Slashdot Mirror
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."
Note that this only affects public chatrooms and not the MSN Messenger service - I say this now not because it's not obvious to those who read the article, but that because this is slashdot and people won't :)
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
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...
There is a real moral panic underway in the UK about this now - and the attack is on all unmoderated "chat" - so even the development channel you use is at threat.
Yeah, there was an article in the Metro (free UK newspaper distributed on trains and buses) -- the slant was that it would curb paedophiles preying on young children. They cited a recent example of this trainee teacher guy trying to 'buy' a nine year old girl for sex using chatrooms.
Fair enough for MSN to ditch it though, there's plenty of other services out there. I wasn't even aware they hosted chatrooms until today.
Personally, I think this is a good thing. It will help drive torward a interoperable standard for IM - not playing catchup with AOL and MSN "standards." Otherwise, we risk being in a situation in a few years similar to where we are with Word doucments now.
...only evil comes out of it. Why should people talk about other things than bondage, rape and casual sex? Beats me.
Computers are like air conditioners.
- They stop working when you open Windows.
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
"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."
Your questioning of microsofts motives clearly indicates that you have something to hide. Are you a paedophile?
We have found a nonce! may we burn him?
Well there is a 3rd party which is open and works. Its called "Jabber". Now of course most people here know this but along with the Yahoo also shutting people out prehaps its time to move
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Microsoft has prepped the mainstream media that this is all about saving children from pedophile predators.
Child abuse experts were interviewed saying this actually increases the risk to children, because kids have emotional ties to their online chat friends. Now they might give mobile phone numbers and other personal data to their online friends so that they can stay in touch... and if that friend is a pedophile, he is that much closer to meeting the child.
The child abuse expert urged parents to talk to their kids about this, so the child can deal with this close down of chat rooms in a better way.
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
Starting? Even without the anti-MS bias, you have to admit that altruism doesn't exist among companies. No air==dead people. Money is air to a company.
If MSN figures they can get more air this way, they will.
Duh.
MS only was nice so long as they got marketshare away from AIM. From this POV, it seems Jabber really needs to be rallied...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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;
I read it was because of spammers and kiddie pr0n..
I can only hope they shut down Hotmail next, though I feel it is more the S&M version of mail for people that enjoy getting spam in their mailbox.
I'm not suprised this hasn't come quicker. Clearly microsoft can't afford (well, they don't want) to pay for moderation of all their MSN chatrooms. However you can imagine the uproar if the headline "Pedophile kills child after grooming in MSN chatroom" appear in papers. This isn't going to help, as everyone will simply move to another chatroom site but I can see my microsoft is doing it.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
I think this is a very understandable position to take. Microsoft get lumbered with enough bad press as it is. All it takes is for one 14 year old to travel half the globe to meet a guy she was chatting to in MSN "channels" for MS to get slated for allowing this to happen.
Childrens channel moderation should not be taken lightly. Here in the UK there is a lengthy screening process for anyone who work with children, and unless MS could guarantee correctly screened moderators (screend of course in EVERY country that the channels operate) there is no way they could protect themselves from outraged public opinion.. Parents like to blame other people for not watching their children closely enough, and if a child is using a major companies message system, they have an easy target for their ire.
I personally believe any such undertaking to be ridden with obstacles, and microsoft as a "software" company are right to back away from this kind of thing
bah!*@%!
Seeing as how Microsoft doesn't seem to be rapidly gaining any ground in the browser wars, or the mid-range server OS wars, or the gaming console wars anymore, it might be good for them to concentrate on an instant messenger war for a little while so they can remember what it was like to win a war.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
I know this is Microsoft we are talking about, but I don't see the clear connection.
OK, shutting down forums will stop many from moaning about Microsoft's MSN Messenger in their own chat areas, but if it hadn't been for the dates, I would have said these two issues are unrelated except for the date. Can someone clarify if I'm missing something obvious here?
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
I haven't used it, will not use it.
They should shut it down, more bandwith on Internet.
KIddies, you must use IRC, with a 1200 baud modem you can chat over the world.
Hail to Microsoft
that only MSN customers can use the chat service now. This is the reason that the countries that they keep a chat service in are countries that they have MSN in. (As an ISP)
Now they know the names & credit card #'s of all the players in the chat rooms. (They actually say this in the article.) Apparently they will still have 'unmonitored' rooms, but I'd bet money that they still track specific usage.
Desperation is a stinky cologne
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.
..they want the bandwidth that had for this?
