Asstr.org

Alt.sex.stories text repository, most often known by its acronym asstr.org, is a huge, largely unorganized collection of erotic stories, 450,000 as of 2015.

Usenet

"Alt.sex.stories" refers to a very early form of the Internet, perhaps the earliest: Usenet groups, currently owned by Google Groups. Without a central server, messages posted by any user were automatically sent to any user who wanted to receive them, and who started up his Usenet reader program (now typically handled within a browser). Postings were categorized into groups. Usenet is moribund though it still survives, and has around 500,000 postings a day, a large number of which are spam (advertisements). Usenet was created when all computers on the network were trusted: no authentication needed; everyone is who he says he is (and at first, they were all "he's"). This has made it unsuited for an environment with malicious hackers and criminals of all sorts.

There is no central site that archives everything on Usenet; that would be prohibitive. Partial access is offered by some commercial sites. Access to text-based postings, without the more-expensive-to-store binary files (pictures, videos, music), is offered free by Google Groups.

In the 1990's to 2000's Usenet was a vehicle for distribution of child pornography; "pedo." was a top-level domain. (In Usenet, top-level domains, like "sci." and "alt.", came first.) Due to the same trusting environment Usenet assumed, it was impossible to automate the exclusion of child pornography.

The child pornography led several big Internet Service Providers, willingly or unwillingly (after protests), to ban access to Usenet altogether.