Yahoo! Closes User Created Chat Rooms

karvind writes "Chatmag News reports that Yahoo! has disabled all the User-created Chat rooms. According to Yahoo's chat log page:'The ability to publish user-created chat rooms in the public Yahoo! Chat directory is currently unavailable. We are working on improvements to this service to enhance the user experience and compliance with our Terms of Service'. This may be true but Yahoo! is also facing a $10 million lawsuit that accuses it of cashing in on some disturbing chat rooms. The companies are paying huge fees for their ads to appear on Yahoo!. But many are now canceling those ads because of the report."

Comments

Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[ErikTheRed]

On the Internet? Really?

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[ErikTheRed]

It's my girl's site. We actually get a lot of traffic from Slashdot. Probably mostly one-handed surfing, but it helps the Google rankings (shameless, huh?).

Of course, I have to do the photography for her creations. The rough life...

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[ErikTheRed]

Funny, I'm watching the traffic right now and the Slashdot referral links go straight for the thongs and lingerie.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[roseblood]

Of course, I have to do the photography for her creations.

Dude, get your models away from the backgrounds and use broad (large) lights instead of those small lights you use now.

Also, if you're shooting digital, you need to check your whitebalance.

To see how bad this is, check this link

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[roseblood]

I should point out the yellow cast comes from the wrong white balance on a digital camera, or a poor choice in film type if not. The dual shadows stem from both the proximity of the model to the background and the point-source lighting.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[pyrrhonist]

It's my girl's site. ... Of course, I have to do the photography for her creations. The rough life...

Your girl has a really nice set of... Um, creations.

(Yeah, that's it.)

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[pcmanjon]

Sad unforunately, had a friend who ran a Linux chatroom and got lots of newbs who got help there. Not possible anymore, I guess he'll have to move his room to "Single Again!"

Yep. Unfortunately, all the "CLIKC HERE TO SEE ME NUDE ON MY CAM HTTP://MEGABUCKS.COM" or "CLICK HERE TO SEE MY PRETEEN DAUGHTER NUDE HTTP://PORN.COM" will make it impossible for users to get help.

Closing private rooms for policy compliance? What about all the spam and stuff in pub rooms?

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[Sj0]

This is the Internet -- the largest distribution of pornography in the free world.

I think it's a bit silly to believe that it's all one-handed surfing.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[fuzzybunny]

This is awesome.

A guy posts his (supposed, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt) girlfriend's lingerie site on Slashdot.

Its presence in his .sig is questioned, ok, so far so good.

Comment is made on the niceness of her "uh, creations". Ibid, nothing new there.

And the discussion ends up at his photographic technique.

I love the Internet.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[slargpdx]

What is even better is he is getting valid criticism. He's not getting trashed or beat up, rather getting helpful suggestions with actual substance to get him and that site going in a better direction.... I am impressed.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[Qzukk]

but it helps the Google rankings (shameless, huh?)

Actually, I just logged out to check, and people browsing AC like the google web crawler don't get sigs.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[X0563511]

Easier to make secure software than to monitor and regulate internet chat. But I wouldn't trust ypager.exe myself either.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[blincoln]

Dude, get your models away from the backgrounds and use broad (large) lights instead of those small lights you use now.

He can fudge the lighting. Bounce the light off of white construction cardboard from the drug store, or put a white bed sheet in-between the light and the model.

But yeah, further from the background would be good. The Tattoine double-shadow thing tends to draw my eyes away from the model (and therefore, the product).

Photoshop's Auto Colour and Auto Contrast operations will greatly improve this particular image (that appears to be a white wall she's in front of, and not yellowish).

I would also suggest some coloured or textured backgrounds. Go down to the fabric store and get a few meters of material in various neutral shades, or light colours.

These are just minor quibbles, though. It's an awesome idea, and it's great that these two are able to have fun with it.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[rsynnott]

No, it doesn't help your Google rankings; slashdot links are rel="nofollow"-ed

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[rsynnott]

The largest distribution in the free world? This is as opposed to North Korea's vast pornorgraphy mountain, right?

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[rsynnott]

There's a HUGE difference between spam and child porn, to be fair. And yahoo certainly have some responsibility to keep an eye on what they're hosting; if they're not willing to do that then taking it down's not a bad option.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[typical]

Dude, get your models away from the backgrounds

I never really thought about it before, but clothing ads for Sears, Wal-Mart, etc always seem to have models green-screened and then superimposed on a white background.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[pyrrhonist]

His gf MAKES the clothes, dumbass. There are several different models on the site, if one of them is his gf, you don't know which one it is.

I was talking about the clothes, wankstain. Why, what were you thinking?

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[anadmin]

I wonder if the other "big" portal places will follow the path of Yahoo. I run my own chat system and to me, I am still learning where to "draw" the line as far as decency goes. I used Yahoo chat a few years ago and the experience was bad enough for me to leave. I usually confront the users on our system and explain what we want and don't want and they pretty much figure it out of they want to stay or go. There's so many chat systems and servers out there, it'll be hard to track the troublemakers, but Yahoo is a business like many others on the net, they're protecting their image more I think. Take care all :-)

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

Negative, they are shot on white backgrounds. Large sweeps of seamless paper that blend the join of wall and floor into a a curve("sweep").

Instead of the right angle the paper forms an arc to bridge the transition from verticle(wall) to horizontal(floor) surface.

Shadows are minimized/eliminated by 1) using broad lights (such as softboxes) that create diffused and soft shadows, 2) keeping the subject a distance from the background to further diminish the appearance of shadows, and 3) using additional light sources aimed back the background to "fill in" any weak shadows cast by the subject.

Often white backgrounds are even given MORE illumination than the subject, this guarentees that they will be rendered pure white (by either being 100% clear in a slide, or going white beyond the dynamic range of the imaging sensor in a digital camera.)

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[Sj0]

We know the communists have been working on the doomsday porno device for some time. Our informant, known only as "deep throat", has informed us that when completed, it will be capable of creating more porn than can actually exist, causing the world to be destroyed.

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[rsynnott]

Now trying to picture communist porn. Does it occur in a field with the women wearing the same as the men and everyone looking unreasonably enthusiastic, and a hammer and sickle in the background?

Re:Distubring stuff in chat rooms?

[Sj0]

Actually, it's more like taking bukkake to a whole new level.

Because everything is shared.

Big Whoop!

[Adrilla]

I never thought of Yahoo as the hot chat room spot. No matter how many Yahoo chats or Aol or whatever, the chat place to be will always be IRC, which they'll never shut down and probably always have the most freedom in terms of channels available and content within.

Re:Big Whoop!

[BlackMesaLabs]

I dont think there even is a "hot chatroom spot". Frankly, Yahoo chat and AOL chat etc are just full of 12 year olds and 52 year olds all going "OMG LAWLZ WAHT DO YUO LOOUK LIEK??!"

Re:Big Whoop!

[PhreakinPenguin]

But you're not a child or young teen. For the most part, kids live on Yahoo and AOL chat rooms and IM. I think the big whoop here is the fact that fucktards are using them to prey on kids.

Re:Big Whoop!

[Professor_UNIX]

I never thought of Yahoo as the hot chat room spot. No matter how many Yahoo chats or Aol or whatever, the chat place to be will always be IRC

Naw, there are probably far more IM Chat users than IRC users these days. IRC is very complicated to use for a newbie compared to Yahoo Messenger or AIM. I know my mother uses Yahoo Chat for the voice messaging functionality in the chat rooms.. it's unfortunately one of the reasons I couldn't switch her to a Mac since the Yahoo for Macs supports neither voice chat or chat rooms! Switching her to iChat is out of the question since all her friends are on Yahoo Messenger in voice-enabled chat rooms playing music. She's unfortunately very addicted to it and gets downright depressed if she doesn't have access to it. I hope they get this resolved soon if it affects her chat rooms or I'm going to get a frantic call that her computer is broken. *sigh* You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Re:Big Whoop!

[Adrilla]

Honestly, years ago before AOL went to the unlimited hours plan, the chat rooms on AOL used to be a more fun, more intelligent space, but I believe that's because mostly it was adults who were paying $2.95/hr to be there. So they made it more worth their while thus making it better for everyone else there. But as soon as they went to that free for all, the floodgates were opened wide with the kids and the "a/s/l" "if yoor a gurl and wanna have hot sex press 11111". Ah, the good old days....wait, did I just say something good about AOL? Damn! What's come over me?

