As binary retention increases due to the ever decreasing price of storage, the popularity of newsreaders as a method of obtaining information is increasingly becoming a mainstream resurgence. A few years ago I used programs such as MIRC in which bots would spam bits of messages corresponding to different file parts. To obtain the files one would have to connect to the server by typing in an obscure command, wait in the queue, and request the file, and doing so for each part of the file. There often would not be any overhead in file checksums, so that damaged files and missing pieces would be impossible to find. In the current decade, as new laws are being passed to counteract digital file sharing, the importance of usenet in becoming the next bittorrent is surely becoming mainstream, but not without its risks.
The providers today offer an excellent service in regards to security in that connections are made using 256 bit SSL and so that usernames and passwords as well as the file transmission is encoded. This encryption dependent on the length of your password would take a large corporation around 1 month to decrypt assuming the password is length 8. If the password is 64 characters or longer, it would be even longer to the point that it does not become worthwhile to do so. If you compare this to bittorrent, you are sharing files by connecting to each others IP addresses, whether anonomysed or not, and currently the speed decrease for the former is so much that it becomes unusable, the fact is that connecting without a peer blacklist in the future for well seeded files would be extremely risky. Using Tor, one can use an encrypted and anonomysed network, but this is extremely slow. The alternative is to use remote cloud computing services such as remote downloading or a remote linux terminal, but the end file transfer is still necessary and could still be traced to your current IP.
The future may hold services that make it possible to not have to install an operating system at all, such as with the Google OS. The internet will need to speed up significantly in order to make this a possibility, and an increasing trust in keeping your files and documents online. With the recent Facebook chat privacy hole and the Gmail outages, I would say that this is not going to be here for at least a few years or around 2015.
The one thing that will dramatically increase the speed of computers now, is the storage. The previous bottleneck was the internet speed, on dialup 56k connections it was plain impossible to see how large files could be transferred using a method other than HTTP. Today, a large, cheap non-volatile memory, would speed up computers to no end. Usenet servers are benefiting from the decrease cost in storage resulting in ever increasing binary retention rate. NewsDemon offers 608 days, and Giganews offers 638 days and counting. This is a long shot from a decade ago where the average length was a mere 30 days for text and less for binary files. This means that news servers never have to press the delete key again as day by day they can accomodate the gigabytes of extra storage that is stored.
File verification is another point to touch upon, the bittorrent system uses a checksum for each file part, and alternatively for transferring large files via external servers uses parity files. The mathematics of parity files is incredible in that it is able of correcting errors based on any missing piece or pieces. As well as SFV, the file is usually wrapped in a rar with a small percentage of recovery record, as such the overhead is enough to protect the integrity of the file contents. As the code transmission will never be perfect, and as algorithms improve the file verification is superior to just the CRC which the BT system provides.
The major and single foremost risk involved in transferring files using usenet, is that the larger providers are likely to hold logs, and then use them against you if a government requested. Therefore it is better choosing second best or a not well known provider to minimise this security risk. There are also cases of spiders and index sites being requested to provide information too, even though there is no link between what information they actually provide to the users, they are merely holding the signposts.
The major risk in usenet access becoming redudant itself is the trend that it is no longer being used as much in universities and ISPs no longer provide them, so there is an increasing reliance on privatised providers. For example, google groups provides over 700 million postings from the past 20 years from within an internet browser, so that text retention is becoming redundant for old hosts.
In conclusion, the factors that are going to be influential in the future of usenet is the users needs and the pace of change of technology in the next few years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_file_verification
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_OS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_Golay_code
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
http://www.slyck.com/
http://www.slyck.com/story1949_The_Effort_to_Save_Duke_Universitys_Usenet_Server
http://www.newsdemon.com/