-- Mod me down. I am not a karma tart. ffs,gag
"In the United States, Canada and Japan, Microsoft will introduce an unsupervised chat service solely for subscribers,"
"Users in the affected regions will still be able to chat online but must do so through Microsoft Messenger,"
Of course it's about protecting children. Honest. The British press I've seen is latching onto the protecting the children angle to the exclusion of everything else. Bring back Chris Morris.
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-
The European head of MSN was on the news this morning; she was singing the praises of messenger, including the highly dubious claim that "MSN Messenger is safe, because you know who you are talking to, unlike a chatroom where you can just bump into anyone". Huh ? You know who you're talking to on Messenger ? All you know is some hotmail account name; there's absolutely no guarantee that "bobby13" is indeed a 13 year old and not some drooling psychopath.
I guess AOL is happy though.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
As for Messenger, Gaim is updating to the newer MSN protocol (version 9?), and nobody is really sure how Microsoft will be going about blocking third party clients.
If they're really just blocking old protocols (which is what some of the messages MSN Messenger sends out suggest), up-to-date third party clients might do just fine.
So it can go back to the old-school days of EFNET?
:-P~
D00000D! Wassssup!!
RU single???
B0st0n R0X0r5!!
ROFLLMAOPIMP!
Ah well. I was planning on moving to DALNET anyway...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
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 ?
No no, just the ones that can't be authenticated by some sort of cryptographc signature... of course to be useful, such a signature should be prominantly displayed (the forhead is the prefered option). Such a signature would be of great value to the user as it would enable them to buy and sell when non-authenticated individuals are unable to.
It seems these days people are afraid of everything, and Microsoft have used that fear to seems like they are doing us a favour by taking away a service!
Here it has been promoted as being due to problems controlling peadophillia, with a few recent incidents referred to. I hadn't realised it was global until I read it here.
[clever sig]
I do use one IRC channel, but it's a special one on QuakeNet for a few mates who used to play Quake 2 together - never any trouble in there.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
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/
Let Jabber step up and recieve its rightfull place.
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
"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.
> 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
Well, it looks like the problem with security is becoming out of hand here. Me thinks it is way too many pedophiles who brazenly abuse the system is what caused MS to cut it off.
Just as well.. maybe we'll have a few less trojaned machines out there.
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
Im using an iMac, and apples iChat program. It is only a matter of time before AOL will lock out these types of clients. Its obviously their choice to make, and my choice to disagree with. I will not download the AOL client for AIM for mac os X, because I do not want any AOL software on my computer. Personally I think open source developers should create an instant messenging protocol of their own, I would be glad to help.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
-Steve Wright
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.
My point is not that MS can stop this kind of thing from going on - as you rightly point out, people will always be able to find ways around this kind of limit. If that means that people leave, and take the spammers and pervs with them, so much the better for Microsoft, no?
If Microsoft discovers its services are being abused and finds that it can at least control or stop that abuse from continuing, don't you think they'd want to try it? And yes, I fully realise that this argument can easily be transmuted against Linux users or anyone else MS doesn't like. But in this case, again, I have to ask: what would you do?
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
If MS continue the service they undoubtedly will get flack for helping aid Paedophiles.
What I find totally scandaluse about the "to protect the children" claim. is that nobody seems to want to know what new features are in the new service, and how Microsoft plans to use them to protect the children in ways that can not be done today..
To me it just sounds like marketing blah blah to cover up the real Classical MS motive "To crush the competition" ..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Lets hope this wont be the next title on slashdot. After all the internet is hosting Pedo sites and illegal music and movies, to protect us they should block or at least filter out sites that might offend us - NOT
Dont just mail it - Maileet
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.
I know this is going to be modded 'redundant', but what the heck...let's sum this up:
;)
.NET eh..thingy strategy. (Preparing customers for a future where you have to pay for things that are free at the moment using some sort of subscription model)
* Obviously Microsoft is not the only chat-room 'provider' in the world. Plenty of alternatives. Some of those alternatives are potentially less safe than whatever Microsoft provides.
Most people will simply migrate to another form of chat-rooms. This will have no impact WHATSOVER on people trading porn and doing who knows what else in chatrooms.
