Google breaks Usenet (was Re: How can I correct an error in an old post?)

[Blair P. Houghton]

Bryan Olson wrote:
> Aahz wrote:
> > The problem is the network effect.  In this case, what Google has that
> > can't be replicated is the history of posts.
>
> There's no magic there. Get them the same way Google and
> Dejanews got them, plus you might scrape Google, from some
> locality with favorable laws.

You can do it in America, as long as you don't use their value-added
formatting or data.

Hence, stripping their headers from every message, and un-framing
the messages from their bins.

The original data, with its owner-copyrighted,
revokably-licensed-by-default
attributes, can be recovered.

But some messages can't be seen because their owners already
asked Google not to display them.  They're still in the archive:
Google has as much right as anyone to keep what you sent them.
They just don't have the right to display them next to their ads if
you revoke their license.  But missing messages are comparatively
rare.

--Blair