Sharing Usenet access?

[velatire]

Me and a friend of mine are wondering if we could both be connected to a giganews from different IPs at the same time. Giganews costs $30 a month, and we want multiple connections, SSL, and the long retention rate, but separately wouldn't use all of the bandwidth. (And we are both strapped for cash)

Also, we really don't know how usenet works.

[Donkeyfumbler]

No you can't. I don't know of any usenet provider who will allow you to use machines on two different IP's. This is to prevent people doing exactly what you are attempting to do (share accounts) for obvious reasons.

If you don't know how to use usenet then check the guides out here at Slyck

[SlyckTom]

This is from the usenet server Terms of Service. It's probably against Giganews' policy as well. If you break your promise to them, they reserve the right to terminate your service.

The Customer agrees not to share their username and password with any third party.

Plenty of folk do, however. They can't cut you off based on an inconsistent IP address...you'd get booted every time you reboot.

[towerblocks]

http://www.hitnews.eu/english/ allow you to share accounts

[Paladwyn]

No, Giganews does not allow to share, except on one IP address. I doubt they would really ever dump somebody due to sharing, since only one person can be on at a time, but if they were ever looking for a reason to boot you, then they could use this.

[BlockNews]

While sharing with a buddy seems like it would be OK, the question would come up, where does it end? Before you know it, one buddy turns into 2, 3, 4, and even more. You could multiply this by many subscribers doing this and you can see that things could start to be expensive, with fewer subscribers. Realize, I am not trying to single you out, cause I am sure you and your friend have simply the intentions you asked about, but you have to understand that there are plenty who would love to combine 5 or 6 Usenet accounts down to one splitting the cost between several individuals. I hate using the all you can eat buffet example, but what would the owners say if you attempted to bring someone in with you and simply said you both would just like to split the cost of one?

[king8654]

They obv have some limit to users, b/c then it would become a rapidshare kinda site just posting links and user name and passwords, and becoming outta control.

[kocoman]

I am sharing too, as long as both of you are in the 'same' network, ie: both in the same city and ISP it should be ok. you can't have like one in USA and the other Canada and the other in Africa, that will set off alarms.

[LD50%]

VPN........... people............ VPN...............

[enigmax]

I hate using the all you can eat buffet example, but what would the owners say if you attempted to bring someone in with you and simply said you both would just like to split the cost of one?

Well, the analogy doesn't quite fit because you're saying that 2 people are eating at once. With a shared news account, only one person can 'eat' at a time. If that person is allowed to 'eat' 24 hours a day (as much as he likes too), what difference does it make who is at the keyboard, as long as they don't use the service for more than 24 hours a day?..after all, that's what was paid for...

You have to expect that your customers are mostly file-sharers...and you just know they love sharing - accounts too

[Paladwyn]

I hate using the all you can eat buffet example, but what would the owners say if you attempted to bring someone in with you and simply said you both would just like to split the cost of one?

Well, the analogy doesn't quite fit because you're saying that 2 people are eating at once. With a shared news account, only one person can 'eat' at a time. If that person is allowed to 'eat' 24 hours a day (as much as he likes too), what difference does it make who is at the keyboard, as long as they don't use the service for more than 24 hours a day?..after all, that's what was paid for...

You have to expect that your customers are mostly file-sharers...and you just know they love sharing - accounts too

My thoughts precisely. Though I do understand what the rules are, and why they want them, if two people are using it, they want to get paid for two people using it, regardless on how much the account is used. Another thing they could have issues with is the whole identity thing. If four people are using the account and somebody downloads somehting stupid, the blame then falls on the account holder, use the arguement of "I wasn't the one using the account", and then you just breached your terms.

However, in the end...if you are filesharing, you are walking the line anyways

[blackmesa8]

i've heared that http://www.ngroups.net/ doesn't seem to notice if you share your acount with them as long as you dont both download from it at the same time.

So get an acount with them and work out with your friend when u both download from it and make sure its not at the same time and you shouldn't get noticed.
Ngroups.net use highwinds-media servers so they have 2 server farms one in the US and one in europe both with 100 day retention i also find there servers very reliable. Chance of them both going wrong at same time is small so reliability will be high.

Blackmesa8

[gorlov]

i've heared that http://www.ngroups.net/ doesn't seem to notice if you share your acount with them as long as you dont both download from it at the same time.

So get an acount with them and work out with your friend when u both download from it and make sure its not at the same time and you shouldn't get noticed.
Ngroups.net use highwinds-media servers so they have 2 server farms one in the US and one in europe both with 100 day retention i also find there servers very reliable. Chance of them both going wrong at same time is small so reliability will be high.