* Microsoft is going to provide 'subscription' based chat-rooms. Some monitored(?), some unsupervised? Either way, more control and money for Micro$oft. (And probably proprietary lock-in - or an attempt at that
* A subscription based chat-room means you need a credit-card to be able to use it. Who would be stupid enough to pay for something that you can get for free? It also means -> 'goodbye anonymous internet/chat-room user' -> 'hello Mr <insert name>, please pay here'. Also fits in well with the
* A chat-room where people are registered (using their credit-card) is nice, and implies more responsible people, and possibly guarantees accountability and who knows what else, but (IMHO) the whole point and appeal of a chat-room was the anonymous access!
* The media is focusing (almost exclusively) on the 'safer for our kids' angle...yeah right.
The articles I've read seem to imply that Microsoft is the ONLY chat-room provider and that this is 'a great step forward'. Right. Whatever.
I don't use IRC by the way. I can think of many better ways to waste my time.
This would be a good opportunity to turn people on to cross-platform IM clients like GAIM. I doubt anyone in the tech communities is naive enough to take the children argument as more than a red herring to keep IM from joinging the OS/Broswer/Mediaformat/Office format anti-trust action. It does, however, provide a very good cover for pushing people into MS-Passport, despite its reputation, and for locking out non-Microsoft IM clients.
Alternately, this can be seen as just another product or service being dropped or postponed as the company sheds weight to try to stay afloat.
Lastly, regarding the link. This is being covered by everyone and his dog, even Reuters, so no need to plug poor sources..
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I don't know a _single_ person who uses it. Most people I know disable it and the MS Passport first thing they do after a fresh install.
Is it only in Sweden (or only in my circle of aquaintances) that ICQ and Jabber reigns supreme?
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
For example one of my girls typed in "Harry Potter" a while back and got a bunch of sex sites - surely if we have to vet/control what people do on the internet then we should get rid of "browsers". Then move onto e-mail to protect children as spam gets into their mail boxes. Then why not TCP/IP?
Why should chat rooms, forums, browsing, email etc be "owned" by pedos, perverts etc? Why can't our kids use these things without massive over-reaction?
What a sad world we live in.
"3rd-party lockout indeed isn't so much about security as it is about marketshare" and the money lock-in issue.
For gods sake man, don't you read Slashdot?
102 posts and climbing the wall.
I my own personal media monitoring service I noticed in their weekly week day IT section (Next) (not to be confused with the weekend IT section which sucks big dogs balls), the number of Open Source Software rocks articles trippled with a corresponding decrease in "I would willingly perform any kind of legal or illegal sexual favours for either Bill or Steve kind of articles. And I watch these pages particularly closely, so it must be true.
"...we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." B.Spears 2003
"The straightforward truth of the matter is free unmoderated chat isn't safe," said Geoff Sutton, European general manager of Microsoft MSN. % the straightforward truth is that its the parents place to monitor their children .... just another briliant example scare tactics being used to put a damper on free speach.
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.
Oh no! Now IRC will be suddenly full of immature people using some kind of weird form of English! Oh wait...
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
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."
One more thing for people NOT to use from MS? That sounds like a fair situation. I was tired of blocking this *rap at the various firewalls anyway.
This is obvious PR cover for them retracting a service. I hope this sets a precedent for them withdrawing altogether... I can dream.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's time to move to an open IM now that everybody is closing doors to 3rd party IM clients. Why are people using proprietary IM anyways?
What is needed here is an education programme to teach parents, not children, as to the dangers. Most parents are clueless about the Net as a whole.
What seems to be the trend is more and more parents are clueless about parenting as a whole. Time and time again I see articles in the paper that follow the same formula - child does something bad, parent blames everyone but themselves
The teachers aren't giving proper sex education so my 14 year old daughter got pregnant
On the subject of 12 year old school girls being sent home for wearing highly visible thongs to school - They're fed up of being treated like children (Well what the fuck are they then you fucking Ford Mondeo driving, Adidas wearing, Council estate dwelling scum?). They don't want VPLs
The broad, freely available radio, Internet and television media become babysitters while the parents sit on their fat backsides wtaching mind numbing reality TV. Then all of a sudden when something happens to their kids it's such a shock!
Anger not intended to taint the message of this post
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Oh no! Now IRC will be suddenly full of immature people using some kind of weird form of English! Oh wait...
... I'm thinking of Slashdot
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
When I first saw the blurb for this MS child protection blurb, I was also looking at ads from this year's Computex trade show.
The two side-by-side struck an interesting contrast. On the one hand we've got MS talking about how we can't trust kids to use text chatting because they're so obsessed with sex. On the other hand we've got dozens of consumer electronics firms partnering with MS to make this the year of the camera enabled wireless devices. So, what's the deal?
