The Usenet alt.binaries.* newsgroups have been a haven for file trading since 1993, but never received much attention because of the learning curve and limitations of ISP’s Usenet feeds. Even if you manage to install a newsreader, locate your news server and figure out how to decode multipart attachments, there’s no guarantee that your ISP carries the binary newsgroups or has anything more than a day’s worth of files.
Easynews provides a web-based interface to the Usenet binaries archive, with roughly 40 days of retention for all groups. A staggering number of albums, software, movies, and images are posted daily to Usenet, decoded by Easynews, and placed for download from the Easynews website. $10 gets you six gigs of downloaded files per month, and it’s the best $10 I’ve spent in a long time. The free trial gives you a one gigabyte quota and three days to play around with the interface, which I highly recommend. My comments are inside.
July 26, 2003: The free trial is no longer available. They’re up to 10 GB/month for $10, though their retention is closer to 21 days as Usenet traffic increases. Still highly recommended.
With Times New Roman default text on a white background, it was clearly designed by a programmer. So don’t expect anything pretty. But what it lacks in design aesthetic, it makes up in sheer bulk. Unfortunately, you can’t search for files across all newsgroups, but you can search within a particular newsgroup, selectively flag ranges of files, and bundle multiple files into a single ZIP file for easy downloads.
Since most people have no experience with the Usenet newsgroups, I randomly selected files from some of my favorite newsgroups to give you a sense of its diversity. It’s like a giant Filepile, limited only by the collective interests of its participants. I’m interested in music, videos, and games, so that’s disproportionately represented. There are binary newsgroups devoted to subjects like the Simpsons (at least four episodes are posted every day), classic cars, oldtime radio, Gameboy ROMs, video game music, clip art, fine art, fractals, and every flavor of fetish you could imagine.
All MP3s listed are complete albums (singles are rarely traded on the newsgroups), and all videos are full-length movies. Keep in mind, the files listed below are only a fraction of the files posted within the last 24 hours. (Easynews keeps a backlog of around 40 days.)
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.indie
Oasis – Singles Collection
Plan 9 – Ham and Sam Jammin’
Sebadoh – III
Howie Gelb – Confluence
Pere Ubu – The Modern Dance
Shriekback – Oil and Gold
Dirty Three – Sharks EP
Rocket from the Crypt – Hot Charity
Swervedriver – 99th Dream
Mirah – Cold Cold Water EP
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.complete_cd
Green Day – Shenanigans
Pink Floyd – Meddle
John Williams – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Johnny Mathis – A Personal Collection
Little Richard – The Speciality Sessions
Barry Manilow – The Complete Collection
Beach Boys – Good Vibrations (5 CD box set)
Mr Scruff – Keep It Unreal
DJ Tiesto – Majik
Iron Butterfly – Metamorphosis
INXS – Kick
Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique
Abba – Abba Gold
Depeche Mode – X1 (Japanese import)
John Fogerty – Blue Moon Swamp
Korn – Untouchables
Morcheeba – Fragment of Freedom
Sarah Brightman – Eden
Ted Nugent – Out of Control (Box Set)
Stevie Ray Vaughan – In the Beginning
Frank Zappa – Strictly Commercial
Camp Lo – Uptown Saturday Night
Enya – Memory of Trees
alt.binaries.cd.image
3D Home Architext Deluxe
Rogue Spear – Black Thorn
Windows 2000 Server SP2
Unreal Tournament
Lindows
PC Anywhere 10.5
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000
Photodeluxe 4.0
Photoshop 7
Star Trek: Armada
Close Combat 4
Quark Xpress 5.0
Microsoft Office XP
alt.binaries.vcd
Lilo and Stitch
Minority Report
Windtalkers
The Hurricane
Dark Side of the Rainbow (cult film)
Dark City
Bourne Identity
National Lampoon’s Van Wilder
Can bootleg video
Panama Deception (documentary)
alt.binaries.movies.divx
Fritz the Cat (miscellaneous cartoons)
Stickmen (billiards documentary)
To Kill a Mockingbird
Kevin and Perry Go Large (UK teen comedy)
Dog Soldiers (Scifi Channel TV movie)
A Boy and His Dog
The Book of Pooh
The Sum of All Fears
Showtime
Pink Floyd’s The Wall
Bruce Lee’s Fists of Fury
Mean Streets
Slackers
It’s the best $10 I’ve ever spent.
an alternative to giganews that i can recommend to my non-technically inclined friends??? … hmm.
also: not having to deal with the stupid space-eating way that Forte Agent downloads files?
it might just be worth it… thx for the heads up.
that is some *damn* good retention. i think i’ve found a new provider for usenet.
screaming transfer speed too. 70-135 KBS! ok. i’ll stop littering this page with comments now.
again: thanks thanks thanks for the heads up.
hey that’s damn cool, I’ve been wondering what to do since Audiogalaxy gave up the ghost.
The download speeds are really good, which actually makes me worry that I would use more than 6 gigs a month of download. I used almost all of one gig today.
Hmmm
If I wasn’t too lazy to figure out the zip tool, would I be using less of the allocated download?
The ZipManager is more for your convenience than to conserve bandwidth. For example, if you’re downloading 15 tracks of an album or 45 parts of an MPEG, it’s much quicker to just bundle everything up into a single download. You might get a slightly smaller download, but not much, since damned near everything on Usenet is already compressed heavily.
Another great resource for usenet binaries content is at Usenet Binaries.
All very well, but BT is completely free with no restrictions…..
As a matter of fact, almost every respectable newsgroups service provider offer free access through a web interface these days. Newsfeeds.com has a good one that I’ve been using for years.
Just came across this page and wanted to comment. You actually can search all Usenet groups, its a new feature called the ‘Global Search’ and is available at http://members.easynews.com/global
As always, if you have questions regarding the service you can visit http://www.easynews.com/support – we are open 24/7/365 available via email, humanclick, secure SSL chat, and toll free telephone.