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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.
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.
Well if all of Earth is in violation, did you mean Martian law? ;)
When a nice 44 year old gentleman helping a troubled 14 year old girl regain her self confidence is "illegal".
paintball
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
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.
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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