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DALnet For Chatting, Not File Sharing
PFAK writes "DALnet IRC Network, formerly the world's largest IRC Network has announced that the IRC network has implemented a new "policy" that will phrohibit "Using a channel for the primary purpose of facilitating the transfer of files", as of March 1st, 2003. This will be another staggering blow for the formerly largest IRC network in the world, this comes after one of the many suprises on DALnet, such as the recent DDoS attacks against the network."
such as the recent DDoS attacks against the network
Well, of course people are going to DDoS them, if they're doing stupid shit like restricting file trading.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Glad the shitty IRC network is finaly dying.
The smaller, more dynamic IRC networks have been widdling away at Dalnet for quite some time now.
Yay for Efnet, for enduring through much more crap!
Brent Jones
DalNet is like the special olympics of IRC. There's a lot of
drooling goin' on and everyone is a 'winner'.
---
DALnet's dying faster than BSD :P
Game... blouses.
Sure they have a right to do what they want with THEIR network.. They can censor it if they want, even though that does get into a sticky legal issue. Once you start, you are libel for content under your control.
It's not censorship if the government doesn't do it, but your point is well made - if they decide they're going to crack down on illegal file traders, they become responsible for all illegal file traders. Thing is, they don't care if it's illegal or not, so I don't think that applies. You could be trading pictures of kittens, homemade kitten.mpg movies you made of your kitten playing with string, they'd still boot you off (sadly so).
Personally I think its a moral mistake to enforce their beliefs on others when they offer a free service, but that is their choice.
Your pronoun use is a little ambiguous, but I take this to mean that it's a moral mistake for Dalnet to enforce their beliefs on others when they (Dalnet) provide a free service, which doesn't make any sense, because, to be cliche, 'beggars can't be choosers' - if you want to use the network, use it for what it's provided to you for. Perhaps you meant something else, but who knows.
People that do use IRC for transfers don't leech any bandwidth, the key component to DCC is *DIRECT*, it does NOT load the IRC network at all. In reality they use LESS resources then a 8 hour a day 'chatter'.
Except that file sharing channels, if you've ever been to one, are always flooded with text. I find it hard to keep up personally, and I only go to the smaller ones. The larger ones are even worse. Combine that constant advertising of your fserve with the trivia bots, and send that to a dozen or a hundred or two hundred people (depending on the channel), and that's a lot of traffic, a lot of memory for the servers to store userdata for, a lot of bandwidth to share that user data around whenever a netsplit occurs (you can send gigs of traffic a day just syncing, since the new link has to carry data about half the users one way, and half the users another way, and then the two servers have to route it to every other server on the network).
Whiners? Not really, just people that would like to keep what they have now, ( or expand features )if you don't speak out you loose it, regardless of the topic.
Whiners? Definately. They don't pay for it. They don't contribute financially. They just use bandwidth and cpu time and memory of people who felt like being nice and linking servers to Dalnet to provide a service to people. You'd have to be a pretty big jerk to throw that in their face because they're not giving you enough for free. Take the service as it is given, or don't take it at all, but no one is 'entitled' to anything on Dalnet any more than they are entitled to anything in my home. It's a private domain, not a public one, and that's all there is to it.
--Dan
Disclaimer: I opered on an IRC network once, and got a little bitter about people demanding that I fix what was 'wrong' with the network, or insisting they had 'a right to free speech'. IRC networks are private property, you're not entitled to anything, and you have no rights.