Slashdot Mirror
Is IRC All Bad?
An anonymous reader writes "IRC is often portrayed by the media as a haven for illegal activity. The author of IRC Hacks set out to find whether or not this was true. His conclusions are quite alarming, suggesting that 99.9% of IRC usage is illegal although he backs up IRC by saying that it is also used for lots of constructive purposes and is used by open source software developers." Update: 01/21 05:17 GMT by P : The author claimed it was merely 99.9% of traffic "to the top 60 channels" that is illegal, not 99.9% of all IRC traffic.
Actually I read the article, and he says that "99.9% of IRC traffic to the top 60 channels is 'illegal.'" Which doesn't surprise me; all 60 of them are warez channels. But overall, this is a drop in the IRC ocean.
There is far too much legal conversation going on that he completely ignored in this study, choosing to focus on the top 60 warez channels to the exclusion of all else. Is it any wonder he found what he found? If you go looking for warez, you're probably going to find warez.
In other words, this is a bunch of lies, damn lies and statistics. I didn't even have to think hard about this one to realize it's a bunch of bullshit.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Ah, IRC, where men are men, women are men, and 14-year old girls are FBI agents.
Yeah, I buy 99%, although the last time I logged on it was for help with my Slackware box.
If nothing else, IRC has given us bash.org.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
By and large, the media has never heard of IRC.
I hope to be the first, and I know I'm not the last. IRC is GREAT for talking to people. The best Linux help I've gotten is from IRC
Devise, Repair, Solve, Build
...not that we should really be surprised. IRC has become less of a community with the chatrooms/instant messaging clients that exist now. In the past, it was a social activity. Now it's just a convenient way to trade warez :)
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
The reason 99.9% of IRC usage is illegal is because it's used by open source software developers.
99.9% is an entirely sensationalized number. It means nothing. If you actually read through, he's claiming 99.9% of the top 60 public channels on IRC are largely illegal behavior. That's not 99.9% of IRC. The warez related channels are large, and there are many people who use IRC just for that. But there are many people who actually use IRC for the purpose it was intended, to chat.
I'm an oper on efnet, so I'm well aware of the fact illegal activity goes on on IRC. Depending on the illegal activity, we can and do take action. We regularly remove drone runners, hacked bots (drones or XDCC), spammers, and other malicious users. Do we actively pursue copyright infringers? Not generally. Besides the fact there's simply too many of them, they're generally not harming our network or each other so they're a low priority.
Me? I use IRC for chat primarily, and most people I know do the same.
Next question please.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
99.9%??? come on...
I've used IRC for so many purposes I couldn't even begin to list them all. None of them were illegal.
I'm a bit short on cash, i'll just download your book (linked from the article) from IRC.
His conclusions are quite alarming, suggesting that 99.9% of IRC usage is illegal
From TFA: Based on those keywords being monitored, 99.9% of IRC traffic to the top 60 channels is "illegal".
Clearly, (all) IRC usage != IRC traffic to the top 60 channels.
IRC is just multiplayer notepad...
Duh?
Most people use IM now, so there's less need for the casual user to read the following:
captnitro: hey whats goin on
ice8229: no fuck that
captnitro: what?
peebles: your mother is a whore, you know it
ice8229: i'm not going to buy a goddamn program just to rip
ice8229: anybody know of an open one?
fisher0: i kno cuz i fuckerd her d00d
captnitro: what the hell is going on here?
adbot: MP3Z MOVIEZ WAREZ BAGELZ go to 62.182.100.10
binaryman: 1000100011110101
captnitro: huh?
binaryman: 1001111010111110
sharky: get out n00b
fisher0: i am not a virgin i so fskced her! in the ears
pornking: anybody want to cyber?
10yearold: yes
Clearly the domain of kings.
He goes searching for warez (using four keywords related to popular software) and when he finds it he declares 99.9% of IRC usage is illegal? What about the linux support, gaming forums, etc... and there have to still be people that use IRC for plain old chat. I think these numbers are a bit misleading.
What internet protocol doesnt have a high percentage of illegal activity? HTTP to get to the warez sites, FTP to download from them, IRC to get them off other jackasses, SMTP to send unsolicited e-mail. P2P "protocols" ...
Too many idiots are out here in cyberspace.
Skimming the article, obviously he counted Fserve ads and Xdcc ads. Each one of these, one every ten minutes or so, ads up most mightilly, but does not necesarrily mean that people are more interested in them by the huge margin that he comes up with (although I do think they do account for more). Just because I have a script that says "Free windows XP Pro Corp, Jasc, Norton systemworks type !DJ245" every 600 seconds doesn't mean that it is accounting for the vast majority of use of IRC. Traffic, probably. Bandwidth, most likely. But hours of time spend in front of a keyboard using IRC- most definitely not.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Last time I used IRC was to chat in the Distributed.net channel. Of course that was when I still used the built in IRC client in Mozilla before I switched to Firefox.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
This just in over the wires, everywhere is reporting that planet Earth is a haven for illegal activities. Without exception, in every town of every province of every country, earthlings are violating (where applicable)local, state and federal laws. In conclusion, people cannot be trusted and Martial Law must be declared!
O' Big Brother, where art thou?
This statistic is misleading, and the article mentions the real statistic: 99% of traffic in the Top 60 Channels of the Most Popular Servers On IRC is related to illegal activities.
There's an important difference between that, and what's written on Slashdot.
If I were pedantic, I'd also mention that it isn't illegal to discuss illegal activities, but we all know that's just a semantic diatribe waiting to start.
stfu you stupid noob.
That has to be the most ridiculous article i've seen posted in recent weeks or months for that matter.
99.9 percent huh?
go back to aol.. >:(
You're nothing; like me.
Slashdot - the geek's Weekly World News!
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
This is interesting, if not completely scientific.
First of all, the author asserts, "Based on [statistics extrapolated from the arbitrary] keywords being monitored, 99.9% of IRC traffic to the top 60 channels is "illegal"
Which is arbitrary but interesting. I bet he might get different statistics if he monitored keywords unrelated to popular software programs. Or if non "top 60 channels" were monitored. Or if some more specific traffic-based analysis was carried out (cut messages by bots, etc).
Secondly, and this is a place where he doesn't go, is IRC an encourager of illegal activity or just an outlet for it (i.e. if all IRC servers quit today, would all the illegal activity just shift to other parts of the 'net?)-- it's probably somewhere in the middle, but where, exactly? In other words, what does his study imply?
I'd love to see more analysis on this.
I would guess that this would be true for traffic, since text obviously takes less bandwidth than warez. However, look at a network like irc.dynamix.com (was the Tribes game chat server, now it's that and far more), and none of the channels, not even the 100+ user ones, are used for file swapping. Of course, the same can't be said for the huge networks, and some of the shadier ones.
&thatsawrap
Where I work uses IRC for internal communications. Channels for support, engineering, sales, etc. We'd go nuts without it.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
(Seriously, though... PSP is in the top four requests? Really?)
stripShow - Where WordPress meets webcomics
a private place for friends to chat and idle. If wetake MSN for example the percentage of bandwidth going to file transfering is going to be massaive compared to text messages. Think of it this way.
1 message = 1-10kb
1 movie file = 900mb (30 minutes = 200 mb so I'm assuming a movie is about that)
Now then, I have to sent 1024 messages to make 1/900 or 1/90 of that same thing. So any way you look at it, you will still end up with "broadband is faster then my fingers."
IRC is just free speech in a free place, it can be abused just as any where else can. I'm sure theres alot of child pornography on IRC, but I'm also sure theres alot of it being handed to "clients" in McDonalds and coffee shops. It's how the world works, only it's hidden better in that case.
