In practice however, most Usenet software happily transmits 8-bit text, and this has been put to good use for a number of years. This is mostly true, but there is a catch. Archie Archie doesn't care about character encoding issues, which is a boon as well as a problem. Telnet Telnet implements a remote terminal through an 8-bit channel, which is fine. The authors know of a site that has to maintain three versions of its document, in three different encodings.
Search engines are also an area of interest and intense development.
Let's review these standards one by one. HTTP HTTP is an 8-bit protocol that allows for transmission of arbitrary data. Furthermore, its use of MIME-like headers permits character set identification for textual data. This is not the protocol's fault. Incomplete implementations are to blame.