If kids can't be trusted not to use the keyboards for text based sex --I mean how hard up can you get-- how are wireless cameras going to be the runaway product this year?
There seems to be a real contradition between these two lines of thought. I suspect from my own memories of childhood that the answer is: yes kida are obsessed with sex and no, the camera enabled devices are not going to sell well.
Most older adults tend to be camera shy and while kids tend to love the idea of posing for the camera, there's the definite possibility they might like too much.
then the terrorists have won.
Oh wait....
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Quite right.
IIRC, Marshall McLuhan traced the origin of the word 'phony' to con artists running scams (like calling up and pretending they're someone you know for some nefarious purpose) over the newfangled telephone.
People have always found ways to abuse and been afraid of new technology.
Maybe it isn't totally about the pedophila stuff. Maybe it's more about how INANE these chat rooms are. Have you ever been in one of these? Noone's talking....they are all whispering or sending pm's. IRC is the same way. Maybe on MSN chats it got to the point that noone wants to use it any more because of the SPAM and cruft that does fly. Yahoo chat rooms are even worse. You think you have seen stupid bots in IRC, try Yahoo chat rooms. ICK! Best chat room I was ever in was a local multiline MajorBBS chatroom.
Gorkman
Parents like to blame other people for not watching their children closely enough
That's the golden ticket. It's always the fault of other people - the teachers, the police, the social services, the Internet, the TV, the teen magazines, the child's friends, the advertisers, ad nauseum.
To parents - Wake up and take some fucking responsibility for your children
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
First: At no time have they said the they will ensure, regulate or be responsible for the service. They are just claiming that their subscribers are not the problem it's the others.
Second: If subscriptions = accountability then I would assume that this would apply to all subscription services. So limiting users to their products and services just proves the point that their intentions has nothing to do with responsibility but with greed. I am sure that Yahoo!, AOL and all other subscription services would also like to solve the same problem.
Third: This is coming out after weeks a bag media press.
I just have a hard time believing any PR. Remember they are there to put a positive spin on the issue. If your are expecting any PR rep to com out and just say "We wish to destroy our competition therefore we will no longer support standards." you will be waiting a very long time. There is no reason why this cannot be stopped with the cooperation of all the players. Has any attempt been made to coordinate the effort? All I see is AOL doing it's thing and MS trying to weasel into another area that they can dominate.
Just my 2 cents and all the MS lovers now will moderate this as flaimbait.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
This is filed under my rights online? What 'rights' to I have to Micrsofts network?
Damn! There goes my unique IRC characteristic. :-/
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
At luchtime, I was listening to Jeremy Vine's programme on Radio 2. This programme covers many current events things, and indeed the main topic of conversation was this MSN decision.
It was astounding how incredibly clueless the top brass of childrens charities were. In fact, the word "incredibly" is simply inadequate to describe their cluelessness - "breathtakingly clueless" would probably be a better description. They were praising MSN, and saying how this helped solve so many problems, as if MSN removing their chat feature would suddenly mean there's no such thing as Internet chat any more. You don't even need to know how the Internet works to know only an idiot would think this. You now have pent-up massive demand for chat rooms with no where to go - so guess what, just as if there was massive demand for $RANDOM_GOOD in the bricks and mortar world, someone else will set up to fulfil this massive chunk of unfulfilled demand.
As it happens, you only need slightly more knowledge of the Internet than a concussed bee to know that alternatives _already_ exist, starting with the granddaddy of them all, IRC. The only reason MSN Chat had the popularity it did was that it's the path of least resistance - for IRC you have to download a client, but I assume for MSN Chat everything's just provided. This unfulfilled demand will start downloading IRC clients no doubt (probably mIRC, so those who host mIRC downloads are probably in for the MSN equivalent of a Slashdotting).
This is the reason why we shouldn't let these people have _any_ sort of power to legislate or make changes to the Internet - their understanding is so incredibly inadequate, they shouldn't even be allowed to run a high street store, let alone be involved in Internet legislation.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
2 Years ago I bought a paper shop in the UK. Everyday, when I see the covers of the tabloids, I get more and more depressed about the state of the British press. ( possible excepting the Times and the Guardian. Or Private Eye ;-) )
"Without deviation from the norm, 'progress' is not possible." - Frank Zappa
A few months ago, whenever I logged onto Hotmail there'd be adverts telling people to chat to strangers online. The person who made the most friends in a month would win a prize. Trouble brewing? You tell me.
Summation 2
Just as I was reading this headline the story was mentioned on the radio. Weird.