Blackmesa8

We don't allow account sharing, and are regularly disabling users where we find that the account has been shared.
It's true that it's sometimes difficult to determine, but we routinely analyze the usage behavior for accounts which has a high traffic, and there are many ways to determine if an account is shared besides which IP it's used from.
There is a reason accounts can't be shared - and the result if the practice gets widespread is that the fees must be higher for everybody. The margins are extremely low for "unlimited" accounts, and we as well as every other privider are having a "reasonable personal use" clause in our ToS.
We *do* allow sharing of metered accounts, and our Block accounts at Usenet-News, but not the "unlimited" accounts, for obvious reasons.

-GoL
.

[enigmax]

I get worried when ISPs and news providers put the word "unlimited" in quotation marks....it's almost as if they they're trying to say that in some instances, it might not be

Seriously though, I understand your difficulty with this account sharing, but this isn't really about sharing accounts is it? Isn't it more about excessive bandwidth use? I have a news account that I share with 4 or 5 other people. They would never have subscribed because they only use it just once every now and again and between us, we don't go anywhere near the "unlimited" package fair use....so is that acceptable or unacceptable? I'm not sure I understand the criteria

[HalOfBorg]

I see this as another good reason for 'block download' purchases. You buy 'X' amount of DL, and then why would they care WHO/WHERE uses it - as long as only on person at a time, unless they say otherwise.

[gorlov]

I get worried when ISPs and news providers put the word "unlimited" in quotation marks....it's almost as if they they're trying to say that in some instances, it might not be

Seriously though, I understand your difficulty with this account sharing, but this isn't really about sharing accounts is it? Isn't it more about excessive bandwidth use? I have a news account that I share with 4 or 5 other people. They would never have subscribed because they only use it just once every now and again and between us, we don't go anywhere near the "unlimited" package fair use....so is that acceptable or unacceptable? I'm not sure I understand the criteria

I put "unlimited" in quotation marks to make it clear that it really isn't unlimited within the full meaning of the word. It's just become the industry standard name for what's in the long form would be "Unlimited downloads for reasonable personal use by the account holder and no one else", or something like that. Meaning you can download as much as you want, as long as it's only for your own personal use, (not commercial use, and personal in the meaning you can reasonable use it... to download 50 DVD movies per month isn't really reasonable), not feeding a news server or news caching server, not sucking whole newsgroups indiscriminately, etc... and not sharing the account with anybody else, since the usage then will be higher than you would have had otherwise. (No matter if that's high or low.)
It's all a matter of basic economics 101 - the average usage for all users must stay below a certain level, or the price must go up. In practice, the low usage users are sponsoring the high usage users. If all low usage users would share accounts, there would be no low usage users to sponsor the high usage users, the average would rise, and the price would have to be increased.
If there weren't a not insignificant percentage of accounts with very low usage level, the whole thing wouldn't work. A lot of users are in practice a pure loss - we can lose 3-4 times what the monthly fee is on some high usage users. In some cases our cost for a user who pays us $15 a month may be $70-$90... that wouldn't work if there weren't a higher number of users who only cost us $7-$9 per month, or less.
You can't remove the low usage users from the equation, then the whole system topples over.

I would recommend any low usage users who want to share accounts to look at our block options at Usenet-News. In many cases that option may be cheaper for you.

-GoL

[NewzSurfer]

I agree with some of the previous comments about whats really important to the providers. Its usage. All of these providers have to pay for the transfer of the bits from their servers to our desktops.

No provider cares if you are sharing your account with your friends/colleagues/family as long as the group isn't abusing the service in total. When it becomes unfair to the provider in terms of total bandwidth consumed is when they are obviously going to have an issue.

I have never subscribed to anything "unlimited" and expected to receive a totally "unlimited" amount of anything. Obviously there are limits to everything. No provider would allow you to consume 100 terabytes of data daily, even if you are doing it over one IP address. Anytime you buy something from someone, would you really want them to lose money on your purchase? Wouldn't you rather the whole system work as its supposed to? They make a small margin and you get a good quality product in return?

As I have posted before, I am a Newsdemon.com homer. I have had good service with their company, I get a good price, and their technical support team has been awesome. One of their live support techs told me that almost 75% of their total bandwidth is consumed by less than 5% of their users. He said that if it weren't for those users, they could lower the price of unlimited accounts by 50%.

I am not a horde. I try to treat my internet usage the same way I eat. I get enough to fill me up, then I move away from the table. No need to eat it just because its there.