comes down to a little matter of trust. Until ACTA gets foisted on everybody across the world (lets all move to North Korea and Iran everybody.. ACTA won't apply there) we get accused of being criminals when under the laws of our countries we have done nothing at all wrong.. nothing illegal about giving away something for free that you have. I can go in a shop and buy a second hand dvd and give it to somebody.. the movie cartel haven't "lost out" on a sale.. in the same way they haven't "lost out" when I rip that same dvd and give it away for free on the internet.... no crime.. none at all (imagined and invented is all it is.. no crime except by assumption.. and you can't "assume" a crime has been done.. there needs these days to be some actual proof)
But then we have the owners of these newsgroup servers.. full to the brim of content.. if it was free access it would be the same as given away .. shared.. non profit.. and in that grey area where it is legal in 90% of the world.. because criminal acts only happen when money is made.. and these guys are raking it in..
One day soon one of them will forget to give a kickback to the right law enforcement.. and then all peoples payment details will come out..

So I guess what I'm sayng is this.. do you trust people with information like credit card numbers (oh yeah.. people say "paypal" well that has to be linked to a bank account too nubs.. traceable right back to you) who are directly selling something for cash while people who are giving access to the same stuff (not even hosting it on their servers ffs.. just links to people like you and me and the kitchen sink) are getting fined millions and threatened with years in jail.. such stupid legal cases that people are being found guilty of things they weren't even charged with, which are still not actually statute crimes.. can you spell corruption?

Personally I don't trust criminals with my details.. anybody selling access to "copyright content" which they don't have legal title to is a pirate.. under the definition of the term under law.. a pirate.. somebody making a profit from the sale of stolen property.. and therefore a criminal..
Nah.. I wouldn't trust em as far as I could kick em..

 

Yes but there is plenty of non-copyrighted content on the servers
as well as the questionable stuff. Those that are in business
providing access to Usenet servers are not responsible for the
stuff being there.
I general, I think the policing
of the traffic has tended to concentrate on those making the
content available, not those downloading it.
(I once got a friendly notice from my ISP for posting a game to
Usenet, even though the game platform was defunct and was no longer
being sold)

Just as we had things to occupy ourselves before the internet,
we will do so again if it all comes crashing down. On the other hand,
from the hardware vendors perspective, I think it's been admitted
that most of the growth in PC requirements (bigger, faster
CPU, HDD, RAM requirements,etc,etc) have been driven mostly by
the rise of piracy. It helped their business model!