Quoting Vadim Antonov (avg@exigengroup.com):

In other words - USENET cannot be fixed with technological improvements as long as the root problem (admission control) is not solved. Improving transmission or storage systems would only let spammers to send more spam for free.

Therefore, i'd say it is time to declare USENET defunct. It was fun while it lasted.

Usenet. That's the sum of all systems exchanging data via RFC1036. Usenet, that's not the Big5 or, even less so, alt.ALL. Declaring Usenet defunct because a part of it, using its structures, has failed to exercise the righth measures, is about as logical as declaring the Web defunct just because Slashdot is. Usenet's traffic is to some 98% comprised of binaries. A huge amout of them (some 85%, actually) is repeat traffic, IOW the same picture maybe with a different slogan attached to it or a different URL superimposed over it. By limiting Usenet back to something that can be read with more in /var/spool/news, you reduce traffic and storage requirements. Usenet, also, ist not Outlook Express or something one should read with multipart-reassemblers, one hand on the mouse. Let's face it. Usenet is not defunct. It works quite well, and that for more than twenty years, whereas the Web still lies in its infancy and already shows sings of decay. Its users may be defunct. Its adminitative mechanisms may be defunct. But Usenet is not. But, and here i aggree with you, unless clue-midgets such as Cable and Wireless start having an abuse department, unless Joe A CIO learns that networks are more than just cables to bring his website to the masses, Usenet will have no chance to remain what it once was - a bandwidth friendly, system agnostic, blazing fast communications medium.