A better translation of the MSN press release would be:
:D
"Chat rooms too expensive, scape goat for closure found."
By blaming pedophilia and advertising they can shut off the service with little user backlash.
This is roughly in line with the changes to MSN messenger taking place on Oct 15th - no non-Windows/MS clients will be allowed to connect. An exemption may be arranged for Trillian, but no Linux or BSD clients will be available. This is apparently because of "security concerns and virus risk" - although if that was what you wanted to stop you would be more sensible disconnecting all of the Windows clients from the network
Beep beep.
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?
AIM is the messenger of choice for anyone not associated with MSN; isn't this just a way of marketing their online service?
They're going for the "technically inept parent who is afraid fo the internet" market.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
It is an interesting question, and I for one am glad I don't have to answer it. The 11 September issue is probably the more interesting area that isn't addressed in the MSN propaganda, for obvious reasons. I do recall in the aftermath seeing various UK-based Saudis (opponents of the current regime, but not part of Al-Qaeda, for instance) communicating via the Internet using the various Messenger / Chat programs.
I don't think I buy into it, but have you an alternative?
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
You know what? I'm glad microsoft is shutting down it's chat rooms. Why?
* I don't like MSN Service.
* I never cared much for anonymous chat. I remember working in a computer lab in college and walking around the room and finding out who was who in the different chats hostend on our vax. You'd have a little skinny 98 pound no sunlight no food no life guy with an ident of jockstud. Then you'd have a 400 pound girl called supermodel01. When they hooked up, look out! LOLx3
* Parents who let their kids play with this stuff are playing with fire. Remember about that rule about talking to strangers? Applies online too.
* Instant messaging is becoming less and less relevant. Banned in a lot of workplaces. Especially Microsoft variety.
All in all, this is a who cares. IM is not the killer app -- it's more like that pointcast "push" deal that was the next big thing in 1998-1999.
-- $G
Yeah. Right.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Yes, we are providing a "public service" by removing our free chat room services. In other words, yes, we are saving money by this move, but we needed to come up with a reason other than pure financial gain... and what better reason than to "save the children".
Great PR, but some of us see right through it. You may argue they are being fiscally responsible, but damn I hate how they do it. I mean, who can argue that "saving children from pedophiles" isn't a noble cause? How many people are going to hear this story and think, "wow, Microsoft is such a caring company"?
Yes, they are good, but seeing how good they are at deception makes my skin crawl at times.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
An alternative look at this from VUNet; "But because MSN will continue to operate moderated chatrooms in the US, Canada and Japan as a subscription-based service, industry experts are suggesting that the real motive is financial. Ian Brown, director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, which promotes public debate about the policy implications of new developments in technology, called the announcement an 'hysterical' overreaction if the motive is to protect children online."
My Personal Blog on Games and Technology and More
1) ... based on consumer experiences Meaning consumers no longer want chat rooms?
2) ... child protection Sure: get those kids away from the computer in their front room and out to the malls and parks.
3) ... our strategic investment Meaning that they need to dramatically reduce chat room use in order to justify the developments in the software used for it; or meaning that they need to charge money for the service in order to make it pay and all talk of "consumers" and "child protection" is just spin.
They missed the opportunity to include anti terrorism, increased choice and lower TCO. Their inclusion would be nonsensical? No more so than those their spin utility actually selected.
You forgot to mention Australia (no i dont consider Australia part of Asia). NineMSN will also be removing the chat services it offers.
I have no link. I heard about this on the radio.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Previous versions of MSNP used md5 to code the password. With the latest version (msnp9) you are being send thru a bunch of Passport servers, and you have to logon using an SSL Socket.
I don't know about sending messages. But I guess they will have some kind of security measure (I HOPE!)... sending plain html requests over the internet, doesn't seem very secure to me...
I'm Pete Carr, owner of Chatmag.com, the leading chat directory and safety site (google "chat safety", we're the second result). For the most part, the comments of other /.ers that MSN is closing their chat rooms due to financial concerns are right on target. It has been long known that chat is not generally a medium to "make a sale". I believe that the decision to close is the result of falling ad revenues in their chat section and potential liability suits.
Operating a good safe kids chat network is a full time job, not something to just put up and forget. MSN and several other major chat networks have been lax in assisting users with help and safety issues. Operating a help desk for chat means hiring trained personnel, taking a proactive stance to addressing help requests, and educating users to the potential hazards of chat.
