From Giganews
*********************
Usenet is convention-based. In the technical underpinnings of Usenet,
nothing differentiates a text group from a binary group. The
distinction
only comes from the stated purpose of the group or hierarchy, and
convention is to respect that.
Thus, Usenet providers are left to their own devices as to how to
enforce any technical restrictions on "binaries" being posted to
"text" newsgroups. I put these things in quotes, because what is a
"binary"? Is an image a binary? Is a text attachment a binary? Those
are technical decisions are left to the Usenet provider with feedback
from the broader Usenet community. As a result, you will see
inconsistency between providers.

For Giganews, we conceptually run separate infrastructure for what we
consider text and binary groups. We present it as a one combined
system to the user, but the infrastructure to support each is
different. The text infrastructure applies filters to not store and
provide listings of "binary" articles in text groups. However, every
text article also gets stored in our binary infrastructure without
filters. It may get filtered from a text group's listing, but if you
have know the message ID, you can often still grab it.

When you post an article, we do not enforce any text/binary
restrictions on it. These filters only get applied when we receive
articles. So, if a Giganews Usenet customer posts a binary to a text
group, we will happily pass it along, but when we put it into our
index, we may filter it based on our text group rules.

I hope that explains things a little better. If you have a text group
in which you expect to see binaries, send a note to our support staff
and we will look at whether that group needs to be reclassified.

Philip
Giganews