Newsgroups -- the venerable old workhorse of the Internet -- appear to finally be on their deathbed. Three big Internet service providers are about to give them a deathblow.

Way before Google or MySpace or YouTube, newsgroups, -- also called Usenet by us Internet old timers -- were a huge repository for information, technical help, hard-to-find drivers (and other bits of software), crazy little groups to belong to, downloadable TV shows, etc. They were somewhat popular 10-15 years ago, but in recent years they've lost subscribers to Web-based forums, chat rooms, social networking sites, and YouTube.

I found out about what looks like this critical blow to newsgroups in a piece by Larry Magid of the San Jose Mercury News, "Digital Crossroads: N.Y. deal on child porn raises other issues."

The newsgroup item is one part of a complicated announcement between New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and three Internet service providers -- Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and Sprint. It's about removing child porn, which of course is illegal and heinous. Stamping it out is the right thing to do. But the way the ISPs are going about it will hit a lot of the old newsgroups, as Magid writes:

There have been reports that these companies will block access to child porn on Usenet newsgroups, but that's not exactly true either. They're doing something far more dramatic.

Time Warner will stop hosting all newsgroups, while Verizon and Sprint will eliminate hosting newsgroups under the "Alt" hierarchy. Time Warner Cable spokesman Alex Dudley said that was "partially a business decision" because less than 2 percent of its customers subscribe to newsgroups. ...

From a free-speech perspective, I'm more disturbed by Sprint and Verizon's decision to stop serving up Alt groups than I am by Time Warner Cable's plan to cease hosting all newsgroups. Alt, short for "alternative," is the designation for groups that discuss issues that aren't allowed in the more mainstream categories such as comp (computers), soc (social issues), and talk (typically religion and politics). Alt includes groups dedicated to sex and drugs, and is reportedly where Cuomo's staff found 88 newsgroups containing child porn. But the vast majority of the material in the Alt hierarchy has nothing to do with child pornography.

I agree with Magid. It's hard to say how this will all pan out. Newsgroups appear to be dying out anyway for the most part, and many network providers are tired of hosting them. But we also need to keep an eye on ISPs that take a sledgehammer to content and end up busting up perfectly legit sites and newsgroups.