First off, don't try and scam easynews because they check their user logs, but if you are a legitimate user
who grabbed usenet files that were corrupt via your easynews account this weekend, then read on:
I downloaded approx 5 gigs worth of stuff off usenet via easynews this weekend.
When I went to unpack the files, 90% of them were corrupt.
I checked their message boards and found this from Easynews Admin Godzilla:
"The UTF-8 errors, which caused yenc decoding problems, were caused by a new
backend server we put online. It is now offline until we figure out why it was
giving out unicode when it was not setup to."
So, I emailed them and told them what happened, gave them my account info and asked for credit.
They checked my usage logs and it coincided with the time of their server errors.
They emailed me back within an hour and reset my usage counter for the month to zero.