Re:Big Whoop!

[dnixon112]

You only had to read the headline to figure out that yahoo is NOT shutting down all the channels. This is not an assault on peoples rights, or an attempt to censor the internet. They're just not allowing users to create their own chat rooms anymore. Do you think the ops of any respected irc network would allow channels named #young_girls_for_older_guys?

Re:Big Whoop!

[dabadab]

And could you please enlighten me as to what is exactly the chance that a 12 year old girl would enter a chatroom named "Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys"?

I tell you, it's nothing more than hysteria at its best.

Re:Big Whoop!

[krymsin01]

Uh, have you LOOKED at channel listing for any major IRC network lately?

(And yeah, I know they aren't shuting down their own channels. It's called hyperbole, and in the context which I was using it it's justifiable.)

Re:Big Whoop!

[eric76]

Doesn't Yahoo filter the chatrooms based on age?

I've never visited one. If I had known, I still wouldn't have bothered with them. I have joined several of Yahoo's mailing lists on groups.yahoo.com.

When I signed up for the yahoo account, I put my age down as 2 years old.

The result is that I haven't seen any of the porn lists I've heard about.

They must think I'm about 6 or 7 by now.

Re:Big Whoop!

[Chatmag]

The Yahoo! created chat rooms are still open, it was only the user created rooms that were closed. Have your mother log in as usual, and join one of the Yahoo! rooms. If her friends are on her buddy list, she can still message them individually, and have them join a particular Yahoo operated chat room.

Re:Big Whoop!

[BrainInAJar]

"Do you think the ops of any respected irc network would allow channels named #young_girls_for_older_guys?"

Yes? how do you qualify a respected irc network, because undernet, efnet, and dal (the three big ones) allow all sorts of crazy crap to go on

Re:Big Whoop!

[Sj0]

I just checked efnet. There are a couple questionable names, but the vast majority of users are in sites named things like "#nerding nerdfest X" and "#Halflife".

Re:Big Whoop!

[Sj0]

To be fair, if you do enter, it's it just natural selection?

I mean, it's a room for creepy old men and the preteen children who would talk to them.

It's sort of like posting a sign "jumpin' cliff". Yeah, I suppose you could jump, but is it anyone's fault when you do?

Re:Big Whoop!

[Sj0]

Neither/nor! Neither/nor!

(If you're going to be a pedant, do it for something only a pedant would be pedantic for, right?)

Re:Big Whoop!

[Spad]

Last time I checked, Yahoo doesn't auto-increment your age in your profile - so you're still probably 2.

Re:Big Whoop!

[Ilgaz]

If they added credit card checking for age, imagine morons will post "they stole my credit card!" everywhere and crook lawyers suing Yahoo.

Also, this child crap is abused by the "camp" who never liked the internet at all, that's what disturbing is.

Re:Big Whoop!

[tverbeek]

Chat rooms with names like "Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys" are going to be populated entirely by middle-aged men indulging in nothing more than fantasy. (I'd call it "consensual", but there's probably some self-delusion involved, so maybe not.) Would anyone in their right mind look at a chatroom named "Unwilling Sex Slaves" and raise the alarm that abduction, rape, and slavery are occurring? Um.... no.

Yes, there are people preying on children via the internet. But here's a clue: the ones who succeed at it are sneaky about it. You'll find them in chatrooms with names like "Harry Potter Chat 4 Kidz", not in "9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex".

Re:Big Whoop!

[Anonymous Coward]

The chances are that few girls would enter such a room, but the number, while finite, it not zero.

I have seen 14 year old girls enter chat site specifcially to find a older man. Perhaps it is just to tease. Perhaps they do not understand the ramifications, i.e. the man is looking to have sex with an underage, preferable virgin, girl. But sometimes I wonder if they are making dates they intend to keep, with the pupose of having sex. Certainly in a world where these girls have children by 13, and some parents think this is a good thing, as they are now someone elses responsibility, it is something we have to watch for.

At the 11-13 year age range, I have noted that the assumption is that they have some sort of protected status. They often assume that they can get away with certain things, like appearing in public almost naked, becuase everyone knows 'they do not mean it'.

I assume that parent have to be somewhat tolerant of such behavior, while protecting thier kids from the tiny percentage fo the population that might take advatage of such naivite.

Re:Big Whoop!

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Yes, atleast on the networks ran by the opers that have been around a while (Eg, EFNet). Maybe a startup network ran by fools blinded by their power and faux selfrightiousness would try and shut it down. The rest of us realise that our job is to keep our servers operational, and anything beyond that is out of the scope of being an ircop/server admin. Once you start shutting down channels for content[1], you become a moderator rather than a common carrier. You're now responsible for moderating ALL channels in the eyes of the law. If some 14 year old girl wants to join, thats her perogative. If you think someone should be policing her internet, thats risky, but her parents decision and not yours. Most respected IRC networks value freedom of speech enough to know that you're much better off having people talk about things you disagree with than having everyone live under the wrath of one persons opinion (even if said person is currently you).

[1] For content as opposed to for housing a botnet thats detrimental to your servers service. Of course, the smart ircops leave those around too because nothing gets your server packeted quicker than trying to take down someones botnet channel.

Re:Big Whoop!

[Digital11]

One word: freewarez1 :P

Ah, the good ol' days when downloading a meg took an hour.

Re:Big Whoop!

[1u3hr]

I think the big whoop here is the fact that fucktards are using them to prey on kids.

Maybe. I just find it hard to imagine that the citd chatroom "Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys" actually has any real women, let alone girls, in it, aside from perhaps (older) hookers and female FBI agents.

Re:Big Whoop!

[hotspotbloc]

Maybe. I just find it hard to imagine that the citd chatroom "Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys" actually has any real women, let alone girls, in it, aside from perhaps (older) hookers and female FBI agents.

Internet chat rooms: Where the men are men, the women are men and the 14 year girls are FBI agents.

Re:Big Whoop!

[northcat]

The chances are very high. You either don't know anything about today's 12 year old girls, or you're bullshitting anyway. Did you even RTFA?

The "Candyman" site was geared only toward trading child sex pictures and stories, just like the Yahoo! rooms.

So 12 year old girls don't even have to enter these room for the harm to take place. Why do slashdotters become so defensive whenever an article about something bad happening on the Internet (or computers in general) shows up? If it's fear that this will lead to censoring of the Internet, it's still not justification enough to lie that things like this don't happen.

Re:Big Whoop!

[ymgve]

You obviously aren't familiar with the channel flag +s (secret).

Re:Big Whoop!

[starakurva]

Am I the only one who can see that as net/sms-speak gets stronger in the English-speaking world, the closer the English-speaking world moves toward becoming the Dutch-speaking world?

Back to the topic, it's as simple as being a good host when you have a party...There is not a huge problem with the internet or chat-rooms-gone-wild...It's just more real-life the people at Yahoo et al have to deal with. If you have a party, you need to expect that sh*t happens. Somebody's gonna puke in the terrarium. Somebody's gonna put a ciggie out on the floor.
Part of the reality of having a party involves some vigilance on the part of the host, or it might get out of control. Same goes for hosts like Yahoo and this whole topic. Ya see a kid-pr0n or hate chatroom, delete it. Barf lake in the hallway? Clean it up. Weather they wanna go the step further of bitch-slapping the bad guest, is a different matter....

The alternative is to stop having parties....But parties are so much fun, isn't the vigilance and acceptance that sh*t's gonna happen worth it?

Re:Big Whoop!

[triso]

I never thought of Yahoo as the hot chat room spot. No matter how many Yahoo chats or Aol or whatever, the chat place to be will always be IRC, which they'll never shut down and probably always have the most freedom in terms of channels available and content within.

I presume that no-one is raking in the the bucks from advertising on IRC? Are there even any ads on IRC?

Re:Big Whoop!

[generic-man]

I tried doing something very similar on AOL -- I put down my age as some low number, and then they asked for my parents' (a/k/a my) credit card number for "parental consent." There's some law about tracking sub-13-year-olds on public internet sites nowadays.

Re:Big Whoop!

[rsynnott]

Except that many paedophiles have in fact met children off the internet. It happens.

Re:Big Whoop!

[Belial6]

You mean like the 11-13 year old girls in bikinis down on the street corner here in Sacramento? The ones shaking what boobs they have and shaking their asses at the passing cars? The ones that are doing this to try to entice people (men?) to pay for a "car wash" (obviously not for the pleasure of watching wet bikini clad prepubecint girls rub down their car. The ones that are doing this with the endorsment and encouragement of our public schools to raise money for the sports program? After all sports in school teaches team work!

