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."

Comments

God forbid

[Corbets]

I can't wait to see what happens when they discover newsgroups. Man, their heads will pop. ;)

Re:God forbid

[JaffaKREE]

I always suspected I was an evil, conniving, warez trading, mp3 album pre-releasing, movie theater recording and distributing bastard from the moment I typed /server irc.dal.net lo those many years ago. Now I know for sure. Time to go kill some puppies and take pictures and post them in #MurderedPuppies.

Re:God forbid

[GreyPoopon]

I can't wait to see what happens when they discover newsgroups.

This has already happened to one of the Philadelphia news channels, although I must say that they have no clue what newsgroups really are. They ran a special feature about Voicenet, accusing them of supporting child pornography and all kinds of things. They showed the police going into the office and seizing Voicenet assets. I was shocked when it first came on. About twenty minutes into it, I became surpised at just how idiotic the whole thing was. It was all about the "Quickvue" search tool that can basically thumbnail internet content, in particular Usenet newsgroups. Apparently, a number of people were using the tool to thumbnail some of the alt.binaries.*.erotica.* newsgroups with child pornography. The news made it sound like all of this was the fault of Voicenet, and that they were doing something sinister. When Voicenet responded that they were not really able to police the content of the newsgroups, the TV station asserted that this was ridiculous, making it sound like an easy task to monitor every single post that comes into every single of the 120,000+ newsgroups out there for banned content. Just for the record, the servers were seized in January and no charges have yet been filed against Voicenet. I think the authorities are looking for subscriber lists to go directly after people viewing the content. I'm not sure if the seizure was really legal, though.

Re:God forbid

[Alexis Brooke]

This IRC thing sounds pretty bad. I can't wait for the New York Times to do a report on the 1995 documentary "Hackers".

Re:God forbid

[Jack Comics]

Just FYI, you can find a transcript of the local news station's (WPVI's), report here. WPVI even takes credit for informing the local police. If anything, what WPVI did was abuse of journalism, IMO. They in effect created their own story, and effected the operation of a large ISP as a result.

Re:God forbid

[pyros]

First rule of Usenet: You do NOT talk about Usenet!!

Re:God forbid

[Torne]

Police, FBI and other law enforcement agencies seize computer equipment *all the time*. Then if what you're being accused of is pretty unimportant, it'll sit on a shelf in an evidence locker someplace for three months before any forensics guys even take a look at it. This happened to a friend of mine. The police who arrive at the office/your house/whatever know what computers look like, and might have one 'expert' with them, but they will never just take copies of your data, they will take whole machines, even whole networks.

If a computer has had kiddy porn on it, they typically destroy the computer. The whole thing. Maybe the monitor too for good measure. They're not polite about this kind of thing.

Re:God forbid

[Skjellifetti]

Did you read the same article I did?

First off, since when is the www a "well policed little suburb?"

Actual quote from NYT:

Even as much of the Internet has come to resemble a pleasant, well-policed suburb, a little-known neighborhood known as Internet Relay Chat remains the Wild West. While copyright holders and law enforcement agencies take aim at their adversaries on Web sites and peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like Napster, I.R.C. remains the place where people with something to hide go to do business.

Sounds like a reasonable statement to me. The cops ARE going after child porn web sites and p2p networks.

The author also made some funny contradictions. Like the part where he says there are only 50,000 people on all of IRC on at any given time. And then in the next paragraph and the rest of the article he goes on to say how there's no way to know how many people are online. Funny, but a NYT editor should have caught that.

Actual NYT quote:

Probably no more than 500,000 people are using I.R.C. worldwide at any time, and many of them are engaged in legitimate activities, network administrators say. [SNIP] It is almost impossible to determine exactly how many people use I.R.C.

Note the careful use of qualifiers probably vs. exactly.

The article was big on assumptions, and short on fact.

Actual NYT quote:

"I.R.C. is where all of the kids come on and go nuts,'' William A. Bierman, a college student in Hawaii who helps develop I.R.C. server software and who is known online as billy-jon, said in a telephone interview. "All of the attention I.R.C. has gotten over the years has been because it's a haven for criminals, which is a very one-sided view.
"The whole idea behind I.R.C. is freedom of speech. There is really no structure on the Internet for policing I.R.C., and there are intentionally no rules. Obviously you're not allowed to hack the Pentagon, but there are no rules like 'You can't say this' or 'You can't do that.'"