There are numerous good, safe chat networks that cater to children and teens. Talk City went to a subscription only chat service, which on the one hand goes against the principle of free chat, but helps eliminate trollers and spammers. In addition, several law enforcement agencies, such as Operation Blue Ridge Thunder, regularly cruise chat rooms to search out pedophiles, and child porn filesharers.
This decision by MSN will certainly not be the "death knell" for chat. There are several dozen major IRC networks, and the estimated chat rooms now available via IRC and The Web are over 1.3M, including discussion boards and interactive sites such as Slashdot. Internet chat goes to the heart of what the Internet was designed for, communications. There will be new chat networks starting up, and the networks with a bad business model such as MSN closing.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
is that children today have no real threat what so ever to their existence. It is pretty much guaranteed that if your child is born without birth defects, it will live at least to an age where it too can procreate.
These children who are the supposed victims of paeodphilia are either mentally deficient to a degree where it is questionable they should have been born, or they were raised by foolish parents and are in dire need of the intimacy the paedophile promises. In both instances, we see a failure of the state to ensure the proper upbringing of its future citizens. We believe that parents have the absolute right to reproduce, and yet we place no standards of responsibility upon their behavior. Rights are not innate, they are made possible by circumstances. In this case, their foolishness is allowed because millions worked and died to establish the bountiful civilization they enjoy. Do they respect this civilization and work to uphold it? No.
Let's not let democracy drown at the hands of a few.
This is what democracy does. It is mob mentality reactionism. No rational person can argue that the threat of paedophilia is so great that freedom restricting measures are necessary. As other posters have mentioned, a child has about the same risk of getting struck by lightning as getting abused by a paedophile. You of course mention the car accident statistics. An enlightened leader would be keenly aware of this fact. In our media dominated world of voter education however, we don't have enlightened leadership.
We have the masses, glued to the television caring nothing of the world or their nation besides what is presented to them in a 30 minute news program.
This is but one more example of the excesses of the mob we allowed to govern our existence.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Cut the chat rooms for the security of our children...
/. masturbation over this story...
...sigh...
Instead give them all MS Messenger cause we all know they can't get hurt using that piece communication software!?
Block all their terrorist friends...Did we (MS) mention terrorists... Oh ok we did
Anyway its for the kids...Did we (MS) say kids... oh ok good.
Fuck this is getting almost too stupid to comment on but I'm sure there be plenty more
1. Open free worldwide chat system
2. s/free/not free/
s/worldwide/few countries/
3. Profit!
Shutting down free and unmoderated chatrooms is really about putting an end to something that doesn't make money and represents a legal liability to Microsoft. I'm not one to give M$ a pass on much, but I can hardly blame them for pulling the plug. How long can it be before some outraged advocacy group stages a class action suit against Microsoft for "knowingly providing a forum" for file-swappers and other naughty people? I'm thinking the days of wide-open chatrooms are coming to an end. And IRC isn't next: it will be AOL.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Considering the fact that MSN Messenger is free, and the chat room environment is free, and I never paid a penny to Microsoft to gain access for MSN Messenger or MSN Chatrooms, Microsoft has every right to do whatever they want to do with it. If anything, they have the right to close it off to paid customers of MSN (any slashdot readers out there on MSN Service?)
If they want to monitor the chatrooms they can and they should. Compared to AOL and Yahoo! chatrooms, MSN chatrooms are much cleaner and much more strict. Even though it is still populated with p0rn bots idling around, at least they have bots and hosts of their own in the chatroom that will kick users out.
With websites like SearchIRC giving anyone who wants it, instant access to over a thousand IRC networks, I don't see that MSN unmoderated chat going away as being a big deal to the overall scheme of things on the internet.
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
Why doesn't everyone just use IRC? I know my wife used to AIM chat with her sister, but it quickly wore off (talking on the phone is so much more effective). My recollections are I get far more out of IRC than I ever did out of AIM. Is it the point-2-point nature of AIM (and others) that separates them from the more group based IRC?
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
The PR justification will be protection from spam and viruses but it will be all about turning email into a proprietary Microsoft protocol.
Why does it just have to be one of those options? Why couldn't it be a combination of several?
indeed..
So, let's take a closer look at the facts:
M$ keeps open its bigger markets, the ones the actually had more problems with pedophyles;
I assume that subscribers means paying subscribers, as getting a credit card information is the best way of identifying somebody: so they will make money;
Yesterday Yahoo launched a revamped service and msn is less popular than Yahoo;
Sounds to me that they are closing unprofitable markets and raising the price in their biggest markets with the excuse of a noble cause.