Re:Big Whoop!

[Curtman]

What a shame nobody has spent some mod points to give that the Insightful moderation that it deserves. How come you've been here so long and kept your mouth shut all this time?

Re:Big Whoop!

[richman555]

While I agree that closing down all the user rooms is a bit extreme, I do think Yahoo has some responsibility here. Everyone knows these chat rooms have existed for many years and Yahoo did nothing about them. I am all for freedom of speech, people having hobbies, and even alternate lifestyles, however the basic topics of these rooms where illegal to their core and their creation should have been prevented a long time ago. They could have easily been filtered out systematically, or even hire a full time moderator that would remove *illegal* chat rooms in the even they are created. I also think Yahoo should have some responsibility in removing the 'automated' bots that frequenty show you pornographic links and phishing sites. The rooms are littered with that stuff and they allow it to continue. It's kinda sad, Yahoo could have done this so much better.

There's always IRC

[mind21_98]

Blah, there's always IRC or AIM chat if you still need chat rooms. Otherwise they're a waste of time. *shrug, wonders why he should be concerned*

Re:There's always IRC

[Anonymous Coward]

because somewhere along the line every irc server relies on some company

and if that company can now be sued for supporting 'disturbing' channels . . .

Glad to hear it

[PhreakinPenguin]

I know the freedom of speech zealots will cry wolf over this but I'm very glad to see this happen. Although the room names don't imply that something illicit is going on, it would be nice if there was a way to keep kids chat rooms for kids and adult chat rooms for adults. Yahoo has been VERY lax about this in the past and it's good to see them make an effort. Even if it's being forced by a lawsuit.

Re:Glad to hear it

[dagr8tim]

Gee...can you hear me way back there in the 1950's? Why is it yahoo's responsibility to keep children out of adult rooms (I'm talking adult rooms in general, not kiddie porn rooms). Where are the parents? Why are they letting their children go online, unsupervised? I'm sick and tired of people wanting the government or buisness to protect them from the big bad evil world that's out there. PS. this was more a random rant, than anything personally directed at you.

Re:Glad to hear it

[PhreakinPenguin]

RTFA, it's not about kids going into adult chat rooms, it's about rooms named "13 years olds love having sex", etc, etc.

Re:Glad to hear it

[dagr8tim]

To be honest, if children were not in those chat rooms, they would dry up. Besides, who would care if a bunch of middle aged men were all sitting around flashing their "packages" to each other on webcam? Remove the children from the forumla, and the rest of it is moot. Which brings us back to the original question: Where are the parents while the children are watching middle aged men on the computer?

Re:Glad to hear it

[PhreakinPenguin]

So basically you don't want to eliminate the problem, you want to just keep people from knowing about it? Middle aged me showing their wanks to kids is the problem. Regardless if it's on Yahoo, MSN, the local movie theater, or wherever. It's a sad world we live it when someone prays on kids and people shout "Well the kids shouldn't have been there!!"

Re:Glad to hear it

[NitsujTPU]

Dude, did you read the article (no), the news report covered chat rooms with the following titles:

• 9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex
• Younger Girls 4 Older Guys
• Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys
• Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Man
• Girls 8 to 13 Watch Boys (In A Particular Sex Act)

Re:Glad to hear it

[dagr8tim]

All I'm saying is if the children were removed. The rest would be a non-issue. Not to mention, the chat rooms would probably dry up. I personally use yahoo's chat rooms. Sometimes the topics in these chat rooms go to adult topics (do not confuse this with anything related to kiddie porn). I am unhappy that I am being deprived of chatting with other persons because, among other things, some people refuse to watch their kids. I know in a perfect world, people would not prey on children. Sadly, we do not live in a perfect world, so we must strive for imperfect solutions. That being said, it's time to dust off my IRC client.

Re:Glad to hear it

[Zachary Kessin]

It seems what really got Yahoo's attention was when the sponsors pointed out that this was in direct violation of the Ad contracts that they had signed with Yahoo and until Yahoo fixes is they are going to loose a lot of money.

Speeking as the parent of 2 pre-teen girls I am very happy to see these kind of chatrooms gone. (And in case anyone asks we don't let the girls on the net without parental oversight)

Re:Glad to hear it

[krymsin01]

Yeah, because you know that AIM is the only network that provides chat rooms.

Re:Glad to hear it

[pyrrhonist]

Middle aged me showing their wanks to kids is the problem.

A freudian slip is where you say one thing and mean your mother^W^Wanother.

Re:Glad to hear it

[timmarhy]

hah, if you raise your children properly you won't ever have to worry about them wanting to go into a channel called "13 year old girls for much older men" if any children went in there, it does not reflect on yahoo one single bit, but on the parents of those children. however, yahoo chat rooms were always just a waste of bandwidth anyway, i'm not sad to see them go.

Re:Glad to hear it

[sustik]

My only problem is that some TX congressman already talking about new legislation that is needed. Why? It seems the current system worked:

1. disturbing (but not yet proven illegal actually) practice exposed by media,
2. business reacted by pulling support,
3. Yahoo shut down service.

All seems to be ok. Please someone remind that congressman that there are real problems in his state which need immediate attention (like half of the children are without health insurance*) and work on something USEFUL.

Matyas

P.S. * Are not most of his constituents pro-life, actually? I thought that means that all life (all children) should be entitled to the protection of their health/life on their own right (against illness and death) even if their parents cannot or do not want to get health insurance for them.

Re:Glad to hear it

[roseblood]

yeah, but the real problem are the rooms with titles like:

MP3s here.
Download Star Wars III this room.
Fuck the RIAA, get free music in this room.

No, wait, that's slashdot's favorite application, bittorent.

Re:Glad to hear it

[ezthrust]

Yeah "9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex" doesn't imply that anything illicit is going on at all.

Re:Glad to hear it

[m50d]

I think it just means all children are entitled to not be deliberately killed.

Re:Glad to hear it

[m50d]

If you're always with them why do you need yahoo to get rid of the chatrooms?

Re:Glad to hear it

[SilverspurG]

Ever think that these particularly obnoxious chatrooms were started by a politician or an attorney for the sole purpose of bolstering their case in court or the congressional floor? Maybe they were started by members of the "accounts payable" department with the sole purpose of having an excuse not to give Yahoo! owed money.

I highly doubt there more than 2 people in any of those chat rooms at any time, and one of them was probably a channel service bot.

Re:Glad to hear it

[smallfries]

Although the room names don't imply that something illicit is going on

From TFA:
9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex
Younger Girls 4 Older Guys
Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys
Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Man
Girls 8 to 13 Watch Boys (In A Particular Sex Act)

In what way do the room names not imply something illicit is going on? Or do you think that pedos grooming children for sex is acceptable? Are the freedom of speech zealots crying wolf when old men are stopped from trying to have sex with young child?

Re:Glad to hear it

[hugesmile]

Grandparent said: Although the room names don't imply that something illicit is going on

I agree. A room title is nothing. It is NOT an implication that there's something evil going on. It's an "ad" to get you interested in coming in the room.

The examples in the article could be reworded, and NOT sound evil...
Change "9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex" to "9 normal 17 year olds"
Change "Younger Girls 4 Older Guys" to "Younger Girls 4 Bush or Kerry" (both of whom were older guys)
Change "Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys" to "Girls 13 and under who respect their fathers"
Change "Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Man" to "Girls 13 and up researching prehistoric man"
Change "Girls 8 to 13 Watch Boys (In A Particular Sex Act)" to "8 Girls to 13 Boys with Watches"

It's a friggin ROOM NAME, not an admission of some act! Read it any way you want!

An example to prove my point: (I hate to make this political...) if you saw a chat room called "We Love War", and you "went into" the room to a) observe the conversation, or b) refute nonsense, does that make you a War Lover?

I bet the vast majority of the rooms in question were set up by law enforcement people anyway! Should we be investigating our police forces?

Re:Glad to hear it

[SacredNaCl]

To be honest, if children were not in those chat rooms, they would dry up

Actually, the bots would simply create the room. Most of those rooms are only occupied by porn bots, but it hasn't become exlcusive like all AIM chat has (nothing but porn bots). Even if the type of porn they are pitching has nothing to do with the title, porn bots would create as many rooms as possible to have another venue to pitch their wares.