The article was full of well researched facts including interviews with the authors of the most popular IRC software.

I guess if the point of the article was fear mongering of the technically challenged, it got it's point across. But it seemed kind of yellow to me.

The article wasn't aimed at you. It was aimed at the general public. It was fairly balanced and described the good, the bad, and the ugly of IRC. You've just got your panties in a twist because you think you're an l337 d00d.

Re:God forbid

[Ykant]

Next thing you know they're going to be finding UPS liable for shipping boxes of contraband information.

Quiet, man - I need my cigars!

Such a discovery!

[Jaywalk]

Wow. The New York Times has discovered IRC. What an amazing discovery. What are they going to discover next? Pennsylvania? I'd love to hear their hard-hitting expose about Pittsburgh.

Re:Such a discovery!

[beh]

It's kind of interesting that the NYT would engage in what I would
consider sensationalist press. I remember that in the late 1990s a
German TV report came out with a sensationalist article about the
fact that there was a "secret document" on the Internet which would
describe how to build bombs - and that this would be totally
scandalous.

This "*secret* document" was the FAQ rec.pyrotechnics...

Re:Such a discovery!

[AKAImBatman]

Of course, that document started saying something like "go to your local grocery store and buy 3 kg of U-235" :)

Then use an old buick as a shell. Carefully pack the entire contraption in a few tons of traditional explosives like plastique or nitroglycerin....

The really amusing part is that it isn't all that hard to build an atomic bomb. Only two ingredients are difficult to come by:

1. Enriched U-235 or Pu-239. The enrichment process requires a massive chemicals and refining infrastructure. Pu-239 is produced inside worked reactors and is carefully accounted for by UN watchdogs. Plus the Pu-239 has to be very pure. If it contains a large amount of Pu-238, it will be useless.

2. The initial charge has to be carefully shaped or else the bomb will fizzle. The only known ways to test a design are by actually blowing one up or running computer simulations. The former is rather noticeable, while the later is the reason we put an embargo on computing technology to certain countries.

If you want to know how to build a hydrogen bomb, go do a search for the Progressive article. Good luck on manufacturing a uranium neutron reflector!

Re:Such a discovery!

[zolon]

It is actually older then 12 years. 1989 was when Eris Free Network was started in hopes of getting rid of eris.edu.

I think I just have proven that I am either old, or a geek. Probably both.

sin

How many years has IRC been running?

[Black Rabbit]

Next thing you know, they'll be raving about the wonders of Archie, Veronica and Gopher!

Well policed suburbs?

[Roadkills-R-Us]

Obviously, they're refering to usenet. I mean, I haven't seen a fatal shooting there in quite some time.

Of course

[Orgazmus]

Is not every place with free speech and relative stealthness a breedingplace for:
-terrorists
-virusmakers
-worms
-terroris ts
-porn
-terrorists

?

Re:Of course

[Black Rabbit]

This century, it's the Internet. 200 (or so) years ago, it was coffeehouses. No matter what the forum, it will always be used to discuss dissention.

Re:Of course

[Dhalka226]

It's not entirely applicable, but your comment reminded me of a quote:

"The only freedom which counts is the freedom to do what some other people think to be wrong. There is no point in demanding freedom to do that which all will applaud. All the so-called liberties or rights are things which have to be asserted against others who claim that if such things are to be allowed their own rights are infringed or their own liberties threatened. This is always true, even when we speak of the freedom to worship, of the right of free speech or association, or of public assembly. If we are to allow freedoms at all there will constantly be complaints that either the liberty itself or the way in which it is exercised is being abused, and, if it is a genuine freedom, these complaints will often be justified. There is no way of having a free society in which there is not abuse. Abuse is the very hallmark of liberty."
-- Lord Chief Justice Halisham

Ahhh.. fear of the unknown

[steve buttgereit]

I think this best sums up what is at play here:

"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... ...god help them if they find USENET.

Cheers!
SCB

Darn! Now average joe will use it and ruin it

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to go back to BBS for all the evil stuff.

/list

[Himring]

IRC is the breeding ground of all the Internet's Evils

It was in 1996 that I developed my eye twitch. That was just after having read /list for the first time on efnet....

