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.

Comments

IRC

[irokitt]

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.

I'm sorry, but

[captnitro]

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.

I have a theory

[hayden]

If nothing else, IRC has given us bash.org.

The theory runs that there is no question or statement that can not be answered by either a bash.org quote, a dilbert comic or a penny-arcade comic.