Honestly, this problem is one of parasites. The person seeking 10 million dollars is the biggest parasite, IMHO. I'm sure they are in it with some group or another, the whole abuse industry is pretty rotten. If they don't have victims, they will create them, and when they do have a victim - they will exploit them. (Just as this "mother" is hoping to cash in...)

We are going to reach a point where we are going to have so many nannies, counselors, psychologist, lawyers, social workers, "helpless victims", and so many other useless riff raff types that they will be the whole of the economy and we wont actually produce anything anymore.

If you are Jerry Springer, its great. If you are anyone else, each & every one of these people diminishes the quality of your life just that little bit, some of it very blatant (in taxes for instance), much of it in subtle ways that have to be pointed out to people. Those of you that have to work with female coworkers probably already understand at least a few of the ways the victim mentality & culture has made your life less enjoyable.

Yet the corporate culture is spineless and will give in, if only a bit. The process is slow. Eventually you wont be able to say or do anything without someone being offended, suing you, or being forced off to some counselor because you have an opinion, maybe even an opinion others disagree with.

The 100,000+ people who used YahooChat member rooms are all suffering that diminished quality of life right now. And while the loss of a gathering place, a connection between friends, and the many support groups and other groups may seem like a small price, it is but one of thousands of small prices we are paying, and they do add up.

Re:Glad to hear it

[Qzukk]

Yeah, it's too expensive to save the lives of everyone, so the pro-lifers stick to saving the lives of unwanted children and the extreme pro-lifers and anti-eugenics work hard to save the lives of babies so deformed they wouldn't live outside the womb anyway. Of course, they refuse to foot the bill when the baby pops out and then dies after tens of thousands of dollars in futile medical care, because that's actually too expensive too.

Re:Glad to hear it

[antifoidulus]

A George Carlin quote:"Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers"
If you fear that you don't have health insurance, aren't you more likely to then join the Army(if/when) you grow up?

Re:Glad to hear it

[white1827]

I doubt it. It's probably some bored 13 year old kid and his buddies making absurd chat rooms for fun.

Re:Glad to hear it

[Khyber]

It's a sad world we live it when someone prays on kids and people shout "Well the kids shouldn't have been there!!"

Well, you shouldn't have taken them to that church to begin with!

Re:Glad to hear it

[Xarius]

(And in case anyone asks we don't let the girls on the net without parental oversight)

So why do you care?

Re:Glad to hear it

[serutan]

So you're glad to see a company do a knee-jerk lawsuit reaction, shutting down an entire service rather than go through and remove offensive items. Makes sense to me.

Re:Glad to hear it

[STrinity]

Yeah "9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex" doesn't imply that anything illicit is going on at all.

Since the average Yahoo! chat room consists of 20 porn bots declaring that they're hot and horny and on cam right now, and 20 guys PMing the porn bots asking, "asl?", then no, really the titles don't really indicate something illicit going on.

Re:Glad to hear it

[serutan]

Are not most of his constituents pro-life, actually? I thought that means that all life (all children) should be entitled to the protection of their health/life on their own right

"Pro-life" is just a PR term for "anti-abortion." It doesn't mean these people are "pro" anything. Most of the people I know who are rabidly against abortion are just as rabidly against doing anything for the single mother. They want her to suffer for her own sins. If you bring up the subject of the child being an innocent victim of the resulting poverty or whatever, they will immediately fall back to the line that the government can't run everybody's life, people have to take responsibility for themselves, maybe you'd rather live in Russia, etc, etc. I've concluded that it's hopeless to argue. The only strategy worth pursuing is to win.

Re:Glad to hear it

[m50d]

Not that I condone not paying for medical care, but there's a huge difference between deliberately killing something and not giving it expensive medical care.

Re:Glad to hear it

[rsynnott]

Er, really, that's ridiculous. The intention of those rooms is obvious, and not surprising; paedophilia is more common than people tend to think. When BT in the UK (a telecom and ISP) blocked KNOWN paedophile websites, they had some insane number of attempted accesses a day. If a few innocent politician fetishists are hurt by this, well, that's life.

Re:Glad to hear it

[rsynnott]

That's quite frightening, about the health insurance. I'm glad I live in a marginally civilised country. (Oddly, "pro-life" people are quite often very anti-life in many cases; a lot of them support execution, war, torture of prisoners and so forth). But really, this stuff isn't acceptable. If those rooms are what their names imply (and in at least a few cases there's no getting away from it; they are definitely dodgy), then they're incredibly dangerous to children and illegal nearly everywhere in the world. Legislation on this sort of thing isn't unreasonable. Yahoo should hand over details of anyone who used these rooms to Interpol

Re:Glad to hear it

[josh3736]

Should we be investigating our police forces?

Yes.

Re:Glad to hear it

[Mike570]

Yahoo has a way to make people have to enter their user name and password in order to get into "adult" profiles. I don't see why they can't do this with user created chatrooms. I mean, there's a bunch of ways that a determined kid could get around this but at least Yahoo would be making an effort.

Re:Glad to hear it

[aminorex]

> "Pro-life" is just a PR term for "anti-abortion."

Pro-choice is just a PR term for pro-abortion.
So?

> people I know who are rabidly against abortion are just as rabidly against doing anything for the single mother

You must know different people than I know.
Or maybe you're just creating a straw man to demonize, for your own PR purposes. I guess there's really no way to tell.

Re:Glad to hear it

[hugesmile]

After reading a website devoted to catching pedophiles I want to revise my statement.

I guess there are MANY more sickos out there than I thought. My point was that BEING in these rooms does not implicate someone. Shoot, the police and the people who run that web site are in those rooms, and presumably those are the GOOD guys, right? I can't believe a young girl would go in there! Those rooms are probably almost all men talking to each other!

But yes, sadly, there are some sick people out there.

Re:Glad to hear it

[rsynnott]

Yes, being in those rooms implicates anyone except police specifically assigned to investigation of such things, and POSSIBLY the vigilante justice people. An investigation could then easily establish whether they were a member of the vigilante thingy, and whether they had any child pornography on their computer (whether they were a member of the vigilante thingy or not, they shouldn't be downloading such images. It would be a mistake to assume that they're always the good guys; what better excuse to hang out in these rooms?

Even if a child never, ever enters one of these rooms, they're still a problem. They provide a venue for paedophiles to exchange pornography, tips on where to find children (SomethingAwful did a thing on a message board of this type a while back; it was quite horrific) and so on. And I think it's dangerous to assume that no child would ever enter such a room.

Re:Glad to hear it

[rsynnott]

Okay, having had a good look at their website, I retract my remarks about the dubiousness of that group. They seem to be careful enough, and they're obviously doing an amazing job.

Re:Glad to hear it

[hugesmile]

Yes, after browsing that wesite yesterday, I was nearly literally sick to my stomach. I almost feel a sense of guilt simply being a member of the same species as some of these slimey snakes!

But I still contend that a room name is just a room name - not something upon which you can convict. Of course, if the person was being tried of trying to meet up with a child, the jury would not look favorably on such "room names". But if I were the defense attorney, I would fight like hell to keep the room names out of the court record, as I feel they are extremely prejudicial (because jurors don't all agree with me - and DO think that room names implicate people).

Of course, if I were the defense attorney, I think I would have bigger problems (like tying to get a good night's sleep!)

If a room is called "Sinners Meet Here", I think it'd be a fair assumption that many "Bible Thumpers" (for lack of a better term) would go there. THAT was my point! (and in fact, years ago, I asked someone who was very religious why they "hung out" on chat, and the response was that in order to "save people", you need to go into the evil places where people are, who need to be saved. I'd hate to think that this person would get convicted (even in the press!) purely because he tried to help people and browsed some REALLY slimey rooms.)

Granted, the overall profile between a pedophile and a Bible-thumper would be totally different - but the press (and the prosecuting attorney) would tend to ONLY report the room names, and not the fact that the person may have been "doing good".

We'll probably have to agree to disagree on that one, but I just think that the press is famous for taking something that may NOT implicate people, and making it look much worse than it is (regardless of the surrounding facts). So I would not convict based on room name - and I would not advocate censorship based solely on room name.

Anyway, the perverted-justice.com site makes for some very interesting (and scary) reading. I will be sharing that with several people I know with 10-15 year old kids. And with a couple of guys I know who like to pull pranks in chat - not that they would do anything this slimey, but,... it certainly makes you think!

