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MSN Cuts Unmonitored Chatrooms Around the Globe
letxa2000 writes "According to MSNBC, Microsoft will be shutting down its unmonitored chat services in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and much of Latin America on October 14th--the day before MSN Messenger will lock out many 3rd party clients. Interestingly, the European manager of MSN is quoted as saying 'This is a decision based upon consumer experiences, child protection and our strategic investment to build up MSN Messenger.' It's starting to become clear that Microsoft is starting up the IM wars again and that the 3rd-party lockout indeed isn't so much about security as it is about marketshare."
All the Kids who used to chat on msn will now find "cooler" chat rooms (perhaps IRC) and they might start trying out other non Microsoft products...
Its obvious that Microsoft make decisions for no other reason than to make more money. The subscription chat services make more money than unsubscribed.
The real reason for this is that the lawyers are screaming to cut the unmonitored service before they get sued.
Nevertheless, that kind of chat is among the most banal and crappy of all internet applications. If every provider stopped supporting it, it would be no great loss.
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird -- Proverbs 1:17
Surely Microsoft realise that by doign this, they are just going to shift the children and unsavoury types to using less servers, therefore making it easier for the nastys to go after the children as there are less places to focus on...
Well done to Microsoft making the world think its doing children a favour, rather than making the peadophiles lot easier
My immediate reaction is that this will simply drive chatroom-using children to less-monitored, less well-policed chatrooms where they can carry on gossiping - especially if they don't have access to IM clients. Only nobody will be watching those chatrooms.
As much as I loathe some of Microsoft's practices, I would have preferred an organisation like them to be monitoring (young) children's chatrooms than SmallISP.com(tm). Purely from a resources standpoint, Microsoft was one of the best-equipped organisations to watch for paedophiles and other slime.
"This is why men never share their feelings; because women always remember." -Just Shoot Me.
I just heard a discussion about this on the BBC's Radio Five Live. One concern they raised: children will not stop chatting online, but will simply switch to other chat services which are even less safe than MSN's. Not only that, but with the announcement of the impending closure, there will be a scramble to exchange contact information before the deadline, which may include phone numbers or other personal information (precisely the thing we don't want children to do).
Another point they made: when talking to your children about the dangers of talking to strangers online (or anything else, really) it's very important to explain WHY it's dangerous, and make sure they understand exactly what the dangers are and how to avoid them. Children tend to rebel against authority, especially when they can't see good reasons for the rules parents set for them.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
You're absolutely correct. Indeed, the first idiot post was only seconds after yours!
I think this consitutes the first step in a slow march towards the ban of unmonitored chat rooms. Something which is absolutely bizarre considering the fact that the chance of your child being groomed by a paedophile are probably about the same as your child being struck by lightening.. In the UK we see about three to four cases of this a year.
More children get killed in car accidents.. in fact it's the biggest killer of under 12's if i recall correctly..
Unmoderated chat is about freedom of speech. The price we pay for freedom is that evil, to some extent, is free too. A world without fear and terror is a world without freedom.
Freedoms are being removed left, right and center in the post 9/11 world. The irony is that the terrorists succeeded.. The land(s) of the free are no longer as free as they used to be.. My forefathers fought for our freedom in blood.. We shouldn't give in.. Every man killed by a terrorist is a solider for freedom.. Let's not let democracy drown at the hands of a few.
Simon
Yes, and it mainly stems from the recent paedophile panics. Huge overreactions and all that. Reminds me of the Brass Eye Paedophile Special whenever I see some rubbish like this.
For some reason, this seems world news. I don't agree. MSN chat has always been a GUI for IRC and IRC is not dead. At least, not yet. Undernet, Efnet, IRCnet, DALnet and a lot of smaller networks still exist and will do so for a long time.
