> The ISP might not have any idea, but your usenet provider does. I'm curious if it's common practice for them to log user activity.

Most providers do not log downloads. To cite the policies of two of the biggest providers, Giganews and Astraweb:

> Giganews does not track the specific articles you download; however, we will track the volume of your downloads for account maintenance and download limit enforcement purposes (if applicable).

— http://www.giganews.com/support/#q4.1

> We do not store any specific information about your downloads. We only store the amount downloaded, date and access IP address for accounting purposes.

— http://www.news.astraweb.com/privacy.html

Most providers will tell you they do not keep any logs. However, most of the bigger providers will add an encrypted header to any post you make. The NSP can later decrypt the header to see which of their users made the post.

To the best of my knowledge, to date these headers have only been used to nab child pornographers. I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble just for downloading copyrighted works on Usenet. The worst uploading incident I've heard of was years ago when all the members of sd-6 got their Easynews accounts deleted. Granted they were posting non-stop and all using the same NSP. I don't remember any charges being pressed or subpenas being issued.

From what I've seen from the major Usenet providers' privacy policies, downloads are almost always never logged -- connections, maybe, but not downloads. Posts and uploads, however, are logged in order to crack down on spam complaints.

Not common.