Needs moderated

[RickPartin]

Well what did they think was going to happen? Opening up chat rooms to the public with I'm assuming very little moderation is just asking for trouble. The article says people asked to become moderators but Yahoo never responded.

I've never used Yahoo chat before. Do they have very many non user created rooms? Sounds like they just destroyed their chat service.

Re:Needs moderated

[Velox_SwiftFox]

I understand that there are legal ramifications. Are these moderators Yahoo employees, owed pay, etc... possibly to sue down the line for back pay?

Re:Needs moderated

[krymsin01]

There is the official hierarchy of chat rooms, and then parallel to that are the user created rooms. As for people "asking" to become moderators, I wouldn't have responded either. In my experience, people who ask for power rarely deserve it.

Re:Needs moderated

[Elyscape]

I've never used Yahoo chat before. Do they have very many non user created rooms? Sounds like they just destroyed their chat service.

From the post to /.:

The ability to publish user-created chat rooms in the public Yahoo! Chat directory is currently unavailable.

Emphasis mine.
I could be wrong, but I'm reading this as follows: Yahoo chat rooms are either the moderated, official rooms, or are private rooms, of which there is no public listing. That's what they seem to be saying.

Re:Needs moderated

[justforaday]

The article says people asked to become moderators but Yahoo never responded.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd be a little wary of someone who asked to be a mod in a "young girls for older guys" chatroom...

Re:Needs moderated

[seanvaandering]

Yahoo had tons, and GAIM also allowed entry into them. Some with names like "PARENT INCEST DILDO SEX" under the Adult > Fetish > Alternative > User Created categories and "PRETEEN NUDE PIC TRADES". All of them completely unmoderated and always completely full (40 users per room). I only checked it out because I had recently upgraded GAIM and saw the chatroom feature light up when I applied my Yahoo account. Needless to say, it was an eye opener...

OH NO!!!!

[unknown_goth]

Now where will all the 14 year old blonde lesbian goth chicks with piercings, and a fetish for cybering do once they clock off from work and head home to the wife and kids... .... so sad. . . soo truely sad it is....

Re:OH NO!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

To Slashdot? You seem to have chosen that path "Miss" Unknown Goth.

Re:OH NO!!!!

[unknown_goth]

OH CRAP!!!! i didn't know which user account i was logged in to my dear. I'll log back in as a 40 year old male computer programmer. Nevermind that, it's just not as fun, i guess i can go play a half naked female night elf in WoW, because there is never enough of them.

Re:OH NO!!!!

[martian67]

I belive that AOL is offering to take on the extra load of perverts, as a special service to its customers, and as a way of polishing its tarnished image....

I have no sympathy for the family

[zymano]

They need to monitor their kid. Especially chatrooms.

Yahoo lets any A-hole create any stupid chatroom.

The only problem with Yahoo is that they don't have one single customer service email address. If they do they sure as hole don't listen NOR DO THEY EVER REPLY WITH A HUMAN REPLY EMAIL. So they could give a fuck if Al-queda had a chat room on there.

Re:I have no sympathy for the family

[RickPartin]

Of course Al-queda has a chatroom. Al-queda is EVERYWHERE. Only people who hate America don't know that. I think there is even a Yahoo Chat clause in the Patriot act somewhere.

Re:I have no sympathy for the family

[mschoolbus]

So they could give a fuck if Al-queda had a chat room on there.

I can see it now..
user Jihad31337 entered chat.
Jihad31337: America sux0rz, a/s/l everyone?

Re:I have no sympathy for the family

[agent dero]

omfg liek wtfwtf, think of teh childran!!!!!11 lol hahah jk jk

Re:I have no sympathy for the family

[m50d]

me kill buildings kekeke!!

OMG plane rush lamer

/one ticket, straight down

Re:I have no sympathy for the family

[i wanted another nam]

I don't have the link any more (backups are your friend), but I saw a web page with links to all sorts of terrorist web spaces, and over half of them actually were Yahoo groups.

Re:I have no sympathy for the family

[squiggleslash]

osama101: so, when we put our plan into operation, the infidels will tremble in fear and have no choice but to cede our demands!
evlhnchmn21: *lol* *LOL* *LOLOL* The West will tremble and beg for our mercy!
osama101: *rofl* *ROFL* *LOL* They will never guess a plot they've already seen on their television show "24"!
sidekick60: *LOL* Except done correctly with technology that actually exists, of course!
*** nycmale23 has entered channel #Al-Queda
nycmale23: ne1 want to cyber?
osama101: go away
nycmale23: osama101 a/s/l?
evlhnchmn21: wtf?

Re:I have no sympathy for the family

[zymano]

That family was about as stupid as you.

I am God.

Re:I have no sympathy for the family

[1u3hr]

he only problem with Yahoo is that they don't have one single customer service email address. If they do they sure as hole don't listen NOR DO THEY EVER REPLY WITH A HUMAN REPLY EMAIL.

I actually pay to have a "premium" Yahoo email account, mostly through inertia. A year ago I started getting loads of viruses and tried to ask them if they could just delete these ratjer than delivering, as they were all a common easily identifed pattern. So I sent about six emails to their customer service address asking if this was possible, and not one time did any reply have any sign that they'd read my mail beyond sighting a keyword like "mail" or "virus", and directed me to the same useless FAQ pages I'd already scoured. None of these assholes would pass the Turing Test. So I just gave up trying. It really is past time to get my om domain and control my own mail.

Did they support the offensive channels?

[Mard]

How many (total) channels were actively run on Yahoo Chat--basically, how hidden were these channels in the first place? Did Yahoo make an effort to police their chat channels, or were they neglected entirely (and thus encouraged to degrade to the point they were at)? Is Yahoo even liable for the actions of other people? Why is congress discussing MORE LAWS when obviously they're being sued so they already (may have) violated existing ones?

I seem to recall similar channels all over the fricking place when I was kid, on AOL. Why was AOL never nailed like this (or was I just too young to care/remember)?

The lawsuit by the family of one child porn victim said Yahoo! could have removed the sites, but instead chose to make money on them.
Oh. Okay. Nice big accusation at the bottom from an anonymous source and no support to follow it. Now that's inciteful writing!

Eh, it looks like the Religious Uptight learned how to astroturf.

Re:Did they support the offensive channels?

[Ugly American]

The story on the lawsuit is here.

Re:Did they support the offensive channels?

[rsynnott]

Realistically, it's not just the religious who are opposed to child abuse. I think, in fact, just about everyone is.

What really goes on in these rooms

[noidentity]

Yahoo! is facing a $10 million lawsuit that accuses it of cashing in on some disturbing chat rooms. The stations' investigation showed what's really going on in those rooms.

What they found: people typing words to each other. Shocking!

Re:What really goes on in these rooms

[Mister Impressive]

What they found: people typing words to each other. Shocking!

I don't think so, stuff like...

hi2u, asl? kthxbi

1 4m t3h 1337 winn4r!

can be classified as words...

Re:What really goes on in these rooms

[djdanlib]

No, they apparently had pictures and live webcam video. Read the article... reading doesn't hurt as much as you think it does.

I will quote it here just for you:

"Inside the chat rooms, not only were men trying to meet children or even take them away from home to run away, the station found countless adult men using Web cameras to send children in the room lewd pictures or display live nude images of themselves."

Idiots...

[Duncan3]

Great, now all the freaks and pedophiles and psycho freaks will be roaming the normal people channels.

At least when they were off in the freak places the law knew where to look for them.

Aim gun at foot, pull trigger.

Re:Idiots...

[STrinity]

Great, now all the freaks and pedophiles and psycho freaks will be roaming the normal people channels.

They already are. From the full article (emphasis added):

Among the thousands of chat room titles, where people can look for common interests like music or movies, there are other rooms with some disturbing titles, such as:

• 9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex
• Younger Girls 4 Older Guys
• Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys
• Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Man
• Girls 8 to 13 Watch Boys (In A Particular Sex Act)

The station found all of those rooms listed as education chat rooms

These were normal chatrooms, not the ones in the adult section.

Corporate control "of the Internet".

[torpor]

See kids, this is why you shouldn't use Yahoo, and discover IRC instead.

All this control over your speech .. its not good for you, you know.

Poo on Joo!!!

[Safety Cap]

Parenting iz too haaarrd!

Make the gobment do it!!!!!111

Re:Poo on Joo!!!

[rsynnott]

Sorry, the people in those rooms are criminals, and hosting such rooms is illegal.

