Newsgroups, fill me in.

[android6011]

I just recently started checking into the whole news groups thing. I discovered that my ISP has a newsgroup server that is pretty decent as far as capability and all that goes. While looking into news groups I learned a lot about the whole downloading thing etc so I just have a few questions:

1) Is everything I see listed in thunderbird (messages files etc) hosted by my ISP, but just posted by users?
2) What is a good client for reading newsgroups, not downloading files related
3) If I do decide there is a file or something I want, where exactly is the nzb pulling the file parts from? My ISPs server? Wouldn't they notice if there were illegal files on there and be more concerned?

Thanks guys.

[fishtoprecords]

newsgroups, aka usenet, were text bases discussion groups, going back into the 80s. These days, everyone uses silly web based "forums" like this one.

They are cooperative, each host decides which groups to accept and what rules are used for posting. Most folks don't know anything about them, and ISPs have typically forgotten them.

As everyone moved to web forums, the talk/text based communications nearly died out. And then folks noticed that you can post porn and cracked applications in the binary groups, using simple encoding.

Google for newgroup readers, there are zillions of them.

[Mal]

In terms of text discussions, use forums instead (as mentioned above). ISPs know about the illegal binaries, but as a provider, they try not to touch it in order to protect themselves from libel and whole load of other legal problems. You should probably stay away from using them for binaries, there's too much pressure being placed on ISPs for access to their log files.