> But as a commercial matter, you could not; if you didn't have binary groups, you weren't offering real Usenet (and if your binary feeds weren't ultra-reliable, you were offering shitty Usenet).
None of the ISPs I had from the mid '90s through 2010 ever had reliable binary news feeds. Most would be missing too many articles, or articles would expire within hours and the download could never be reassembled.
Anyone who really wanted binaries started using paid services and just use their ISPs usenet feed for text discussion.
This is exactly my point. It's why Usenet consolidated and then died: because smaller firms lost the ability to provide the whole service, which was overwhelmingly abused as a file sharing network.
None of the ISPs I had from the mid '90s through 2010 ever had reliable binary news feeds. Most would be missing too many articles, or articles would expire within hours and the download could never be reassembled.
Anyone who really wanted binaries started using paid services and just use their ISPs usenet feed for text discussion.