Chat rooms

[ATAMAH]

There are disturbing chat rooms in any chat medium that supports "rooms" as such. However, if my memory serves me right, there used to be a part in MOTD on IRC servers that said something along the lines of "IRC is an unmoderated medium"... If Yahoo is not a moderated place either - who is a judge of what is shocking and what is not? Not that i am advocating sick stuff, and not that i don't see how they (Yahoo) can give in to litigative pressure.. but still?

Re:Chat rooms

[Bigthecat]

"who is a judge of what is shocking and what is not?"

Their advertisers, which is where they gain a good portion of their income from. It's all well and good that they can technically perhaps be on the correct side of the law, but when it comes to standing your ground or losing your income a public company is going to cave.

Re:This is really too bad,

[dancingmad]

. there were also lots of arabic rooms that the Al Queada may have been hanging out in, I can't really be sure because most were in arabic font

God bless you sir, for being American.

how many times

[berlamont]

How many times did they say CHILD SEX ROOMS in that report. I love how they act like the advertisments were purposely placed on those particular chat rooms.

Custom Chat Rooms Sorta Disabled...

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, the "custom" chat rooms were only down for a few days. Of course now, they apparently have some "restriction" on them. Possibly some hacks have found ways to create "custom" rooms again, as the regular yahoo messenger does not allow it right now. Secondly, yahoo has always forced users to view one advertisement before jumping into chat room mode. So, to accuse them of using controversial chat rooms to market thier crap is a real lame ass accusation. If anything, they could be accused of not moderating thier chat rooms. However, I do believe the Yahoo Messenger software agreement limits liability for this somewhat. Besides that, though, if someone is going to chat about something "inappropriate" on the internet, they will find a way, even if that way is hopping on yahoo chat, IMing "wanna talk about codeword?" and then jumping over to third party product.

Also...

[Electrawn]

Maybe they can also get rid of the bots plaguing Mahjongg Solitare and other stuff on games.yahoo.com

Well...it was a dream.

Re:Also...

[Deluge]

I may just be a little dense here, but what in holy hell is the point of having a bot play solitaire for you?

Re:Also...

[mgscheue]

They're spam-spewing bots, not solitaire-playing bots. Yahoo chat has been plagued with spambots for years and, as far as I can tell, no one at Yahoo cares.

This is why..

[sinner0423]

All Yahoo chat rooms :

joeuser: where are the ladies
joeuser2: HI R U FEM?
adbot: jargonlkjdsfhgnbfoo
adbot2: 25/f/perfect nudexxxpics.sex.ws click here for my pics!

Followed by the hammering of your desktop full of randomly generated adult website advertisments and emails. Things have gotten so bad with the bots that people are relying on 3rd party programs to block the sheer amount of crap that an average yahoo user receives every day.

I'd honestly say a good 30-40% of the "users" in the rooms are adult website advertisement bots. I've spent a few minutes on this comment and I already received at least a dozen bogus IM's / ads from them. The news about companies not wanting to deal with yahoo's obvious chat room problems doesn't suprise me in the least, I say good riddance.

Re:This is really too bad,

[Dunbal]

there were also lots of arabic rooms that the Al Queada may have been hanging out in,

Just reading this comment from you is scary. But perhaps not scary in the way you think... It's scary that your first thought about an arabic chat room is as a possible host for "Al Quaeda". Those darned terrorsts are everywhere now, aren't they? And yet 5 years ago you never even knew they existed.

Oh, but because I suggest that perhaps arabic chat rooms are NOT somewhere for Al-Quaeda to hang out, that must make me a terrorist too...

Rape Club

[nexu56]

Not surprising at all...

Microsoft's media portal in australia, "ninemsn" (think msnbc) recently had to explain how it failed to notice its members had set up a "Rape Club" chatroom devoted to discussions a photos of, er, rape.

I just tried to track down a link through google news.

Which (at the moment) leads to a news article on ninemsn (!) Amusingly, follow the link and receive:

"The article you have requested does not exist"

Tinfoil hats ahoy! Instead, try this link to read about the whole sordid affair:

Re:The REAL tragady of P2P

[sillybilly]

Nah, actually these rooms are getting closed, because the undercover law officers wasted tremendous time and effort fishing for pedophiles in it, for no good. Thing is there IS a line between reality and fiction, and in fiction people will do countless things, including butchering each other in games. But when it comes to reality, there is a little inner voice that goes off, that makes people care about each other. I wonder how many pedophiles they set up who actually treated their bait very very decently and with respect, and stopped the contact after coming to their senses. Like, look, even Michael Jackson got let off, so why waste time fishing for these people if the law will just let them go?

PS. Chatting is a bit impersonal, and because of that it can get rude. If you don't like it, flip the switch off. How many times have you seen people talk really nasty in 3rd person, but when they are face to face with someone, they shape up and behave, and become less offensive? Well in chat the "I" can talk to the "You" as if it were a "he,she,it." Webcams and voice can aid making it more personal, but it's impossible for everyone to voice-talk at the same time the same way as they can type, it'd be a mess. Of course there are two sides to every story, and the opposite is true too, when you get to know someone very well even through "impersonal" means such as letters only. Also I'm sure there were some true pedophiles that stop at nothing, caught. It's always funny when they catch a 50-year old judge or respected person about to meet a 17-year old. I always think of salmon or black widow males. Sex is a funny thing, I tell ya, but without it you wouldn't be here, nor would the little salmons.

Internet filth is impossible

[superiority]

I question the credibility of any scientist that brings it up.

Fair Enough.

[destx]

There was some fucked up stuff going on there.

Re:Fair Enough.

[Adult film producer]

There wasn't really anything fucked up going on in them despite the titles of the rooms. They were populated with bots that spammed up everybody with advertisements for sex sites. I guess that's fucked up too but not the same thing. The advertisers just just didn't like having their names/products associated with those particular venues..

Re:This is really too bad,

[sillybilly]

Actually if Al Quaeda hung out in these rooms, we should keep them open by all means. Haven't you heard they only talk in person and don't even use cell phones? We got satellites aimed at listening to these people, if they only would speak up. I mean what's better than having them type up their shit in a chat room, and then just run in through some translation program? Free intelligence anyone, without wasting arabic-speaking-undercover-precious-time?

For those who don't RTFA

[johansalk]

"Yes, more legislation is required. The law has not kept up with this type of criminal activity," U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, told the Houston television station KPRC." With a nod from Gitmo Gonzales ""Short of changes in the law in Congress, we may be limited about what we can do in this area," U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said."
It's yet another shenanigan and publicity stunt by a *Texas Republican* and a Texas local TV station. I resent that the article submitter did not mention that. Not that I ever was fond of the bot-infested Yahoo chat, but the action of those US Talibans reeks of stink; we found something we didn't like on this thing, nevermind that we shouldn't have been looking for it in the first place, so we'll mess it up *ALL*, for all, and let's take a chance and excuse to legislate!

Remember that 'sexy cheerleading' legislation?! I hate those folks; buckle up for their attempts, onslaught after first step, to legislate their morality and force it upon all!

Re:For those who don't RTFA

[Scoria]

For those of you that don't live in Houston, KPRC has less journalistic integrity than The Sun. They are notorious for their melodramatic rating stunts.

Re:For those who don't RTFA

[data1]

For those who do not know what the parent meant by "Sexy Cheerleading" legislation, check out these links.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:gEUWd6ysFhAJ: enews.earthlink.net/article/str%3Fguid%3D20050503/ 4276f740_3ca6_1552620050503281522295+sexy+cheerlea ding+legislation+tx&hl=en&start=5
[google cache]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7727886/
[news article]

Commercial web-based chat

[varebel]

*shakes head*

Whatever happened to good ol' IRC? When nobody really cared what you did or chatted about so long as you weren't bothering the other users.

Nothing new here, move along

[dogugotw]

Yahoo has chat rooms associated with their yahoo groups - these are still active. They don't display ads on the way in. Group use ads when you view threads - every n items you read, you get to view (ignore) an ad.

I didn't realize that yahoo also had these ad-hoc chat rooms but that appears to be what's been shut down.

As several other posters have remarked, this kind of adult/child dialog is nothing new. Way back in the day, when CompuServe was master of the on-line universe and a 2400 baud modem was da bomb, I recall watching my 7 yo daughter chatting on-line on night. When I noticed someone say 'would it matter to you if I was a 27 yo male', I pulled the plug on her chat and permanently shut down her access to chat rooms.

While I don't condone pedophilia, PARENTS ARE OBLIGATED TO DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES HOW THEY WANT TO MANAGE THEIR CHILDREN'S ACCESS TO THE INTERNET. Please do NOT ask the government or buinesses to become the ethics police, that's MY job.

I realize it's damn near impossible, and not very healthy, to monitor your kids 24/7, but teaching your kids right and wrong is what we get paid to do - you pop one out and you get the responsibility that comes with the sex.

Re:Nothing new here, move along

[adzoox]

PARENTS ARE OBLIGATED TO DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES HOW THEY WANT TO MANAGE THEIR CHILDREN'S ACCESS TO THE INTERNET. Please do NOT ask the government or buinesses to become the ethics police, that's MY job.

While I agree with your argument that it ultimately lies with the parent - Yahoo in particular has gone overboard with lack of moderation

Plus - I don't understand why they would allow their servers to be bogged down so with all the fake profiles, personals, auctions - not to mention the perverse and strange groups and chat rooms.

Look here to see how I elaborated about this; last month in my BLOG

Re:Nothing new here, move along

[mark-t]

And what do you propose for the families where the children are more computer literate than the parents?

Because that's the way things often are, and it is is their voice that is screaming to outside agencies for help.

Because in such situations, there's nothing those parents are going to be able to implement that's going to actually limit their kids' access to inappropriate material if the kid has even a moderate level of intelligence and creativity without rendering the computer virtually unusable for themselves as well.

Parents that know enough about system administration to effectively lock down their systems so that their kids can't bypass the security policies that want in place are simply not the norm.

cf. IRC

[RedLaggedTeut]

Well, on IRC you can moderate your own chat room. The downside is someone else can take over your chat room while your computers are down, unless you got allies.

Moderating like this isn't the problem, it is creating own chat rooms at all. I suppose Yahoo! will have to require an identification of all users who open up rooms if they want to stop that. This leads to other unpleasantness, like someone getting the idea that you are responsible for what people talk in the chat rooms you opened, even if you are away on holiday( or in jail :-P )

Because it's not funny and way overused perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because they became NOT FUNNY years ago, perhaps?

Hopefully, this trend will continue to the NO-LONGER-FUNNY Korea one-liners as well. They're the same fscking joke over and over and over and over and over and over again, yet they're supposed to be funny even beyond their 5,000th iteration?

Any legal pointers?

[putko]

Does anyone have any legal pointers to what Yahoo! was obligated to do (if anything)? I've tried looking for info on the relevant US law or case law, but I've not seen anything.

It seems clear that Yahoo! was operating a website in a hands off fashion. Slashdot does the same, right?

I can image a court could hold Yahoo! liable for any bits they serve (ala China or France), but that sounds un-American.

The various articles mention that Yahoo! cannot be held criminally liable. Does anyone have further info?

What about USENET? There's probably tons of illegal stuff floating around on that.

Re:Any legal pointers?

[the eric conspiracy]

Does anyone have any legal pointers to what Yahoo! was obligated to do (if anything)? I've tried looking for info on the relevant US law or case law, but I've not seen anything.

Part of the point of the article is that Yahoo was not doing anything illegal.

However advertisers with Yahoo have a different standard - they don't want their advertising dollars used to support these sorts of chat rooms, and have that specifically placed terms in their contracts stating this.

So while Yahoo may not be in criminal trouble, it is going to get hammered by advertisers because Yahoo violated its advertising contracts.

Re:Any legal pointers?

[rsynnott]

It almost certainly can't be held responsible while it doesn't know the material is there. Once someone publicly points it out, tho, they have to do something from a publicity point of view, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they have to do something legally as well; they certainly would here.

Any Bets.....

[Rule_Of_The_Bone]

.....on the number of people out there in beat-off land who are cringing a bit at the moment?

Oh yeah.....

[Rule_Of_The_Bone]

....did anyone notice that Brawny (paper towels) was listed as an advertiser along with Diet Pepsi? Fat old dudes slurping down a 64oz Big Gulp and vainly attempting to clean the keyboard post chat session...the mind boggles. Now pass the Brawny so I can can clean up the mess caused by blowing my beverage through my nose all over my monitor.

Re:Oh yeah.....

[Persi]

Brawny is the paper towel of choice for every fat old fart in a wifebeater T shirt and boxers sitting in his Casa D'Aluminum and whacking it while he asks women "what's your cup size baby?" ... Brawny should be a proud sponsor of Adult Chat ... Along with Wet Ones ... Guys??? Boycot Brawny! Make Bounty your jizz catcher of choice ... After all it IS "The Quicker Picker Upper" ...

Re:This is really too bad,

[Frogbert]

ofcourse they don't hang out in araBic chat rOOMs, GOd knowS THats what thEy want you to Think. insteAd they decide to post secRet encoded messaGes on forums complETely above suspicion.

Big Bad Coporations

[WildBeast]

So Big Bad Corporation is to blame because it let's users create their own chat rooms. Notice how there's pretty much nothing about those who are creating and participating in those chatrooms. Why blame pedophiles when you can blame The Coporation?

What's next? "Big Bad Corporations banking on the use of baseball bats by the mob"?

Re:Big Bad Coporations

[JenovaSynthesis]

We have already been through that with the gun industry lawsuits that failed because of people making the stupid assumption that Smith & Wesson made Gun #102546 and some how clairvoyantly knew Johnny B. Amurderer was going to by gun #102546 and kill someone with it.

Some might argue the tobacco lawsuits fall into this as well. But the only reason the tobacco ones have stuck is because they knowingly market a product that is harmful and has no other purpose.

Should turn eye to IM/Personals/Auctions next

[adzoox]

Yahoo IM and Yahoo personals have become the EXACT same as their chat rooms - just ways for the sexually perverse,incredibly strange, or overly obnoxious marketer to gain attention.

Yahoo Personals/Yahoo Profiles for instance are about 60% fake - there to be front end or link builders for XXX chat/websites

Yahoo IM has become almost unbearable to be visible with fake "bot-women" IMming me and inviting me to sex cam chats

Yahoo auctions are over 90% fake - just look at the Mac Category - I don't think there are but two out of the 45 auctions that are currently up in the Mac category that are legit.

Re:Should turn eye to IM/Personals/Auctions next

[dave1g]

I'm actually surprised I havent been getting the "girl promoting her cam site" IMs anymore.

Thank god.

Re:Sadly laughable.

[hugesmile]

I remember such classic rooms as "12-14girlz and guyz chat" and "13-17 teen chat", with maybe 84% of the room's population consisting of thirty-two-year-old men living on the west coast

So how are things on the west coast?

Why is it that YOU judge other men for going into that room, when YOU probably had to enter the room to see them?? ;)

Thank You Mister Grammar Pedant

[Kurisuteru]

I haven't seen a complaint on the use of this before now. Lots of were/where, seem/seam, a/an etc, but never neither/nor. In Norway this is-5th grader curriculum... and most all learn a third language later on in school too (8th grade onwards). How many languages are common to learn in US schools? Is French obligatory? To not make Norwegians look holier than the rest of thou though, it seems most of us can't speak, let alone write our own language very well. Just like you guys. Guess I'm a bit old and anal-retentive, but I don't care. I like languages. Though I accept that they transgress(?) and evolve, and I may spell wrong here and there myself, some errors are true corruptions, can't be parsed with 100% correctness, and as a result won't convey the intended meaning behind the sentence. Just a tiny defense of the grammar fascists. I am one myself.

Re:Thank You Mister Grammar Pedant

[Professor_UNIX]

Maybe where you're from what I said doesn't make sense, but my grammar is perfectly good, especially on Slashdot.

Re:Thank You Mister Grammar Pedant

[Professor_UNIX]

He's right, your wrong.

It's spelled "you're", not "your".

Re:Thank You Mister Grammar Pedant

[Sj0]

You have to admit, it's much nicer to be hit for pedantry for something obscure and archaic, isn't it? :)

Re:This is really too bad,

[fermion]

And the thing about some american thinking is they never talk about the possibility that the chat rooms are being used by white protestants to plan the nex Oklahoma City, or the next killing of a doctor, or the next Olympic Bombing, or the next school rampage.

One can only assume that if a white christian kills people it is ok, while all arabs are evil.

Re:Because it's not funny and way overused perhaps

[Travelsonic]

Maybe because they became NOT FUNNY years ago, perhaps? Hopefully, this trend will continue to the NO-LONGER-FUNNY Korea one-liners as well.

