Why Are Canadian Sympatico Users Being Banned On EFNet?

An anonymous reader asks: "After being away from IRC for over a year, changing ISPs and moving my physical self to another apartment, tonight I tried to get back on EFnet. With a brand new IP, and a brand new computer, I discovered that all over EFnet, all channels related to Linux are banning all Canadian Sympatico users, this includes high speed customers, dial up users, and business users. In fact, the ban is quite severe and bans the entire sympatico.ca domain. I've tried to message several operators in #linux, #linuxhelp, and #slackware, but nobody is responding. What's going on?"

Comments

Odds are

[leviramsey]

Somebody on Sympatico was being such an ass when a ChanOp had a bad day, managed to get a different IP, so anything from Sympatico was blocked.

Hmmm... banning subnets... where have we heard that before?

same thing from online.no

[bob@dB.org]

or at least it used to be. that covers quite a few hundred thousand norwegian uses as well (adsl, isdn and modem). i also tried messaging ops to find out what was going on, and never got a response. in the end i just figured; fuck it! do i really want to be on a channel with people willing to gag half a nation (online/telenor is the biggest norwegian isp) just to shut up a few noicemakers? my advice is to find yourself a channel with less braindead operators. shouldn't be hard :-)

Re:same thing from online.no

[arcade]

As a norwegian, and as chanop on efnet#norge, I know quite well how much noise a few idiot-users can generate. Wide bans are not that unusual.

*.no is getting banned from more and more channels on EFNet. That is not very strange, when you consider that online.no doesn't take IRC-abuse complaints very seriously. The same goes for many other norwegian ISP's.

As long as norwegian kiddiots act as they do, and the same goes for the canadian kiddiots, one cannot expect channel operators to take heed of one or two good seeds among the thousands of bad ones.

If you are that desperate to join a certain channel, buy yourself a server somewhere, or get a shell-account from a friend - so that you can bounce of that and onto the IRC-network of your choice. One moment though - make sure that friend of yours is a _Friend_ and not someone that allows everybody to get accounts on his box - or that IP is sure to be banned from several channels as soon as the first kiddie appears.

Oh, and "shut up a few noisemakers" .. are you aware of what amount of noise a "few noisemakers" can generate? And are you aware that EFNet just supports 25bans per channel? And that a single floodnet often is far more than 25 flood-klients?

Now, how would you solve that problem? Please, do explain, in detail.

Re:same thing from online.no

[arcade]

It would seem that your definition of idiot is even broader then mine. Based on the above paragraph it seems you place about 99.9% of Internet users in this category. And you're a ChanOp on #norge? (for our international readers: norge is Norwegian for Norway).

I did indeed generalize, and I did indeed make the problem larger than it is. But the main point stands. If you're running, say, #usa or whatever - and three out of four norwegians that join the channel acts like idiots. What is the natural thing to do? Ban the damn country - of course.

The same goes if 3 out of 4 users from one ISP acts like idiots.

Norway unfortunately have far too many 13-year-olds online on IRC, which does reflect negatively on us. Our country get banned from far too many channels. I fully understand and support those that ban us however.

Not everyone has the possibility to get an account on another computer, not everyone has the opportunity to pick and choose their ISP. Me, i work in the industry, and would have no problems finding a host that would allow me access, but you're missing the point...

IRC is a priviledge, not a right. If you're having problems getting onto IRC, its YOUR problem, nobody elses. Maybe its elitist, in my eyes - you don't have a _right_ to join any channel, any network, nor a _right_ to join any channel. Its a priviledge, and it may be revoked for whatever reason those that run the channel finds appropriate. Wheter YOU find it appropriate is quite irrelevant.

I think a have a fairly good idea about how much noise a "few" noisemakers can generate, yes! My point is that this is (to me) a completely unacceptable approach for controlling noise. On my list of really bad ideas, it's right up there with reducing SPAM by blocking all mail from Korea and China.

If I don't want to receive email from those countries, then I block them. Which I've done on several on my accounts. I wouldn't implement it on a mailserver-wide though.

Why would _I_ want to receive any mail from Korea or China? If people I know there want to send me email, they may ask me to give them a shellaccount on one of my machines, which they can send their mail from.

I really don't care enough about this to apply by brain to that problem. All I was saying was that I'd rather not hang out on a channel where thinks that blocking ~70% of all Norwegians is an acceptable solution to the noise control problem.

Don't do that then. I'm sure you won't be missed. You're getting irritated because you're blocked, but nobody else really cares about it. :-) too bad.

Re:same thing from online.no

[LordNimon]

It would seem that your definition of idiot is even broader then mine. Based on the above paragraph it seems you place about 99.9% of Internet users in this category.

Yeah, that sounds about right to me.

Solicits a question...

[3-State Bit]

This brings up an interesting question, which is whether I can help out a friend by routing her IRC traffic or his for her/him, if I have a large server up a lot. I'm not sure I would do it open-to-the-public, but as something for a friend, why not?

2) Anyone who gets posted to slashdot and hangs out on IRC probably has enough techie friends that one of them would be willing to host such a service.

So, a better ask-slashdot might be:
How do I route around draconian ban-by-subnet IRC policies?

Philosophers ask WHY. Engineers ask HOW.

Re:Canada is infamous for its script-kiddies.

[bob@dB.org]

Why doesn't the US let anyone that wants enter their country? Isn't that _unfair_?

does the us deny entry for *all* norwegian just because *some* of us are idiots?

Why doesn't Canada let anyone that wants enter their country? Isn't that _unfair_?

does canada deny entry for *all* norwegian just because *some* of us are idiots?

Why doesn't Norway let anyone that wants enter their country (well, we almost do *sigh*)? Isn't that unfair?

does norway deny entry for *all* americans just because *some* of them are idiots?

i could go on, but i think most people see where i'm going.

based on your comments on this story, i used to think you probably just a bit immature. reading the comment above i now see that you're just plain stupid!

IRC Politics

[Komarosu]

Channel politics are flakey at the best of time, all it takes is some idiot in a country to say summat wrong to a chanop and there banned. Another widespred ban on few networks is *.aol.com, as people on technical channels dont belive that "technology wise" people could possibly use AOL. It's these generalisations that end up with domain bans due to a few users spoiling it for the rest.

As for banning ISPs, all it takes is a few "scriptkiddies" to come onto a technical channel with there MP3 scripts and l33tsp34k to annoy a few ChanOps and boom...perma-ban

For further note, i am a Chanop on various channels on the HashNet network, and yes people do get domain banned for stupid reasons. Maybe this will just give you more of a insight.