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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.
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.
Binaries (if you mean warez packaged in nicely formatted rars or isos) don't get sent over IRC. They use DCC.
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?
Warez channels tend to be huge, so no surprise it'd be easy for them to make the top 60.. But what if there are 10 times as many legit channels, but they only average half as many users per channel. Now we've suddenly gone from 99% to 20%...
On that same note you need to figure in how many users are being counted more than once by being in more than one warez channel. Perhaps it's different on other networks, but people that come into channels I op in that have warez channels in their whois list tend to have a dozen or more warez channels listed, while those in only legit channels usually have 3 or less.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
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.