I like muppets.
Obviously any channel which has 1000 users on it isn't going to have much conversation going on. Unlike a cocktail party where 1000 people can congregate and have 200 different conversations simultaniously with 4-6 people per conversation, an irc channel with 1000 people is more like an auditorium where only a few people can talk at a time (usually one). This is hardly what you would call "chat".
How we know is more important than what we know.
A search for words that are more likely than not connected to warez returns 99.9% illegal activity? I wonder what percentage of the word "dumbass" turns up something illegal...
Quick summary: the author of the article monitored occurance of four keywords: "Norton", "Microsoft", "Symantec" and "Jasc" and found that over 99.9% of the contexts in which they were used referred to illegal file sharing.
Among those who use IRC for other purposes (general chatting, collaboration), how many of them talk about the above companies? If the author had monitored the occurance of the words "linux" or even "c++" or "java" there would be many more "legal" contexts.
I think the number 99.9% is worthless as a measurement.
From TFA: "Based on those keywords being monitored, 99.9% of IRC traffic to the top 60 channels is 'illegal'."
How about: 99.9% of IRC traffic mentioning commercial software in channels dedicated to trading illegal software is related to trading illegal software.
Largest number of users. Humans, fservs, or both? After a rigerous analysis I have discovered that file trading channels tend to (wait for it) have many file server bots...
And the author could do with an introduction to use of IRC by viruses. Nothing like using Google, or even talking to the folks on each network that deal with the infections, before writing an article.
When did Slashdot become a college newspaper?
99.9% of what? Alcoholics Anonymous' IRC meetings? The Linux channel? The Star Trek channel?
Most of the other channels are sex lines. Sure, there's probably illegal stuff going on in some, but it's mostly people pretending to have a social life.
99.9% of what's left, after you get rid of all that, is probably illegal. I'll accept that. It's just not a very useful figure, at that point.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
still, most of the piracy traffic is congested on several networks. I spend my time on gamesnet where 99.9% of the activity is legal. It's just a bunch of gamers scrimmaging, matching, idleing, and pertending like e-sports will ever get big :-P
leprkan...
the IRC protocol does not permit two users to share the same nickname
This line from the article made me laugh.Pondering over it which IM protocol supports this ?
fifteen jugglers, five believers
IRC also works as a great source of entertainment without being illegal as shown at http://bash.org/
I think a clarification is in order. The author states that he monitored the top 60 channels and of those 60 99.9% of that traffic was illegal.
"Conclusions Two rather surprising observations can be made from this ad-hoc analysis of the 60 largest IRC channels: Based on those keywords being monitored, 99.9% of IRC traffic to the top 60 channels is "illegal". Norton products are more popular than Microsoft products (perhaps IRC users have more need for virus scanners?)
Which is definitely not the same as saying 99.9% of "all" irc traffic is illegal. Which the story leader tends to imply. As we know there's a whole lot more than 60 channels available and many of them engage in perfectly legal activities.
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
Ever been to bash? That's what IRC is, there just happens to be alot of warez servers out there too.
http://bash.org/
I like muppets.
I've used IRC for years and whilst i have noticed some spam, i have never came cross anyone or anything illegal.
Infact, the worst case of anything illegal going on was when my friends little brother chatted on MS net meeting, with the video confrence, dressed up with some fake boobs and got some elderly pervert to masturbate.
I've only experienced dick heads on IRC. No doubt there is a lot of illegal stuff going on, but 99.9%? Get off it!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
I'll admit, from a distance IRC may seem like a gigantic warez breeding ground--and with sites like http://searchirc.com/ such channels are easy to find, but many of the IRC networks DO contain channels whose members don't distribute illegal material. I have such a channel, and all we do is idle--er, I mean chat most of the time.
Networks operators need to take stronger initiatives to cleaner servers (those that care), or soon the mpaa and riaa may bite (and rip in half) them.
Very correct, 99.9% is sensationalized and made up. With a sampling of 60 channels, either 1 channel could be non-warez and it would be 100% - 1/60 % = 99.833. . .% , or all would be warez related and it would 100%. This guy may want to use accurate math (not round up from 3) if he is doing a Ph.D. thesis.
-Mr. Nit picky
Is everybody forgetting the instant help people get from IRC channels? Look around. You've got official IRC channels for almost every distro of Linux. Got a problem? Pop in and ask a question. There will almost always be someone there to help you.
I idle on an IRC network where I've known the members for several years now. Yes, I will probably never meet them in real, but you have a sense of community. Is it illegal to have a sense of community?
Too bad all the irc servers he has in his favorites are warez and porn. I mean 99.9%?!...could there be any other explanation?
Wow we should ban IRC along with P2P aswell! Oh why not ban real time network communications too?
IRC: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Actually to be honest, I've taken to calling it the "wastelands". If there is something I want, its google first. Bittorrent second. Kazaa-lite third. If all that fails, then its IRC. Usually if I get to that point, I'd rather give up before treking through that sludge.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Illegal activity... and some Open Source too!
Those are not parallel's I appreciate being drawn. What do you think 99.9% people who read that will have as a conclusion? It's almost as though this were a more indirect, intelligent way for Microsoft to frame up Open Source as "evil". Too bad they didn't think of this first...
I disdain most chat applications, however I actually have to use IRC to communicate with co-workers several hundred feet away from me at work. It's actually very efficient, and it's the only thing I ever use it for.
Actually it's 99.9% of the "top 60 channels".
.06th of a channel?
Which leads one to wonder:
how does one have
Are you saying IRC is useful for something other than idling?
analysis, and conclusions. First off i will agree that most if not all of IRC traffic is illegal. Secondly i will note that monitoring four words in 6 channels on the top 10 IRC networks, is not a good sample to base conclusions on. I will also point out that most, if not all, of the really "illegal" channels are not on the big networks, and are rarely public. This Kazaa of places he found are just the tip of the iceberg. The IRC channels are really just a front for a much larger problem. Here's how it works: People run these IRC "warez" channels basically as recruiting places. They offer lots of content, but what they are really are looking for is suppliers. There is a sort of bartering system in place on IRC. If you have access to some unreleased item or can provide bandwidth you get recruited. Once you get recruited, you get showered in free stuff. As long as you keep producing, you keep getting. The bots are really just a bait tactic to recruit new people. Sure the bottom feeders like them, but that's really superfluous. I could go on to explain curriers, dumps, and ratios, but that's another discussion. During my younger days I often traveled in these dark underground arenas. Fortunately, I moved on. The point i'm trying to make is that most IRC traffic is illegal by volume, but IRC has plenty of other great uses. There is no real way to analyze the exact ratio or amount that is illegal.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
Join IRC NOW and get... -Asshole ops! -Free(after enduring the nag) chat! -Channels of 100+ people with NO TALKING! DOWNLOAD NOW!
Hell, frm the sound of this article and others like it, what the fuck do they want? Maybe ban all forms of file transfer? That certainly seems like what they expect (following their logic of course). Maybe we'll get a great new product from Microsoft that does just that. "we will control everything you download. If We don't think it's a picture or spam email, you will not get it"
thank you so much for blowing up my spot CowboyNeal. if irc's gone..where-tf am i gonna get all my warez from?!?!?!
This entire study is flawed simply because the author is using math to justify his conclusion, but his variables are all meaningless and arbitrary.
If he had instead wrote a simple script for his IRC client that would get a list of channels and randomly join say 10 of them with atleast say 10 people in them, then he could start citing numbers as his test cases would have been random, possibly. But the fact is, he completely ignores that the number of small channels is massively larger than the number of gigantic channels, and generally speaking in these smaller channels is where genuine conversation takes place.
Try having a genuine conversation on a channel with 200 - 300 people, the chances are its like talking in a storm and your words are lost in the chaos. All the channels I personally go on have at maximum 50 - 80 people, but on average closer to 20, rarely in which all people are active. Out of all our interactions, only a small percentage of them would be deemed illegal. This 99.9% number might as well have been made up before the author even started the 'experiment', which was really not much of an experiment but more like fitting the test to match the desired results.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
He monitored 60 channels for 36 hours for only 4 words - Norton, Symantec, Jasc, and Microsoft.
He then determines that out of 10588 instances of those words, they were only used 10 times legally. Based on this, he concludes that 99.9% of all IRC traffic is illegal. But he doesn't define what is illegal (other then mention that he's monitoring for warez). He doesn't mention what percentage of these "key words" were in relation to the rest of the conversations. He also doesn't take into account what percentage of the traffic these 60 channels make up out of all of the IRC traffic.
And this study was for his Ph.D. thesis. I really hope he fails. We don't need Ph.D's that come to wild conclusions based off of the poor analysis of data.
As someone else mentioned, he went looking for warez and found it.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
If the files themselves are not transfered over IRC, then how are any of the discussions illegal? I the address off a copyrighted file illegal?
A&M Records v. Napster should help you find your own answer to that question.
When a nice 44 year old gentleman helping a troubled 14 year old girl regain her self confidence is "illegal".
paintball
I work as a systems engineer for a large internet service provider in western pa, and I use IRC everyday to chat to co-workers and other admins / engineers for various ISP's all around the country. Ever have a problem with a radius box that you're using to do dial-up authentication? IRC is just about the only place left that you can find people who'll know what the hell your talking about... It's a great place to bounce ideas off of other like-minded / like-employeed people. The other day for example I talked who just took over abuse duties for an ISP in Canada, shared some of my tips and tricks...
So 99% of IRC traffic is bad? Maybe the bandwidth, because text doesn't use much at all... But I would argue there are many that are using it for legit purposes!
Well not unless you count that time you accidentaly accepted the pictures of the under-age Asian twins with the sea-cow... But don't worry, I'm sure no one reads bash.org
The only time I use it is irc.mozilla.org, and occasionally freenode, for #spamassassin, and #wordpress
I contribute some to mozilla, so I'm there quite a bit...
but other than that... IRC is just creepy these days.
grammar like "Microsoft probably don't need introducing." still resides.
In some dialects of the English language, the name of a corporation is considered a plural noun.
Hi, I'm the RIAAlippy. It looks like you are able to block copyright infringers from your system. Would you like me to sue you?
paintball
This guy was obviously doing all of the wrong searches. Last time I was on IRC, I tried to get help with my Linux box but somehow got a cyber-bj. It's a jungle in there!
how about slashnet?
Gamesurge is #5 in the top 10 networks and has no illegal content at all. Don't they factor in or were they skipped over?
99.9% of IRC is silence. nada. idling.
or in my case, a handful of friends (i talk to the same people on irc i did 10 years ago).
are you guys still reading story submissions, or just picking them at random?
Seriously, though... PSP is in the top four requests? Really?
PSP is also the name of a handheld video game system that's out in Japan and will see a release in North America and Europe within the next few months. I can see why legit game players would be chatting about that on IRC. But if you really want a cheap paint program comparable to PSP or Photoshop Elements, then try this.
That's not to say I've never done anything questionable on the internet. Hehe. Just look at the porn sites I visit. However, the time that I spend on #distributed on irc.distributed.net have been for the most part extremely informative and welcoming. They might have a political leaning a bit left of my personal tastes, but the discussions are always enlightening and relevant. I've not seen an IRC channel that is so anti-questionable use as #d, but that's about the only place I go, so the practice may be present elsewhere too.
Not everyone uses IRC for illegal things. Let me give some great examples of why I use IRC and the advantages I see:
1. FreeMatrix radio chat for the radio shows
2. No lame fonts and other stupid things like sound effects - easy to strip out the colors too from the AOL newbies who don't realize how rude it is
3. No bulky chat clients. Can IRC using only a text based interface if I want to, or even mIRC or the java chat client I have on my website
4. Ignore, kick, ban, kline, gline, need I say more?
5. Ability to communicate with alot of the people I work with who normally I can't get in touch with due to distance or expense.
Theres ALOT of good things going on IRC if you take the time and look. But of course, the GOOD things on IRC wouldn't make for a very interesting or popular story would it?
Brielle
It would be like me going to Las Vegas looking specifically for prostitution and gambling, doing it, then claiming that Las Vegas was totally evil just because of that. ...OK, bad example.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
And Amazon tells me that if I want it delivered Monday, January 24 I only have 19 hours and 21 minutes to go....
Nah, I think I'll just sit around home on Monday and be depressed about how crappy a day it is instead.
FWIW, I'm developing a software for IRC, and would like to lay emphasis on the fact that IRC per se is nothing more than regular TCP/IP connections which are not different from HTTP or some P2P protocols on the internet, to counter expected rise of stupid argument such that IRC is inherently bad or IRC should be banned etc. Long live freedom of speech.
Oh give me a break. I'm currently doing a small anthropological study on an IRC channel for a class. I am of course in my paper stating which network and which channel I am studying.
This "study" didn't tell us anything. Just the "top 10 networks" and the "top 60 channels". And those are... what exactly? What is his definition of 'top'? by usage? What usage? Number of people connected? Amount of traffic? did he make allowances for people sitting on multiple channels? Too many open ended variables.
And has been said before... go looking for warez, you're going to find them. Of course the top 60 channels are warez.. but last time I checked, the top 60 channels didn't constitute all of IRC. His 'study' would have been better served if he had picked 60 channels at random (or say 10-15 per network). I'm sure that the number of people in all of the *other* channels on those networks combined way way WAY outnumber the people on those 60 channels grabbing warez.
Y'know, I may very well use his "study" in my paper to show the fallacies people fall into when they try and study online communities/culture. He definitly did a good job on that standpoint.
I can just see some moron waving a statistic like this around congress... that's all we need. It's hard to enough to explain things when we have accurate information. It's a nightmare when dealing with this kind of hackneyed nonsense.
You basically just said: excluding what is likely to be illegal, what remains is 99% legal.
you mean all that stuff i've downloaded wasn't legal??? ok, how do i give it all back?
Sig not available, please try again later. If the problem persists, then the submitter is an idiot.
Quick research of the words "teens" and "porn" on the google turns out that 99.9% of internet content is illegal.
He's claiming that 99.9% of the discussions involing MS, Norton, Jasc, and some other company in the top 6 channels by number of members are about illegal uses.
So he is by no means sampling all of IRC or even all of those top 6 channels. The statistic is pretty much meaningless and I suspect just included because it sounds scary.
I'm an admin on the GameSurge IRC network (irc.gamesurge.net). I can't really say much about the other networks, but on GameSurge at least, we don't permit warez distribution, among other illegal activities. Our 6 largest channels are for finding games to play, clan channels, or IRC games -- none of these activities are illegal.
So at the very least, that means that 10% of the channels he looked at aren't used for illegal purposes (presumably he used something like netsplit.de to determine the 10 largest networks, so we'd be in that list).
I seem to recall that DAL changed their policies to disallow file-sharing channels a while ago. If they're enforcing that, there goes another 10%. A quick glance on netsplit.de shows that the biggest QuakeNet channels aren't for warez either. I didn't check the other networks, but there's probably a couple more that are clean.
I'll admit it's likely that the biggest channels on some of the other networks will be like he writes, but surely not 99.9%. Less than 70% even!
From the article, all he found is that most of the time Microsoft, Norton, Symantec, and Jasc are mentioned in 60 particular IRC channels, it's in relation to illegally downloading their products.
He didn't look at the vast majority of IRC channels, and of those he did, he didn't consider the vast majority of the traffic within them -- just those four words. Additionally, he failed to observe any distinction between engaging in an illegal activity and simply mentioning it.
This is a bit like visiting the 60 largest train stations, measuring how many times the word "score" is used in relation to illegal activity, and concluding that 99.9% of the world's public transport users are drug trafficking.
I should buy some cement.
Saying the media hasn't heard of IRC is just silly.
IRC is *always* mentioned in reports of any kind to do with computer hacking, copyright protection or similar such crimes. The media view IRC as a hacker world of badness, which is why not much focus is put on it.
The other main reason being that by far the majority of the userbase on the Internet do not have sufficient skills to operate their email client, let alone an IRC client. Its not as simple as using things like IM clients, its not as pretty, it doesn't have pretty flowers and fluffy windows.
IRC has been adopted by these hacker/gamer communities because it is these people who have the knowledge and experience, and interest to use IRC with no hassle.
As for asking networks like EFnet to police ~40,000+ channels for copyright infringers, that is just plain unrealistic. However, one thing that normally goes hand in hand is the use of hacked/compromised machines by the people who are offering this material. That usually attracts much more negative attention, and you're much more likely to have a hard time connecting to IRC if you're involved in this.
- Another "nit-picker"
The first time I user IRC on the VAX/VMS in 1989, I ended up talking to a young man in Berlin who told me the Berlin Wall was going to come down three days before CNN knew about it.
Every spare minute I had between class, I spent asking what he thought would happen, heard he was scared because the doubts of what would happen next and felt REAL glad I stumbled on IRC while most everyone else was using it to try and scam a date.
Knowing that something like this tool was able to bring people together across the world for such a world changing event just made me feel unbelievably privileged.
And I beat CNN with the news. Thanksgiving just meant more that year.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
#104383 +(4298)- [X]
bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears14: Aight.
bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.
bloodninja: Me too baby.
BritneySpears14: I kiss you softly on your chest.
bloodninja: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
BritneySpears14: Hey...
bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 chicken of the Infinite.
BritneySpears14: Funny I still don't see it.
bloodninja: I spend my mana reserves to cast Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness.
BritneySpears14: You are the worst cyber partner ever. This is ridiculous.
bloodninja: Don't f*ck with me bitch, I'm the mightiest sorcerer of the lands.
bloodninja: I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you are only a Lvl. 2 Druid.
BritneySpears14: Don't ever message me again you piece of ****.
bloodninja: Robots are trying to drill my brain but my lightning shield inflicts DOA attack, leaving the robots as flaming piles of metal.
bloodninja: King Arthur congratulates me for destroying Dr. Robotnik's evil army of Robot Socialist Republics. The cold war ends. Reagan steals my accomplishments and makes like it was cause of him.
bloodninja: You still there baby? I think it's getting hard now.
bloodninja: Baby?
I had a whole post written up, but the gaps in the logic used to pick his sample aren't even worth my time to comment on.
I do security
Hihi
On friday/saturday nights I run a karaoke show where I stream video live over the internet
I just stretch a bx client across the bottom of the screen, and let folks on the net hang out in a chatroom. What they say in the chatroom, goes up on the screen right below the lyrics for the singers to read.
Sometimes we get jerks in there. Our #1 rule is no heckling the singers. We figure it takes guts to get up on stage and sing in front of the world, so we try to take care of our singers.
Luckily, I have a lot of good people watching it for me. The occasional bad comment slips through, but part of the fun is in the banning.
No warez, none of that junk. Just a cool place.
irc.landoleet.org #karaoke
www.7bamboo.com
I've been using IRC since 96 and I have quite a circle of friends who I keep in contact with over IRC on private channels. From my home town of 8000 there are around 800 IRC users who just use IRC to keep in touch and find out where the party is at, etc...
/list or in a /whois. The only way you could gather stats on these users is to sniff the traffic of the server. The legit chat channels are usually +s because you don't want to be overrun by newbies or 1337 kiddies.
It's also use it for illegal stuff too, like finding weed... (Most people already know who they are dealing with)
Most of the legit chat is going on in private channels that a circle of friends inhabit that will never show up on
MSN has put a big dent in the number of new IRCers, a few years ago IRC was growing big time but then people started to switch to MSN and the newbies followed likeing the simpler(?) interface.
Warez, MP3's and movies have moved off IRC for the most part and onto the p2p networks for the masses. Its only a few 1000 kids left running xdcc bots and fservs. Then you have the release groups who you will never meet on IRC unless you know someone. I'd have to guess there are a few IRC servers only accessable over SSH where the real big shit is going down.
God, root, what is the difference?
We use IRC at my work to communicate between techs at different call centers and other markets.
Most of the time it's us BSing around, but when I was green, I was told by people within my office that the error, "Operation was performed on something that is not a socket" wasn't winsock and we had to refer customers back to thier OEMs for OS repair.
That was quickly fixed.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
You used the words "illegal" and "open source software" in the same sentance.
Please don't do that!
Considering most IRC servers are based in universities and other publically funded institutions, this report is upsetting: someone looking to cut budgets can easily use this as grist to further cut down IRC, and I'm sure somewhere out there some bored RIAA and MS goons are just looking for more targets in their copyright reign of terror. Keep in mind that the only other time IRC made the news was when DALNet was under attack. The fact that the report gives a heavily slanted view of IRC usage has already been mentioned...but try explaining this to a public that has little clue what IRC is...
at 230AM. Joined a channel called #earthquake on efnet. We just had a sizable earthquake here in the west. The epicenter was out in the desert so damage wasnt too bad, but I could sure feel it here. So I got on and talked to people about the earthquake, where we all were, etc. Pretty interesting...
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
At the end of it all, he seems to finally come to his senses:
Too bad he didn't come to that conclusion before he chose to share it with the rest of us, and all the idiotic lawyers hired by the media companies to suppress the most innovative technologies on the net who will, no doubt, be quoting it in deposition. Young men are sometimes ignorant of when it is the right time to speak - and when it is better to remain silent.
I had to get that out...
And what do you think most of the software on most people's home PCs is? It certainly isn't $500 copies of the most recent Photoshop, Dreamweaver, AfterAffecs, all carefully purchased to keep the machine up to date constantly, and what have you.
So, based off of these observations, I've concluded - statistically - that 95% of Windows users are felonous pirates. It's a statistical fact.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Some people apparently use IRC to read RSS feeds. There is a channel on EFnet called #nerdnews with bots that post URLs/Titles from RSS fees from these sites: s tormsecurity.org
slashdot.org ;)
exploitwatch.org
freshmeat.net
hert.org
irc-junkie.org
newsforge.com
norml.org
packet
secunia.com
securityfocus.com
theregister.co.uk
He based his study on 4 words. Software producer's names. How in the world, could this be used to account for the entire English language, not to mention all of the other languages, used on an irc server? "Based on those keywords being monitored, 99.9% of IRC traffic to the top 60 channels is "illegal"." Is this a joke? Doesn't he really think that this could be accurate at all?
Sigs are for Terrorists.
There are thousands of IRC channels.
It is statistically invalid to take the top 6 channels of 10 irc networks and extrapolate to the thousands of others.
This is like taking the 6 largest cities in 10 largest countries, finding the crime rate and assuming the whole world is on par.
The findings may simply show that channels with hundreds of logged in users are used for trading, where channels with a handful of users are where legitimate conversation actually takes place.
He also has no way of examining the thousands upon thousands of private conversations.
Moreover... what exactly is an "illegal context"?
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Most people who use IRC just sit there idling for days on end. Now if he meant to say 99.9% of DCC is illegal.. then I couldn't agree more.
My conclusions are quite alarming, suggesting that 99.9% of Slashdot story summaries are retardedly inaccurate.
Don't fall for this trick! The folks conducting the study had a hunch, and looked for the specific metric that would make their case. The case being that IRC is worthless because it's mostly used for illegal activities.
Obviously large file transfers are going to consume more bandwidth than casual chatting. But what about other metrics? How about if they counted the number of human users on IRC performing illegal activities versus those users that are just there to communicate? How about if it counted the number of connected hours used for legal communication as opposed to number of connected hours used to initiate DCC transfers (not monitored or controlled by IRC ops) of illegally copied material? My guess is that the study would show the opposite result.
It's just like the old statistic that airline travel is the safest. You'll hear that quoted a lot, but no one ever mentions the metric. It just so happens the metric is "safest per mile traveled." An airliner designed to go long distances at 550 mph obviously has the advantage here. Compare it by number of individual trips or hours spent traveling, and it turns out that the chance of fatality is about the same (or more).
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
You could just as well say that 99% of Usenet usage is illegal, because that is probably the part that alt.binaries.* takes up. That still doesn't really reflect the discussions going on there.
Somewhat off topic: IRC still seems not very gender balanced yet in relation to the general population as you would expect. Any ideas what might be the reason and any serious suggestions what can be done about it?
of course open source developers use it - they all started as pirates...
IRC is sort of like Usenet. If you're willing to put up with all of the horrible problems, you're either a *nix geek, addicted to porn/warez, or looking for anonymous sex hookups. For anything else it's better to pay more for some other method of communicating.
Mr. Mutton didn't bother to pick 60 channels at random. Instead he carefully selected the 60 most popular channels. Most likely, those channels were saturated with warez bots which is why they were so popular [1].
But such a biased sample wasn't enough for Mr. Mutton. He had to bias his sample even further. Instead of picking traffic out of the channels at random, he carefully chose four keywords likely to be associated with warez. He then sampled the conversations involving those keywords.
Mr. Mutton may have developed an efficient technique for finding warez on IRC, but he certainly hasn't conducted his study in a manner to generalize his results to IRC "is a haven for warez and trojans."
All the author has discovered is that when you pick channels saturated with bots and listen for keywords related to popular, easily copied commercial products, you have a good chance of finding discussion of illegal activity (he didn't even confirm that the activity was occurring).
---
[1] The author says: "There does not appear to be any need to offer anything in return, which has to make you wonder why the hackers are doing this."
To which I respond, when someone conducts illegal activity it is easier to hide in a crowd. If the authorities get involved, the risk of prosecution is split amongst more users. This of course, further explains why illegal activity would center on large channels and why the 'hackers' would make themselves look like one of the hundreds of bots.
In my own experience, legit IRC servers are the smaller ones, with close-knit communities. I helped serve Dorksnet, a smallish server, for about a year, and nearly all of the usage was simply for chatting. Generally, your small servers are formed by groups of friends for their own purposes, and the usage reflects that.
On big servers, it's essentially impossible to have a conversation anyway, because everyone is retarded.
As part of a team who works on an IRC client I find this to be a little out in left field. Yes, I agree that there are illegal activities on IRC, and even many file transfers of copyrighted material. But where do channels like #windowshelp, and #win98 fit in? These are simply help channels where individuals offer free advice and technical assistance. There are many of those types of channels. And they are never mentioned in these types of editorials. What about #vbhelp and #ASP? These channels offer detailed technical assistance to any who look for help. If you were a programmer before Google and needed help, you would hop on IRC way before hitting the MSDN. And while discussing other genres of channels, online dating has always been quite popular. I actually have used IRC to find new employees when looking for programmers in my local areas. IRC is not the dark side of the internet as many would like you to believe. We were the pre-AOL, pre-Yahoo, pre-MSN instant messaging medium. And there are many of us who use IRC daily for perfectly legal purposes, and sometimes we have great days were we benefit our local communities (IRL). No one ever mentions NNTP in these editorials... Just food for though. Tyler Lynch Aka: CybrCyfr Team Klient (www.klient.com)
I monitored 2 persons holding bricks in front of pawn shops, and found that 1 of those persons threw the brick through the window and made off with some loot.
Therefore, 50% of people holding bricks are stinking thieves! Just think of the crimes we can stop if we jail all masons...
Where else can you get near instant free technical support? I always have xchat open with to various servers and multiple channels.
I can't tell you how many times I've been saved by the help of fellow coders in IRC.
There's quite a bit of knowledge out there sitting in such rooms as #c, #php, #mysql, #css, #perl, do I need to go on?
As many others have said, the article is quite flawed in it's logic anyway.
--
shouts to: zaei, ribs, lenox, ashitaka, dwism and the rest of the boys in #gentoo!
Looking on the largest channels strongly biases his analysis: in the physical world, mobs of people also do completely different things from small groups of people.
And looking at frequencies of legal/illegal use of four keywords doesn't work. It's an oversimplification, but seriously, what else other than illegally sharing them is there to talk about with Norton or Symantec?
Finally, his conclusions at most mean that these particular IRC servers are a haven for warez trading; IRC in general is used for many purposes.
...in 1995.
Every so often we go back in to see what a wasteland it's become. It seems like anymore it's all about the ops, who has the power.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
its more like 75%
I used to run my own irc network, I had over 800 users at any given time with around 5 leafs....anyways, these days you are either a warez/illegal based network or a clean non-warez/non-illegal metwork, people who own networks are starting to get away from illegal content servers, they bring in ddos attacks and other legal issues...which in turn costs the owner lots of money, thats why I don't do it anymore, plus I never got any fucking sleep.
I met mine on efnet in 93 (on #romance). Haven't been back on IRC for years. Too many closed servers.
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
99.9% of IRC is dirty, while Ivory Soap is 99.9% pure. Does that mean that .1% of IRC is Ivory Soap and .1% of Ivory Soap is IRC?
No really, it makes as much sense as this "research".
What does this button do...
This entire post is like flamebait for some of us.
I've been an oper on DALnet for six years now, and I currently lead up their coding team, so allow me to shed some light on this - assuming this makes me qualified.
The top 60 channels. Who goes to huge channels to chat? Ever tried talking in a channel with 20 active users? Try 800 active users. Nobody goes to large channels to chat, its pointless to even try. The folks that join these channels join looking for something specific, or to offer something. They find what they are looking for, and move on.
On DALnet, we've taken agressive action against warez, child porn, and drones. Drones are unfortunately the only item that I can speak on authoritively - we reject about 300 drones per second on any given server on our network. This is done through pattern matching in their registration. Drones is a serious problem on any network. A while back (five years or so), dianora of efnet did some drone hunting, and concluded that around 60% of "users" on irc were accually drones - hacked end-user computers. Drones are a far worse problem than people realize.
A few years ago, DALnet was seriously DDOS'd - we went from the top network in the world (around 140,000) to next to nothing. Our servers sometimes got hit with DDOS attacks in the range of 60 Gigabits per second. We shut down major providers, rendered entire datacenters useless, and obviously lost servers quickly. We've since changed our routing methods to rely heavily on anycast, and changed a lot of other things.
In my mind, DALnet is one of the networks that accually has one of the lowest noise ratios around. Quakenet, the current leader in usercount, raises questions with me. Their usercount rose very fast, and I wonder about their userbase. I personally know only -one- person who uses quakenet. You mention DALnet, Undernet or EFnet and people identify much more readily. Even more people use small IRC networks with 50-500 users.
99.9% for illegal purposes - bullshit. If you go to irc only to look for warez, then I think you are in the minority. I'd put illegal purposes around 5% at best. And that means real, live people at the keyboard, looking for illegal material.
.
He connected to channels with a thousand people on them. Any group of people chatting would obviously be in a smaller channel. So he selected the largest channels that guarantee no reasonable conversation would take place. Then monitor them, and amazing, you are in a channel for pirates, and you get illegal stuff. WOW, imagine that. Maybe if the name didn't have WAREZ in the name, the results would be different.
99.9% of calls on crack dealer cell phones promote illegal activity, therefore all telephone use is bad.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
While the anime scene is still considered by most licensers as "illegal", and it often pulls together many people that aren't necessarily more or less intelligent than the warez scene frequenters, it does attempt a noble and resume-brightening service by getting fans a product they couldn't possibly buy with money: translated anime shows direct from Japan.
And did anyone else mention IRC and Counter-Strike ties? I know I played CAL-O (read: the sucky ladder) and IRC was a big part of connecting with opposing teams, or just for setting up scrimmages.
-Kenners EE,CE,JP&RPI.EDU
Why is it that in the virtual world theres always something top blame for illegal activites and IT must be shut down. There tons of weed that goes through teh borders from Canada to the USA yet we dotn seem to be trying to ban the means by which it gets there, which is a car/truck/etc...
Imagine what the world would be like if the same amount of effort was put into solving social issues as is used to try to ban piracy of shitty music and straight to dvd movies online.
Fuk thats my rant for today. Getting the flu sucks.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Its plainly obvious that this guys anaylsis is not only flawed, but DESIGNED to make IRC look a lot more dodgy than it is. This guys doing a phd thesis on a related topic, so he's hardly going to be unaware that he's grossly biased his analysis.
More curious to me is wondering what's his motive? Trying to sell more books? Or something else?
**Paul Mutton is an expert on Internet Relay Chat (IRC). He has authored the book "IRC Hacks" for O'Reilly, the PircBot IRC API, several open source IRC bots and several other publications featuring IRC.**
(Expert - according to who)
(To my knowledge most IRC bots are written in an interpreted language anyway? So its a little hard to hide the source)
The rest is legal pr0n distribution
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
That wouldn't get him a Doctorate at Hamburger U. :P
Really, this article makes me mad. Big time.
I have met too many cool people through IRC who have become real life buddies to see IRC as what this dumbass says it is. I know for a fact IRC has saved one life that I know of...one of my chat buddies sent a suicide note via email and between the rest of the regulars in the channel I was a regular on we were able to get paramedics from her town there at her doorstep in time to save her.
Note well: I abandoned EFNet, Undernet and DALnet a long time ago, when they became almost unusable. There are little networks around now where the *real* IRC lives. You probably don't know them, and that's OK...they'd rather be left alone, far from the crapflooders and the warez kiddies and the skript kiddies and the rest of the miscellaneous lamers who make the big nets a living hell. They'd rather be hanging out in cyberspace together in their little cybernetic communities.
I suppose of the big nets freenode.net is still quite friendly. I suggest if you are associated with a LUG get your feet wet in your LUG's chat channel.
IRC used to be fun. It still is when it's among friends. I suppose it's the tragedy of the commons. Let too many people loose in one place and the worst comes out.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I did a real big shit earlier. It was great! I totally recommend it.
Or were you talking about something else?
fish and pipes
The chatroom usually has around 100-150 people, except for when the The Screen Savers is taped live every day at 4PM PST where the room spikes at 300-400 people. Users in the chatroom interact with the hosts on live TV and the live show incorporate user comments from the channel.
I'd say we definitely make good use, legal and positive, of IRC!
So, IRC eh. Illegal? I wonder how they profit from those? irc transactions?
Illegal is not necessary sin nor is illegal most likely sin; sadly sin is also not most likely illegal.
Hmmm... smells like semen.
keep doing that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm involved in the running of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, an Australian science fiction and fantasy mag. There are 21 members of the editorial team spread across every part of Australia, we print an issue of the mag every 2 months and we only meet on IRC. Sure, we have a mailing list for general stuff, but IRC is vital to us because it's cross-platform and easy to use via java clients or Mozilla.
Occasionally some of us meet up at a convention, but the only time the entire team has been in one place at the same time was June 2001, for the launch of Issue #1.
Incidentally, (plug plug) ASIM is an SF fiction magazine but we've also interviewed some interesting people - Neal Stephenson, Miranda Otto, Cecilia Dart-Thornton might be familiar to US
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Everybody who speaks about terrorists and their evil plans is a terrorist. Down with free speech and natural rights!
If you speak about illegal software and activities, you are committing crime!
Does 1 bot count as 1 person?
Then he uses this information to boldly say...
Of course he's going to get results like this, he's idling in large channels with thousands of people and bots spamming those keywords. For the rest of the channels (which I'm willing to bet is something around 80% of them), much less information is traveling through them (they may not necessarily be idle though). He completely disregards this information though! His analysis seems to be completely based on the frequency of the used keywords, Norton, Microsoft, Symantec, and Jasc; these were probably the most queried words in the warez channels, and renders an inaccurate depiction of the world of IRC.
A much better approach would have been to count the total number of messages his clients received, and sort them out by "illegal" and "legal" context; removing the number of repeat lines from the warez spam channels (usually from the bots), and you would be left with a much more realistic outlook.
Um...your sig sucks!
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
That's like listening to the top 60 most-hyped RIAA "artists" and concluding that 99.9% of all music in the world sucks.
When I was younger the ONLY reason I'd go on IRC would be porn or some other nefarious purpose. But in the past 5 year I've probably spent more time on IRC chatting with developer communities or gaming communities. I've even spent time running my own IRC channel.
There is seediness in every corner of the internet (and guess what, human life too!) but this study is simply BS.
Let me guess..next they'll study USENET? Just wait until they discover the web!!
Quack, quack.
No aspect of IRC is illegal. Irc is just a protocol for chat. Other programs add in the illegal stuff, which cant really even be classified as illegal, because its just allowing one user to dc to another, and transfer files. This also blows the "99.9% of irc is illegal" bs, since there is really no way to do anything illegal with just text itself.
So he goes into warez channels and concludes that they're used for illegal stuff. Well, gee, ain't that a surprise. (Sarcasm there.)
So it's not just like doing a crime-rate study on the 10 largest city. It's like doing a study on the 10 largest _prisons_ and concluding that 99.9% of them are criminals (or at least have commited at least one major crime in their lifetime), hence the whole country is a country of criminals.
Or it's like doing a web study based on Slashdot and concluding that world-wide 99% of the people are computer-savvy nerds, and that Linux is the most popular OS world-wide, more used than MS Windows and MacOS/X combined by an order of magnitude.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
as to the definition of a hacker...I wish that more people would properly use the word, or will hackers have to come up with a new term to describe themselves without public outrage.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
99.9% of all traffic is illegal in channels trafficing illegal stuff.
DUH!
No, it's more like taking the average proportion of criminals in the largest several prisons.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
OMG! It's like a USA Today infographic.
IRC in itself is merely a protocol. Just as a gun in itself isn't inherently good or bad, but rather the person who fires it, the same can be said of IRC. However...
I spent close to eight years (September 1995 to July 2003) inhabiting IRC, primarily on the Undernet network, but also DALnet as well. For most of that time, I literally spent all of my waking hours on IRC...My bed was located about two feet behind the computer, and I would get up, sign on...and sixteen-eighteen hours later, sign off, and lie down.
In my experience, the Undernet in particular exists primarily (as does Usenet) as a haven for the socially disenfranchised, chronically mentally ill...it is literally a human rubbish tip, and is the closest thing in physical existence that I have known to the concept of Catholic concept of Purgatory...not even so much in the level of torment that exists there, but more because it exists mainly as a gathering point for those who, because of mental disease and deformity or extreme sexual deviancy and perversion, are unable to associate with the rest of the offline human population. In short, quoting the words of Egon Spengler from the Real Ghostbusters, "This is where the worst ghosts of the lot get stuck, because they're too awful for anyone to see." Outside of the institutionalised mental health or penal systems, I can with confidence state that in Western society, IRC is as bad as it gets.
During my time on the network, I literally encountered examples of virtually every psychiatric disease or ailment known to man. I knew paranoid and hallucinatory schizophrenics/schizotypals, people with MPD, OCD, and nymphomania, various forms of autism, extreme drug addiction, and nihilistic and perverted occultism related interests.
As far as sexual deviancy is concerned, DALnet is probably worse than the Undernet, but there again, I was privy to learning about the existence of a huge number of different forms of dysfunctional sexuality...Paedophilia, beastiality, scatology, BDSM, various types of oral fixations, group sex, fetishism is countless other different forms, transsexuality, etc etc. It had an enormous, and extremely detrimental psychological effect on me, which two years later I am still attempting to recover from. I have also had a formal diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder due to my experiences.
I personally believe that the Internet is one of the single most positive...bordering on miraculous...inventions in human history that I know of. However, with that said, there are parts of it that urgently need to be avoided. If parents are worried about their children using the net, the Web to a large degree can be ok, as is MSN...but when it comes to Usenet and IRC in particular, their concern is justified.
I know it will never happen, but my fondest wish would be for the global psychiatric community to mobilise and send some of its members into a number of channels on the Undernet...#scripture, #submission, and #thelema probably primarily among them. Those channels contain extremely sick, damaged people...who need help.
text-mode bukkake..
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
Maybe its time to dump irc for silc - secure irc
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
IRC reminds me of USENET. Once upon a time, it was fun and neat and useful. Now it's just filled with crap.
Ah, IRC, where men are men, women are men, and 14-year old girls are FBI agents. Which are men.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
From the article:
This is misleading nonsense because IRC is a protocol, not a community. There are hundreds or thousands of IRC networks out there, including a few big ones. IRC is a number of big cities plus lots of small towns. I happen to frequent this nice small town where people are mostly friendly, children are welcome, and warez and sex channels are forbidden (this is enforced). Just goes to show that the article is one big misleading generalization with sensationalism as its only purpose.
Good point. But most people just default to whatever "big" IRC network their clients connect to when you get on. The main reason why DALnet is (was) so large was because mIRC defaulted to DALnet servers, and it became bigger than EFnet and Undernet.
Plus people want to go to where all the people are, so they usually goto the big three. Underent EFnet and DALnet. Of course all the bots, worms, and "illegal activity" ends up going to these networks.
The network you like to goto is an obscure network that's too small for anyone to even want to BOTHER loading spam bots, and XDCC bots, and what not. And it's also why it's probably never been attacked by any DoS, like DALnet was not to long ago. Security with obscurity!
-FRAGaLOT
He must be monitoring all the clueless Romanians who keep invading my channel wanting warez and ops. What's with that, has Romania suddenly discovered the Net?
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
I've been on and off IRC since 97 and only to meet girls. The first 30 or so I've met I had great times but in the last 2 years it's gotten rotten, girls have become more and more selfish or the nice smart ones have left... who knows. About illegal activity, don't know anything about that, just looking for a new relatively unknown place to meet girls where they don't feel like their pics and cam data is going to end up in some porn usenet group. That really sucks for the rest of us!
Oh, it has been attacked allright. You'd be surprised at the shit the admins get to deal with sometimes. :-) The difference is that the network is small enough and the community cohesive enough that script kiddies, pedophiles, and other scum can be kept out mostly successfully.
i have been using irc (Quakenet) i know irc is used like crazy for illiegal activities but for the multiplayers irc is nothing like that its just a convenient place for all the clans to mass and create clan matches and arange many other games and i remember when hardly anyone knew a damned thing about irc until the noobs found out u could download warez i would also be very suprised if 90% of the peaple connecting to irc could even use it.
I Predict A Riot
one thing the auther failed to mention though: there are programs to actively _search_ for illegal files, sometimes referred to as "P2P" (shorthand for "peer to peer") where every user also acts as a host to distribute files; this gives availability a huge boost.
A recent study has also shown that 10 out 10 computer stores actually sell computers...shocking! This study is moot. I mean c'mon he didn't randomly choose 60 channels. He chose them by content..warez.
Don't forget IRC's use as an extremely effective medium for gamers to communicate. IRC channels are an extremely good way for clan/guild members to a) be able to converse with members of their team in one channel and b) comingle with other team members in your channel or other channels.
Personally, I'm on irc.gamesurge.net (the old gamesnet). Warez'ing and "h4x0rz"'ing channels are very tightly restricted on this server. Even so, here are the usage statistics from this morning at 2:30 AM.
31,023 users
59 opers
51,692 channels
on 19 servers
Well, it's probably off topic, but the bogus data and their use in auto-inflating statistics are one thing I've been wondering about too. Of course, I haven't done any study or anything, so it's only tinfoil hat hypothesis at most.
For example, I'm in a gaming channel and some allegedly 16 year old horny kid drops by and tries to score some "cybersex". Had to personally persuade one or two to get the heck out, because no op was around.
How many of those actually are actual kids and potential prey for pedophiles, and how many are actually some FBI agent? And I'm not against the FBI helping keep pedophiles out, but _if_ that's what it was, it was starting a pedophile conversation in a channel that didn't have any to start with. Worse yet, a sex-related conversation in a channel that _does_ have children in it. (You know, lots of games are only PG-13, or even less.)
I.e., it was doing more harm than good. Or arguably did only harm and no good.
And how many of those end up in some statistic to justify one's own budget?
Or someone drops by and starts asking for a crack for that game, or where he can download a warezed version. Or worse yet, advertising some warez site.
I have no doubt that most were truly clueless wannabe pirates, but... were any of them actually BSA/FBI/publisher/whatever drones trying to see who they can bait? Or deliberately polluting the channel to make pirates comfortable about talking about it?
The problem, again, is that _if_ that's what it was, it's pollution. A bunch of us have a hard enough time keeping the channel clean of that kinda stuff, and making the pirates _not_ comfortable about it.
And then someone comes and spends two hours (until an op finally drops by) spouting crap like "only idiots buy what they can download for free", and generally promoting piracy full time. _If_ they're from the BSA or the publisher, it makes me want to bash not only their head in, but also their boss's.
And again, how many of those end up in some self-justifying statistics? "Waah! Poor us! Piracy is rampant! Yesterday on IRC they were again talking about how only idiots buy our software instead of downloading it!" Right, except was it really a real pirate?
Oh well.. guess we'll never know. Makes for a good tinfoil hat theory, though.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
/msg xdccbot[050] xdcc send #7
err, woops... wrong window.
I started IRC'ing my first year at uni, and I became addicted. I ruined one year of my life and it cost me about $8.000 in student loans. Ofcoarse this is my fault completely, but it is nice to have someone else to blame :)
Has this guy even tried to figure out how many perfectly leagal post one needs to type to have the same bandwidth impact as 1 CD download. Sjeesh... Talk about flawed conclusions.
The article is ment as a joke, as it is now even mentioned in the article itself.
I know this is slashdot and that reading full articles isn't really what people do here, but "Hey slashdot readers. This is a joke about bad journalism." is actually the first thing you would see, if you read TFA.
Jeez, this is a none-case. Wisen up.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
if that is how society has decided to use a generic technology, then so be it.
And if you don't like it.. too f-ing bad. Adjust or get lost.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I will be handing over this evidence to the authorities (ie. Microsoft) for immediate action.
So, if I go to the very bad parts of the South Side where I grew up I should conclude that that entire city is a haven for illegal activity? This analogy comes to mind in light of where I grew up. Likewise, if some E.T. come to planet earth and saw the massive amounts of p0rn in terms of web content, he might conclude that the Net is a vehicle for a sex crazed race, therefore news sites, e-commerce, /. et al must be anomalies.
I see no substance to this claim having participated in IRC channels myself and pointing out to my analogies.
Worthless noise.
Did any of you stop to think that the purpose of said analysis was not accuracy? I am willing to bet the only purpose of it was to analyze the PROCESS of gathering statistics.
- O R -
With all the tinfoils hats around here. I'm sure somebody thought of the point that the actual study was influenced by big media business who is threatened by P2P and (now the new evil) IRC.
- O R -
This is just some guys opinion and he happened to raise the ire of plenty of geeks. That's the Internet for you. Give absolutely anybody a voice to stir up the shitstorm. Bah! Credentials. We don't need no credentials.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Unless you happen to believe that perception is reality. Which in marketing, it often is. Or stately more acurately, it becomes real enough.
-FlynnMP3
Figures don't lie, but liars figure.
I couldn't agree with you more.
there i was, sitting in the interogation room waiting for the lead investigator to come back in after leaving in a huff upon reaching a questioning dead end with me as the target of his affection.
he came back in, slamming the door behind him, smaking his opened hand on the desk, saying "it was you and your IRC buddies... you hacked in to brutus, stole the GPS code and shared it with your IRC buddies... and now it's everywhere, all over the world."
At this point, I realized computer crime investagators were idiots without any particular grip on reality, let alone this case.
I should bomb something ...and it's off the cuff remarks like that that are the reason I don't log chats
Just in case the FBI ever needs anything on me
I'm sure they can just get it from someone who DOES log chats.
*** FBI has joined #gamecubecafe
We saw it anyway.
*** FBI has quit IRC (Quit: )
In response to those Slashdot readers who obviously didn't bother to read this article properly: ... It seems reasonable to assume that a journalist researching IRC for the first time would be more inclined to visit one of the larger channels, and thus be more likely to conclude that it is all about illegal file sharing. This is one of the reasons why IRC gets an unfair bad press. That's what this article was trying to show, in a roundabout way. There are no "lies" or "bullshit" in this article, just people who can't read and interpret things sensibly for themselves.
Nice of him to be direct but we can be sure that journalists, who thrive on controversy, will be fed the following quote from him 99.9% of the time:
[IRC] is a haven for warez and trojans. ... 99.9% of IRC traffic to the top 60 channels is "illegal".
That's out of context, but the important contexts are missing from his article too. While the update bemoans the fact that "Slashdot readers" are apt to be confused and enraged by what he says, he does not include these important facts and explanations:
In short, IRC usage is much like the rest of the world. The vast majority of activity is legitimate but a minority are making it difficult for everyone.
It's silly to characterize things the way he did. Unless the author notes and includes some of the better judgment exhibited by the people he's insulting, he's not doing IRC any favor.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Especially when considering the laws of China, Iran, and so on.
The important question is, what percentage of the applicable laws in all countries, including DMCAmerica, are just?
/server irc.warez.com
I beleive that 99.9% of all activity in the high flow channels is illegal, especialy since most of these channels are just filled with bots serving files and idlers waiting for their files. I've used IRC for around 10 years now (i've pretty much eased my way into real life by now) and i'd say that only about 10% of total irc activity is illegal. The rest is just 12 year olds talking about meaningless garbage.
Further, what is "illegal?" The very existence of warez channels? Lurking in them? Chatting in them? Perhaps just exchanging commercial files in them...
Ah, but it's only the exciting numbers like 99.9% that are headline worthy.
Probably because with so many users, and the fact that IRC is just multiplayer notepad, then everything that can be said is said. See?! Any statement can be followed with a quot... ah nevermind.
If they didn't read the article properly the first time why post a response at the top of that same article to people who did not read it "properly" in the first place?
As funny as it is I agree the first few posts to this really miss the point. He isn't saying it's all bad.
And here I thought that huge metropolitan cities were havens for illegal activity.Make THEM illegal!
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
> 99.9% of IRC usage is illegal
The word "illegal" is not appropriate here.
Unauthorized file-trading increases a person's potential for civil liability under the statutes for direct, contributory, or vicarious copyright infringment.
To use the term "illegal" to refer to an increased potential for civil liability is a gross distortion of the term "illegal".
If I construct a swimming pool in my backyard, I am, in fact, "increasing my potential for civil liability". (One of the neighbor kids might jump my fence and drown in my pool, resulting in a lawsuit.) But just because I choose to engage in an activity that increases my potential for civil liability, it does not mean that activity is "illegal".
The most popular channels in IRC are warez and porn channels! They use most of the bandwidth and the most people go in there!
If you don't tell me I would've never suspected. Of course, i'm of those chitchatters that spend less than 1% of the bandwidth of irc in occasional conversations, using short acronyms like "brb" and "lol". So I guess I'm not representative at all. Oh well.
The author's conclusion "It (IRC) is a haven for warez and trojans." is inaccurate and tends to suggest that all of IRC is a haven for warez and trojans.
The top 60 channels are popular because most of those channels involve illegally giving away warez, etc. The popularity of those 60 channels is not because of the illegality per se, instead those channels are popular because they encourage leeching of popular items for free. It would have been more accurate for the author of the article to suggest: 99% of the traffic in the top 60 channels involve leeching transactions of illegally distributed software,etc and that the top 60 channels comprise less than 1% of the total channels.
What I learned when I used to use IRC was how to hack linux, me and a group of other highschool kids used early versions of slackware and helped each other on learning the internals. While yes, there was a lot of warez and other illegal activity going on, at the same time communities of individuals were being developed and evolved out of the old bbs style communication. IRC wasn't they only method of discussion we used, news groups, mailing lists and others played a role. But a common bond of young geek wanabes was born there. And I for know that I would not be as knowledgable today if it weren't for IRC...
Later,
Phil
It's a great place to pick up chicks! Seriously. AOL used to be a good place, years ago, but now that any moron can get on AOL it's useless. But IRC? Works pretty damn good. Generally I've found that IRC chicks have a slightly higher level of Net knowledge to begin with.
One of the main reasons is that there are still "local" channels, kind of like the old BBS days. Remember those days? Where everyone in teleconference was a local person dialing into a local number? Sometimes I really don't care to sit around and chat with people in foreign countries. I just want to meet people that are local to me.
IRC allows this to happen.
Definition of IRC
Since this was (according to the date on the post) the first time anyone dealt with the issue, it's not redundant. Subsequent posts to the same issue are redundant.
Dipshits.
Look at what illegal activity occurs on IRC in comparison to what legal activity happens on IRC. Development conversation lasting one hour: 100k of text. Let's say 1,000 participate in something like that. That makes 100 MB of traffic (Fuzzy math, I know). Now let's say two people download the French Halo 2. I'm going to estimate it at 8 GB each. That's .1GB/16GB Legal/Illegal ratio, .625% legal activity.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
The results would astonish you.... Over 99% of all IRC traffic is programming related. Clearly IRC is a haven for programmers.
Yes, please send them to me by email. It reminds me my surprise when I wanted to make a full Debian mirror on my new webserver only to find out that I couldn't fit nearly enough disks in my server to hold Debian. Just for the record, here are the ISOs torrents for the current stable version of Debian:
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
+10 Insightful