If lusers are smart enough to browse, they are likely to be smart enough to surf to the mIRC website and download mIRC. Connect to your favorite network and the Chat Goes On!. However, MS has a point. (never thought I'd ever say that). IRC and chatting in general has become more and more dangerous for our children. Pedophiles know exactly how to present themselves to innocent children and it is partly the responsability of their parents to educate them. Partly, because in my opinion the ISP's could be more response on abuse complaints and so can law enforcement agencies.
In The Netherlands, a pedophile was captured by a tv-journalist on national TV while he tried to force a young boy to come to his house and do "some things". The pedophile works on a school. The school did not fire him, and the court gave him 240 hours of force community-work as a punishment. Unacceptable.
In these ages of continious improvement in communication possibilities, the judicial system (yes, for once that includes ISP's) should be aware of their important tasks in order to protect our children from pedophiles. Shutting down chat-rooms will simply not help as there are numerous of other possibilities to contact youn children.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Guess I've been trolled, but you should lay off the 'Microsoft == evil' lines, they're getting really dull. This kind of comment is flippant, and actually pretty irresponsible. What would you do? What would you have them do? Give an answer of 'We're not people's censors' and leave it at that?
This is a perfectly understandable reaction on their part, and you will probably see similar reactions from other popular, unmonitored, visible chat providers. We can bitch about subscriber lock-in all we want, but the PR flack had an undeniable point -- subscriptions mean accountability for both the provider and recipient. When you provide a visible, accessible service like this, you have to decide if you want to allow this kind of crap on or not.
Hey, you want to see loads of junk, you can still go to IRC or read Usenet - it's your call.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
Am I the only one here to think that maybe they're actually doing this for the very reasons they quote - i.e. they're scared to death at the idea of being associated with all these net-paedophiles stuff ?
Clueless journalists are just as dangerous for MS as they are for others (note: I'm talking from the UK, homeland of such some monuments of fair, objective et reliable reporting as The Sun). They've seen those stories about paedophiles "hunting" over the internet, and they know how 'sensitive' the public is about anything related to paedophilia (Britain is also the place were angry mobs assaulted a doctor's house because they confused the word 'Paediatrician' with 'Paedophile').
This may be a much more compelling reason than locking out a few thousands 3rd party clients.
Thomas Miconi-
This is, of course, complete rubbish. Its all about finding a way to ditch a free service that is costing them money and replace it with one they can charge for. This is sensible business practice from a money point of view, but the business model is more akin to drug pushing than online services.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
FACT: The Internet is a public place, parents that let their children roam public places unsupervised are still responsable for letting them do so.
although it is using AOL or .Mac (both proprietary) it has 2 advantages :
- Not bound to MS, who has a history if being big brother and control freak
- kids can use the iSight, which works flawlessly and assures the person on the other line is indeed a kid and not an imposter.
All that aside, I think this whole pedophile paranoia will one day grow a more mature and intelligent way of educating your kids. I have 2 toddlers myself, and get scared by the though that one day they will ride their bicycle from school to home alone. Does that mean I'll install a camera or GPS tracking in their forehead ? Offcourse not. Most parents agree with the fact that kids need to learn that the world can be a dangerous place, that strangers can be freaks, etc etc, but that all in all, it's a nice world, and we should be happy to live in it. The same holds for web communities. They have their inherent dangers, but all in all it's a nice world.
Just watch for the freaks and don't do anything head-over-heels.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Shutting down services is not the answer for abuse of the system by some bad elements. The dangerous aspect of this is that, So called "abuses" of chat is applicable to irc and many other applications as well. There is also abuse of the systems in these applications too. So they could use the same argument to shut down any of these . On the contray if somebody is genuinely interested in stoping the abuse , they should look for serious level of parental level cotroll. Because perception of "morality" widely varies and whats acceptable to one person may not be acceptable to others.
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
"Give an answer of 'We're not people's censors' and leave it at that?"
Yep. You say `if you`re worried about what your children might see or do online, then only let them use the net in your presence, log what they are doing, talk to them about the dangers (and don't let them use the net if they aren't old enough to understand)`.
