Usenet NEWS vs. Bittorrent

Sun Jul 6 06:27:44 CDT 2008

--- On Sun, 7/6/08, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com> wrote:

> But anyway, USENET News was never designed to be a
> porn/warez/stolen media warehouse.

Neither was E-mail, Bittorrent, the World Wide Web, etc.

> The fact that it's been hijacked into one shows how 
> far gone this tech is.  :)

And if being "hijacked" by porn/warez/stolen media distributors was a good enough reason to discard a technology, then we should discard E-mail, Bittorrent, the World Wide Web, etc.

Pornography is the reason we have such wide acceptance of most media technology, because "fringe" businesses often adopt new technology long before the mainstream, and the markets these fringe businesses create are then exploited by mainstream businesses.

Hollywood initially freaked about VCRs and even tried to pass laws banning their use.  VHS wouldn't be popular without the porn industry creating a market of video stores and VCR owners, ready-made for the cautious Hollywood to exploit without having to risk anything.  The same happened with the DVD format, with the pornographic industry pioneering a market of DVD stores and DVD players in private homes, which was then commandeered by Hollywood as well.  Usenet News and E-Mail became public knowledge when porn started getting distributed through them, and the World Wide Web would not be the modern business arena it is today without the pioneering efforts of the porn industry to implement methods of credit card payments online.

Ironically the presence of pornography in Usenet NEWS is more of an indicator of how well it is doing, not "how far gone it is".  If people weren't using it then there would be no porn.

Historical Trivia: Gutenberg's Printing Press was originally used almost exclusively for religious tracts and Bibles, which had a very limited but safe market.  The first best-sellers printed on Gutenberg presses for the common man?  Pornographic books of erotic drawings and erotic sonnets, complete with the Pope slapping the early equivalent of "warning labels" (i.e., "sales boosters") on all of them.  Literary historians credit the early pornographic printed literature industry with developing the conventions used in the book format known as the "novel", and of course while "Pamela" was the first novel, the best-known "first" novel was the second novel, "Fanny Hill."