Despite the wording of a small announcement claiming that it's all about performance, NTL seems to have the warez community in its crosshairs. Doubtless some users will be up in arms but NTL has decided to drop several alt.binaries from its news servers.
Many of the groups being dropped are for reposts, though it's fairly obvious what NTL had in mind when it dropped alt.binaries.dvd for instance. The fact that the announcement came from the Acceptable Use Policy Team, better known as the department which deals with abuse, should give you some idea what is going on.
The announcement goes further in saying that requests to add new binary groups will not be accepted. Is this the start of a real campaign against the less-than-leet warez crowd? Will NTL kill off more binary groups as time goes on? Just what was it that prompted this purge?
We're still waiting for NTL's PR bunnies to get back to us as we go to press so you might have to wait a while before you find out what's really going on.
News source: theinquirer.net