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.
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?
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
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 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!*@%!
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
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.
"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.
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 ?
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!
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/
"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
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
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.
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..."
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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