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NYT Discovers Internet's Wild Side: IRC
maztec writes "The New York Times (free soul-sucking registration required) published an article today entitled The Internet's Wilder Side. Apparently, according to the article, 'the Internet has come to resemble a pleasant, well-policed suburb , [but] a little-known neighborhood known as Internet Relay Chat remains the Wild West.' In essence the article concerns itself with how IRC is the breeding ground of all the Internet's Evils, from animal pornography and illegal file sharing to virus making and computer cracking, it all starts here. I'd continue pointing out interesting quotes, but that'd be a waste. Go read it yourself. And if you're on IRC, remember, you're evil. Even if you're one of those do-gooders who uses Mozilla, LFS, or FreeNode servers for software development."
Is not every place with free speech and relative stealthness a breedingplace for:s ts
-terrorists
-virusmakers
-worms
-terrori
-porn
-terrorists
?
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
I think this best sums up what is at play here:
...god help them if they find USENET.
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." -- Lovecraft.
IRC is still more difficult to use than AOL chat rooms and largely the domain of techies. Sure bad stuff happens there because it's not part of the mainstream, but I don't know that it's worse there than anywhere else...
Cheers!
SCB
Wow, talk about your corporate motivated propoganda.
the Internet has come to resemble a pleasant, well-policed suburb
I guess the key here is well-policed, huh. Wouldn't want to offend.
The problem that the corporate world has with IRC is that it's a network of humans, exchanging ideas and conversing freely. And, to make matters worse, they aren't paying a monthly/weekly/hourly fee to do so.
I've read a lot of these "watch out for these free social based things on the internet, the only way to keep your kids safe is to stay on amazon.com with your credit card in hand" articles.
Meh, fuckit.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The "problem" with IRC is that it connects people. IRC isnt a breeding ground for weird stuff, humanity is.
The main beef is that IRC is an old, open protocol with countless free servers out there. How are you supposed to charge 10 cents per instant message when such things exist?
Babies are safer when you write a lot of checks. Beware free things, they're inherently evil and unamerican. IRC is like a slum (he doesnt mention which network, I'll assume they're all the same). AOL chat rooms are where high class individuals masturbate.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Am I the only one who thinks Godwin's law needs a new corrolary?
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Just calling them "chatrooms" makes me think you're full of shit.
One more established form of media just disparages another because it doesn't understand it, or because it fears it. It's a shame, because average newspaper readers inevitably equate, "IRC = bad," and continue to spread the hearsay when it comes up in conversation.
What are they smoking, anyways? The web is anything but a well-policed suburb. If anything, it's a middle school that is in perpetual recess. They just know if they were to apply these same arguments to the web that people would not stand for their bullshit.
Once again, social acceptability shows itself to be completely arbitrary.
The suburbs is where all the s#!t happens that everyone *thinks* is limited to the "inner city".
Leading market for gang growth and presence? The burbs.
Leading market of drug users and drug spending? The burbs.
Leading market for pr0n? Burbs.
By far the leading market for SUVs (speaking of so-called evil)? Burbs.
Number one users of so-called Earth killing pollutants? Burbs.
The list goes on and on and on...
Why do so many entities (read: media) STILL portray the suburbs as some sort of pure, loving, pastures of solice? The suburbs are like a nice, ripe tomato: All shiny and pretty on the surface, but a disgusting mess 1mm below the surface.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
Uh... it has? Are we using the same internet? The internet is full of spammers, annoying flash and pop-up advertising, worms, spyware, and all kinds of other undesirable things. If anything, it sounds more like the ghetto to me, not a well-policed suburb.
a little-known neighborhood known as Internet Relay Chat
Little known? I wouldn't call IRC mainstream, but it's certainly not obscure either.
Anyway, given the crap ratio of that quote, I don't think I'll bother to read the article. (Gasp! What's this, someone posting without reading the article?)
We use IRC every day for legitimate work. We're not the only ones. Don't take my word for it though. Check out this link. We progam, chat every day on IRC, and use source control tools to get our work done. This article while accurate in many ways was very unbalanced. That is a mark of poor journalism and is only done to sell newspapers. This is expected of publications like The Enquirer, but should not be the mark of the NYT.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty