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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.
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.
The reason 99.9% of IRC usage is illegal is because it's used by open source software developers.
I'm a bit short on cash, i'll just download your book (linked from the article) from IRC.
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.
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Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
(Seriously, though... PSP is in the top four requests? Really?)
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By and large, the media has never heard of IRC.
No kidding. Mention this to someone who has been on the Internet a few times and they're liking to say:
"I recall correctly?"
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Are you saying IRC is useful for something other than idling?
Well if all of Earth is in violation, did you mean Martian law? ;)
Don't you know that Linux is subversive and soon to be illegal technology used by terrorists and copyright abusers?
Careful, you'd better not use IRC either because someone did something illegal with it.
Oh and don't use the postal system either because you too might also be sending anthrax. So since the postal system can be used for illegal means, it should be outlawed too.
Actually you're best off going and living in a cave...
Oh wait no terrorists do that, that's illegal too now isn't it?
Here's a better idea, write your government official and tell them to pull their head out of their ass.
Or shoot em, that too cause I mean if you use Linux you're probably a terrorist, or at least they'll brand you as one so you might as well start taking pot shots at reps anyways. You can start with Orrin Hatch cause I'm sure given the opportunity he'd shoot a tree hugging, terrorist, commie, bastard like you anyways.
Remember kids, if all you do is sit back and watch, they really will outlaw Linux, just after P2P.
When a nice 44 year old gentleman helping a troubled 14 year old girl regain her self confidence is "illegal".
paintball
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#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?
And as we have come to know the last few years those OSS developers missuse other people precious IP, patents and tradesecrets on a large scale. Of course it's illegal:-)
The problem is that 86% of all statics are made up 97% of the time.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
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
The remaining wonderful conversation is fully documented here.
My sources tell me that those figures you quote are only 79% accurate +/- 3.4%.
i think this persons "study" was just based on how many times someone said something that seemed to be "illegal" or "legal" based on keywords in what they have to say.
Well, with names like #nethack, of course the channel is devoted to illegal activities. ;)
It is reasonable to assume that smaller mailing lists and one-on-one email communications will not contain a significant number of users, so I did not bother to include them in my study.
Psst, I know where to get some Debian isos, copyrighted Debian isos, want to download them?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
That's like listening to the top 60 most-hyped RIAA "artists" and concluding that 99.9% of all music in the world sucks.
Speak for yourself, I encode them in UUE and paste them in the channel. Much easier that way.
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