I despise the quality of their software, but I envy their marketing.
Is this the first thread to be linked on the front page summary in Google News? I wonder if /. will be /.ed via a reference from Google.
The rooms stay open in the US BUT you need to provide a credit card to verify ID.
The article hints at something interesting:
Heh, that small minority is Microsoft. After all, it's Microsoft that is closing this service, making it no longer free and open. I have no doubt that they would do that to the entire internet if they could. It is very sad.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
The internet has made it vastly easier for sexual predators to stalk children. Of course, the answer to the problem is education and diligent enforcement of current law, not more unwieldy regulation. Microsoft is free to close it's free services, and it can even play the liability card (I think it's valid), but nobody should imply from that that all unmoderated chat systems should be regulated. Far from it. Unmoderated chat systems offer a valid means of free and open communication. The obvious social advantages of that outweigh the risks, IMO.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
this is probably a little off topic, but who has the crappy job of monitoring chat rooms? I thought my job was getting boring. Eventually this should mostly be handled by AI, but until then, someone actually has to do it. I remember thinking the same thing back in the early days of monitored chat rooms. How does that job work? Are they on salary? Do they work from home?
TallGreen CMS hosting
I used to be one of the 'warriors' on MSN's Chat Network. This is BEFORE they went to full java, back when they had MSNChat clients in Windows 98. Kiddie Porn traders were EVERYWHERE, with only a few channels kids went to. Often, they would come in and offer sex / porn for sex / self pictures back. We all had our war tools, massive amounts of socks bots that we could connect in a matter of seconds.. bringing in 30-40 bots into the trader channels, flooding everyone out, and close down the channel. I destroyed over 20 channels a day, in pure boredom. But sure enough 40 new ones with loads of new traders comes along..
/list >80
/loadsocks 30
/join #biggestchannel
/attack #biggestchannel
/killsocks
/mode #biggestchannel +ik
...i flooded him off the network too :D
+k was knock, they would knock but even worse, they'd leave messages like "I'll give you good young porn to let me in".. I was like 14 at the time.. so..
we did what MSN staff would not. These servers were never used for anything good.
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
err WTF ?!?! "The new world order is one in which corporations enforce their own censorship, violate rights, and pass their own laws without any pesky constitution or democratic process to get in their way.
It is a FREE service they have been providing, no laws involved, no right to chat that I know of, and last time I checked they did not need constitutional or congressional approval to alter the terms of a service you offer for NO COST.
I personally won't use it, won't allow it on my network, and block it at the firewall, but it is M$'s business to do with as they see fit...Not some god given right ensured by our forefathers...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
MSN and AOL chatrooms are jammed to the brim with angst ridden teens whose grasp of basic language structure appears to be comparable to that of an ironing board.
I used to use IRC on a regular basis, and although I occasionally met people of a similar ilk, the ratio was a tad lower. Because of the relative obscurity of IRC compared to Yahoo, MSN and AOL, the users tend to have an active interest in using the servers, rather than MSN and AOL users who are simply hammering the free coaster they got in the mail...
For the record, I only pop onto the Undernet now and again to talk to an old friend I met when I first started out on this Internet Rollercoaster, Chat rooms bore me now. Besides, I have Slashdot.
kill elrond
take elrond
put elrond in cupboard
You also failed to note that once they go subscription ALL chatrooms with be MONITORED 24/7. That's what your fee gets you.
It looks to me like this is the beginning for the push towards 3 degrees This will be safe for the kids, and they could do alot more..... gimme money!
Outdoor storage sheds and pet kennels
Only on Slashdot is it an evil monopolistic conspiracy when a company wants to get rid of its unmonitored chatrooms known for being rampant with child pornography and other abuses.
It's Microsoft! It MUST be an evil ruse!
"Sufferin' succotash."
What they're basically saying is: "We're moving to a fee based system to protect kids".
Did anyone hear their statement and *not* guffaw?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Did you manage to get the newt out of your butt?
If M$ was doing this for "child protection" motives then the result would be consistant across all MSN "service" providers. It is not. There are a number of them who will be providing unmoderated chat room FOR A SUBSCRIPTION FEE. It is nothing more than a cynical ploy to try to make money in areas that haven't been looked at in the past now that they are starting to feel the pinch on other profits.
Darn, now I can't get 100 porn bot messages every minute! :(
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
If there is one nation in the world where the likeliness of being sued for promoting pedophilia/spam/whatever as an owner of a chat server is high, it would be the US. The states could prove a very expensive testbed for payed chat services.
