The issue of 8-bit transmission of NetNews/Usenet/NNTP is slightly different
from that of 8-bit transmission of e-mail.
The idea of a "just send eight" standard for email was a non-starter simply
because there were known to be SMTP servers out there that would *crash*
when fed mail containing octets with the 0x80 ('scuse me, 0200) bit set.
NetNews is different because any article posted to a major newsgroup will
eventually reach most of the NetNews servers on the planet. Any dire
consequences of sending "8-bit" articles over NetNews are thus discovered
very quickly....and the software is fixed.
In contrast to email, "just send 8" might well be the best policy for NetNews.
MIME compatibility could be gained by adding appropriate content-type and
content-transfer-encoding headers (using 8bit for the latter), but without
having to actually encode messages.
Keith