I don't care much about this instance, as I don't use Microsoft stuff if I can avoid it, and there'll *always* be a way of discussing things online with strangers, whether the government or big business likes it or not. I don't want accountability - I want to be able to talk about what I want with who I want, which includes strangers. It's easy enough to ignore idiots, catch bots and spammers etc. If someone wants to sit and watch rooms for perverts etc then fine, do it. I don't have a problem with that.
It's not exactly hard to monitor a room and look for words relating to `phone number` or `address` or `age` or whatever.
I couldn't agree more, but "concerned parents" groups like to place the blame firmly at anyone elses door.
I'm just saying M$ are right to cover their own arses on this one.
bah!*@%!
> Am I the only one here to think that maybe they're actually doing this for the very reasons they quote
No, not at all. Here are some of the reasons Microsoft gives in the article (thru Geoff Sutton, European GM of Microsoft MSN):
""This is a decision based upon consumer experiences, child protection and OUR STRATEGIC INVESTMENT TO BUILD UP MSN MESSENGER"
"The straightforward truth of the matter is FREE unmoderated chat isn't safe"
Emphasis is mine in both quotes. But there you have it, even within the Microspeak they are admitting that its really profit/market-share driven.
That second quote looks very like their "free, open-source software isn't safe" marketing, doesn't it?
-- now where did I put that
Thus one can conclude that the problem isn't kiddy fiddlers, it's free (as in beer) kiddy fiddlers.
PS,OT, is anyone else having problems with /. headlines by email?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is nothing new. New technologies always inspire fear. When doing some research once I read an article in a magazine from around 1890 talking about how young ladies should not be allowed to use the telephone for more than a few minutes at a time due to fear that they weren't mentally strong enough to cope with the sensation of talking to a disembodied voice for very long.
In my lifetime I seen fear of video cassette recorders (remember how "video nasties" were going to corrupt a whole generation of children?) and similar fear of video games, and now all this stuff related to the internet.
The really stupid thing about all this from my point of view is how the press in the UK has caused the general public to believe that paedophilia (that is, adults that find pre-pubescent children sexually attractive) is common, when in reality it is very rare and probably no more so today than it was fifty or 100 years ago. This has caused, for instance, parents to be afraid to let their children go out to play outside. This is a real shame.
omg, now we will have hordes of MS Comic Chat users pouring into irc channels... (and tons of kickbans i guess;))
sick of sigs... *sigh*
**Give an answer of 'We're not people's censors' and leave it at that?**
yeah, exactly. they're not peoples censors chinese goverment is, microsoft shouldn't be.
unmoderated/selfmoderated chat has been sort of baseline on internet chats all along, the chatters themselfs can and do moderate as much as they can if necessary.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Whenever I see stories of people doing things "to protect children", I often look for alternative motives. I think press departments of governments/corporations use this as a way of ceasing debate, but they know that people are too afraid to oppose the thing done because they don't want to be seen as against protecting children.
HM Government wants new snooping powers on email - undoubtedly as the legislation gets closer, the "protecting children" trump card will be played.
Like the experts say, What MS are doing will not protect children. They will find alternative chat rooms, possibly in juristictions outside the UK, with absolutely NO regulation or searches by police being available.
In this case, it looks like one of the following is the real story:-
MS are scared of getting sued
MS are looking to get people using messenger to increase their stranglehold.
MS are looking to publicise MSN as a service, encouraging non-savvy parents to believe that signing up to MSN means their kids won't use chatrooms.
MS want some publicity to help spin the image of them being a good company with strong, secure software who care about their users after the virus disaster.
If MS really cared about children, they'd host chatrooms and put some of their massive resources into moderating them.
Of course, the mainstream media are too thick to deal with the real issues in this - protecting children through education of parents and children in using the internet.