It is an interesting question, and I for one am glad I don't have to answer it. The 11 September issue is probably the more interesting area that isn't addressed in the MSN propaganda, for obvious reasons. I do recall in the aftermath seeing various UK-based Saudis (opponents of the current regime, but not part of Al-Qaeda, for instance) communicating via the Internet using the various Messenger / Chat programs.
Yeah, but still they try to force their customers in 28 countries out of the more anonymous IRC style chatting and into the more easily identifyable forms like IM. So either they are building market share in IM, or there really is something spooky going on; the anti-spam/pedophilia argument is crap, you just can't generalize this way without offending the customers you keep out.
I don't think I buy into it, but have you an alternative?
If, you're going to shut down services because they allow a certain amount of anonimity, the internet is going to be a very dull place soon. If you care about your corporate image, put in some more operators, listen to your users, ban the abusers. It's not like MS hasn't got the money to afford it, and if they put a little media pixiedust over it, they could regain some goodwill ("Our chat service is FREE of costs, spam, pedophiles, ...").
I am not sure what to think about this.
I read the article, MS said that the affect in the US would be only chat to paid subcribers of MSN so they can track the billing information.
How many more steps does Micro$oft have to take before they can make the claim that if you have a family you should subscribe to them because they are family safe?
In that respect it sounds like a marketing gimmick.
On the other hand there are the usual band of idiots making claims of free speech and such. Good shit people, freedom of speech doesn't really apply here, MSN is a business and in the same way that Wal-Mart cannot (and should not) be forced to carry Hustler MSN cannot be forced to provide chat features at all.
For the simple sake of capitalism I support Micro$oft in there choices here. If the free speech zealots think they can force Microsoft to carry chat channels then I want to force libraries to carry Barley Legal.
Finally there is the side of simple competition. If Micro$oft doesn't use this as a marketing tool then they are leaving themselves wide open. The 14 year old market is very demanding about chat tools. It is entirely possible they may start a chant of 'I want my AOL'.
The freedom Sutton is talking about; the freedom to use a more anonymous chatting system.
It's a service they're paying for. They can stop offering it for WHATEVER REASON THEY WANT.
Correct. But if you stop offering it completely to some, make some pay for it and continue to offer it for free to others, you look like a jerk.
Why the hell does everything here turn into an argument about freedom.
Probably because the internet was built as an open system without restrictions, and people like it to stay that way?
I'm a big user of Gaim's M$N plugin.. Gaim doesn't show the advertisments which pop up in M$N / Windows Messenger..
This seems to me the only *real reason* Micro$oft would want to stamp out 3rd party clients.. Loss of advertising revenue...
"MSN Israel does not offer MSN INTL Chat services directly, but works with a local chat solution to offer a chat product to its users. This service will be remaining open, unaffected by the changes to MSN Chat."
So less hassles and fewer paedophile lurkers in MSN Israel's chatrooms, then? "
It's funny, but here in Australia it's been hailed as a good move by all the papers and media.
When asked what they would do about such abuse of their networks, Telstra remarked, "We'll be expanding out chat networks". Avoiding the question, and only serving to give the 'I don't give a f*** impression'.
At least MS has been remotely honest this time.
IIRC it was illegal to use credit cards as identification, which is what one aspect of this move boils down to.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
err WTF ?!?! "The new world order is one in which corporations enforce their own censorship, violate rights, and pass their own laws without any pesky constitution or democratic process to get in their way.
It is a FREE service they have been providing, no laws involved, no right to chat that I know of, and last time I checked they did not need constitutional or congressional approval to alter the terms of a service you offer for NO COST.
I personally won't use it, won't allow it on my network, and block it at the firewall, but it is M$'s business to do with as they see fit...Not some god given right ensured by our forefathers...
And I bet you thought you were being insightful saying a thing like that. You are simply proving my point. Corporations get carte blanche. "After all, it is their service."
Well what happens when all the corporations decide to do the same thing and there are no alternatives? That's right, people get screwed. Microsoft has decided to curtail free speech with the claim that "it's just business." But everything on the net is "just business."
Basically what you are saying is that corporations can do whatever they want. That is exactly my point.
I, in my role as Amazing Kreskin standin, predict that "very shortly" there will be new DRM based chatroom system in place within MSN. Using the DRM to remove anonomus nature of chats to "protect the children" and thus get the DRM software into a "must use" niche.
You just watch...
Sneaky, sneaky.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press