Re:/list

[drinkypoo]

IRC developed a successive series of safety features to prevent this from happening. First, they designed the network to drop you for flooding when you did a /list *, and later, they just prevented it entirely - at least on efnet. (The one true irc network.)

I haven't tried doing one on openprojects or anything like that, though.

seems odd

[theMerovingian]

I think its funny that file sharing is now on a par with animal pornography...

The vilification plan is almost complete.

Re:seems odd

[Glonoinha]

That depends. We talking animals with other animals, or animals with people? The former you can find on the Discovery Channel; the latter, not so much.

If they think IRC is bad

[Tebriel]

they should see Ebay. There's some weird shit for sale there....

Just saw a discussion in #hackers...

[jez9999]

The NYT has an article on us being 'evil'! Just saw it on Slashdot, go see it :-P
<creat1ve> What?
<creat1ve> Damn.. they suck!!
<creative> hack-bot, DDOS nytimes.com
<hack-bot> Initializing DDOS

...

<l1ght> Haha, nytimes.com down :-) That'll teach them to badmouth irc, thank god for that Slammer virus that let us build up those zombies!

Re:Just saw a discussion in #hackers...

[HeghmoH]

That is such an obvious fake. If you're going to post made-up IRC discussions, you should at least use proper IRC grammar, such as no capital letters, missing or incorrect punctuation, etc. You're not even trying to be believable!

Re:Just saw a discussion in #hackers...

[Nobody You Know]

And the damndest thing is, that compiles under Perl...

Whatever

[stratjakt]

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.

Re:Hmm...

[stratjakt]

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.

Godwin's Law

[Aneurysm9]

...and I.R.C. users speculate that terrorists also use the networks to communicate in relative obscurity.

Am I the only one who thinks Godwin's law needs a new corrolary?

Re:Lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Just calling them "chatrooms" makes me think you're full of shit.

All too common nowadays...

[mattgreen]

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.

Re:Lol

[Orgazmus]

and "moderator" dont help

its called #channels and operators.
n00b

pleasant, well policed suburbs AREN'T EITHER

[potus98]

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.

Uh.... what?

[KeeperS]

the Internet has come to resemble a pleasant, well-policed suburb

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?)

Need proof?

[Rorschach1]

Don't believe IRC is evil? Just try logging on with an even remotely female-sounding nick sometime.

Seth Schiesel Is Just Trying to Sell Papers

[Milican]

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

They don't

[poptones]

In the US the "complete" newsgroup providers I know of have begun either denying posting access to certain groups, or just filtering out binary content altogether. Easynews especially seems to have been hit hard since that virus made its debut from one of their accounts. Every now and then you see a complaint from someone in the support forum because godzilla deleted binary content - their response is almost always "get over it, things have changed." That old paradigm about carriers of content not being responsible for the actual content seems to have gone out the window - lots of "police," self appointed and otherwise, sending in complaints. Once the complaint is made, the carriers have no choice but to delete it.

I use easynews and regularly READ (important note there) several of the "shady" groups. There's plenty of music and movies and stuff, but the kiddie fans and site crackers have ALL gone underground. LOTS of groups now flooded with PGP posts and encrypted RARs, locked away from everyone but the cliques that communicate elsewhere and use the groups as massive file stores. All that's left in the clear are stories about arrests and rumors of arrests - those folks are all running scared and getting busted even in places like Finland and Singapore. Even many of the bigger MP3 posters have left the building.

I do believe usenet is about to "grow up" the way the web did. Except newsgroups are useless to businesses for anything except support forums, so how this is going to affect things in the future remains to be seen.

Even most of the stuff in the DVD rip groups is intentionally mislabelled and you often hear about folks having their accounts cancelled due to their posts in the music and video groups. The only reason none of this affects me is because I don't post ripped movies or pop music (or illegal shit) - all my trading is done in the "international" and techno music groups where artists are more independant and copyright coverage a bit murkier.

That said, I think these folks must be late to the party. I'm sure there are plenty of newbs on IRC doing illegal shit, but nobody with more than half a brain would be doing it in the open on IRC where your IP can be grabbed in realtime. I'd say the NYT is, as usual, arriving VERY late to this party.