What about parental responsibility? Do you allow you children to watch anything on TV when it can include extreme violence and things like that? Why is the Internet different?
I think that the solution would be to create monitored chatrooms that are safe for children and then LIMIT YOUR CHILDREN'S ACCESS to unmonitored ones.
You and only you are responsible for controlling your children's access to the Internet.
Secondly, if these sickos are infesting the boards as they claim, one might wonder why there aren't an equal number of policemen and admins there to catch them and protect the kids. I'm sure MSN is in the unique position that it can post warnings, censor & monitor conversations initiated from the chat room and provide all kinds of interesting account data and logging if need be. How is closing the service so that kids and paedos disperse over a dozen unmoderated and worldwide servers going to make the internet a safer place?
All in all, I think this talk of shutting the servers down is bunk. MSN could make their chatrooms safer but have chosen not to. This smacks more of knowing it will cost N million dollars to fix their service on the one hand and on the other to cut the service entirely, push people to their instant messaging and ban 3rd party chat clients all wrapped up in a moral blanket. After all, we all know these sickos are preying on MSN minors through their unauthorized Jabber clients right?
I think this is a typical "blowing smoke in your eyes" kind of situation. Child abusers aren't i most cases total strangers to the children. They aren't someone they just met on the street or in a chat room over the Internet. Most child abusers are intimate to the children they abuse: either a close family member or close friend of the family. Child abusers are, for the most part, people that are trusted by the parents. In some of the cases the parent *is* the abuser.
We should be teaching and educating our children as to "what" they should be aware of and not "who" . The "Don't talk to strangers!" slogan is just helping spread the paranoia. When the abuser is someone they know, strangers (be they psychologists, shool counselors, whatever...) are usually the only people they'll be able to talk to about it.
-- Marco.
"Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two."
LOL. For there to be true freedom you MUST allow some thing you don't agree with. Free speech doesn't work in a pick-and-choose model, where you allow what you deem 'good' and ban what you don't.
Nice troll, tho. You got me to bite.
This is filed under my rights online? What 'rights' to I have to Micrsofts network?
No more MSN chat? Time to go back to AOL.
Does it really make sense to make a public service a payed service in the US, and to take it down completely in other parts of the world? What about the people using this service in those 28 countries, are they all spammers and porn-mongers?
The article hints at something interesting:
It is really an interesting question on how far you're willing to go taking away freedoms/openness from your customers because a small minority does something illegal/unwanted with it. Sutton is playing the 9/11 card very cheaply, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read this. Are you really buying into this?
Yeah. Right.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Who would be stupid enough to pay for something that you can get for free?
concerned parents who don't want to prevent their kids from talking to their friends, but want to be reasonably sure they aren't talking to 40-year old men trying to lure them lure them away? There are plenty of non-technical people out there who are willing to pay for things like this.
the whole point and appeal of a chat-room was the anonymous access!
not for everyone. I don't think most kids under 16 are worried about being anonymous, they just want to talk about the latest B. Spears album.
Of course, this isn't going to solve the problem, and the fear-mongering being used by the media is rediculous, but I don't really see this as a problem as long as there are alternatives. Informed parents can feel better about allowing kids to chat online and I'd bet we'll soon see software that blocks online chat software for just those parents.
I do wonder if this monitoring will open M$ up to lawsuits if some kid runs off with a person they met in a moderated chat room though.
you're all figments of my deranged imagination
Check my url. Right now there are over one million people on IRC. You can search through listings of over 600,000 chatrooms, and you don't have to download an IRC client to join them - just click on the name of a channel and a java chat brings you there. That totally blows away all the paid services. We have built it, and you are more than welcome to join the party. As for FREE chatrooms not being "safe" for kids... clearly, that is a ridiculous ploy that /.'ers can see right through. Free does not make something unsafe. IRC is self moderating. That means, the *parents* have the option to set up private chatrooms on IRC where THEY moderate their children's activities. Try doing that on MSN.
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