Did you happen to think that what is not funny and funny is a personal preference? YOu are starting to sound like those very annoying-as-hell clique girls from high school. It's a personal preference, if soembody think's whatever joke for whatever reason is funny, and you don't, why not skip it instead of posting high-ego, high snob bullshit comments?

Re:This is really too bad,

[Dogtanian]

> > there were also lots of arabic rooms that the Al Queada may have been > > hanging out in, I can't really be sure because most were in arabic font

> God bless you sir, for being American

Is it possible to write English language stuff using the 'appearance' of (true) Arabic letters?

That would be hilarious; US intelligence going through screeds of Arabic in what they perceived to be some obscure dialect for hours on end.

Eventually, one guy holds the printout upside down and says...

"You know, if you squint at this, it kind of looks like 'Oh my God, Laura Bush is hot and she sucks me ofF LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!'"

"LOLOLOLOLOL? Doesn't make sense. Must be some fiendish Middle-eastern call to Allah before they invade God's own country. Keep working on this men!"

The problem with legislating computers

[Qzukk]

Inevitably, these guys are going to come up with legislation that will be impossible to implement. Just like the library net-nanny laws, which are inevitably going to be doomed to "I thought my kid would be safe if I left him at the library for 4 hours while I did my shopping and a manicure!" lawsuits, it's not going to be possible to screen each and every room name in every language created. Especially, if like IRC, they're simply created automatically.

See if you can write a regular expression that will block all of these channels. I'll throw in some easy ones as well as some that require actually knowing the subject matter (if you don't get it, try google and ageofconsent.com):

Let's all have sex with little girls!!!1!
kome ere 2 c lil kitz
young kittens 4 men
t33nz p1><
Jelly Bracelets R us
Chilean Wife pix
tennis player porn
erotaisou na shashin (I see from other posts that yahoo supposedly supported arabic, so they'd probably have supported japanese as well, and in that case you'll have to match all possible combinations of the japanese alphabets that create that concept)

Re:The problem with legislating computers

[slavemowgli]

See if you can write a regular expression that will block all of these channels.

How about this one?

$name =~ m//;

That trivially blocks all the channels you listed, and unless I'm mistaken, it should be the simplest example you can come up with, too.

Of course, that's pretty much what Yahoo is doing, too.

Re:Because it's not funny and way overused perhaps

[Travelsonic]

Excuse me Mr. Smartypants, but the joke was modded down because it is not funny.

And how many people can mod down a comment at one time?

So umm google...

[dtk13]

Yea google has another area to step into. Actualy google chat would be really cool. Then on to a stand alone chat app GIM with a GIM Robot that would have AdSense embeaded.

Re:Because it's not funny and way overused perhaps

[Travelsonic]

Stwarman argument, this does not change the fact that not everybody thinks the same way in what is and isn't funny, n'or will it change my opinion that if you don't like something, posting in the smartass way you did won't make things better/change things.

Easy solution

[t_allardyce]

Chat-room paedophiles are like email viruses - it can easily be stopped but everyone is too stupid. Ok so the paedophiles shouldn't be around in the first place, but that's not the point: bad people _do_ exist and that will never ever change so its about fucking time that parents took some responsibility to stop it at their end. I see no reason why a private chat system couldn't be set up were all users are pre-screened or identified. Its very simple: to join kid-safe-chat.com parents would provide ID such as a credit card or kids could get their school to do it. The kid can then choose whatever screen name they want and the parents wont know it. Chats are monitored/logged but privacy is maintained so that parents/teachers etc can't read the logs or do any monitoring other than what they could do by simply creating their own account (otherwise your kids will just walk right around it). If anyone dodgy gets on they will know that anything they say or do on this chat system can be fully linked back to their real identity.

Re:Easy solution

[JenovaSynthesis]

Exactly. Pedophiles are not going to just go away and cease to exist. Even with people like Perverted-Justice it will never fully go away. It seems like most parents what everyone else to raise and protect their kids from teachers to Yahoo.

Even if parents allowed their children to chat on yahoo, it is not that hard to set up a limited account in Windows that prevents them from doing it when they are not there. Plus all the spy software that gets marketed for cheating spouses would work wonders here.

It's just that dreaded e-word people fear. Effort. Parenting is not all baby showers and cheery holidays.

Re:Easy solution

[t_allardyce]

Yes and a great place for the police to track down people who do that.

Re:Easy solution

[typical]

Ok so the paedophiles shouldn't be around in the first place, but that's not the point: bad people _do_ exist...

And then your .sig:

Saudi Arabia - where school girls are prevented from leaving a burning building because they have no head scarves on

Don't you love people who refuse to recognize different value systems?

There are probably plenty of people in Saudi Arabia who think that lingerie model ads are peverse, obscene, and disgusting...

Re:Easy solution

[t_allardyce]

I recognise different value systems - where did i say that they couldn't be offended by lingerie?

In this case lingerie had nothing to do with it, it was just a load of school girls trying to get out of their burning school while the police stopped anyone from helping or unlocking the doors because of their lack of proper dress, while being fully aware of these people burning to death. It wouldn't make any difference if they were naked. You can hide behind 'different value systems' but after a point you have to cut the political correctness - some Saudi Arabian value systems, laws and beliefs are just wrong, disgusting, primitive, insane, take your pick. Now whether we should interfere is a different matter.

As for paedophiles, im not one of those ignorant masses that goes around in lynch mobs threatening people on sex-offender lists.

I think this system would be a good idea because its simple crime prevention without trampling rights or going over the top.

Re:Because it's not funny and way overused perhaps

[Travelsonic]

I know things get tiring, but there ARE people after all people, me being one of them, that sometimes never gets tired of whatever jokes and clichés are thrown around here, and that is mainy because they are more tolerable to me than the clichés thrown around by some, like the RIAA/MPAA/BSA and their blind supporters. And where the hell do you get off trying to dictate what is and what isn't "normal"? How do you determine that anyways? What is a "normal" human being?

TAKE OUR KITCHEN KNIVES AWAY TOO!

[typical]

We should also have the government file kitchen knives down to dull metal objects, because if we're stupid, we can manage to hurt ourselves with them. And the government knows best. Hell, why don't we just all seal ourselves up in government-regulated personal spheres that can be rolled along government-prescribed paths with only government-censored content on the government-supplied monitors.

God *damn*, how did people survive for millions of years before the United States government came along to start eliminating terrible hazards? Especially *informational* hazards? My parents said "don't get into cars with strangers". Real simple. Somehow I survived, along with hundreds of millions of Americans, stunning as the thought is. And now the government is cracking down on a bunch of middle-aged people who are acting out some sexual fetish online. Great. In George Washington's time, there wasn't the *technology* necessary to monitor and punish people who violated social norms in their private lives, and yet *somehow*, *somehow*, we survived.

You know that there are cannibalism USENET groups too? You know how many people get killed and eaten? Not bloody many; it's a lot of people engaging in some random sexual fetish that they're into.

We have statuatory rape laws. We even have soliciting-sex-from-a-minor-laws. I don't understand why such laws are insufficient, and we have to start eliminating some people's fetish roleplaying.

Tomorrow, whose fetish gets eliminated? Is it those dangerous homosexuals (I notice Texas lawmakers playing a prominent role here -- they've already managed to get adopted children taken away from their adoptive parents if the parents happen to be homosexual -- way to go, conservative Texas.)

There's a little Victorianism in us all. In the United States, we call our Victorianism "Texas".

Re:TAKE OUR KITCHEN KNIVES AWAY TOO!

[BlueStrat]

"We have statuatory rape laws. We even have soliciting-sex-from-a-minor-laws. I don't understand why such laws are insufficient, and we have to start eliminating some people's fetish roleplaying."

That's an easy one. It's the fact that the chat service would have to pay someone to police the chatrooms, losing money, added to the fact that parents might have to actually parent, which could have a negative effect on the future profitability of increasingly-privately-run prisons. Plus the fact that lawyers want to make money from questionable lawsuits.

Let's not forget the politicians also, who need a feel-good cause to trumpet to distract and attract/retain voters and expand governmental power while not actually solving any problems, possibly even exascerbating them. Thus, insuring fresh opportunities for both themselves and lawyers to profit.

Victorianism? I don't think so. Follow the money and the plans of the power-hungry. Victorianism implies some firm moral standard, and we all know what kind of "moral standards" lawyers and politicians have...none.

Just my opinion

Strat

Re:TAKE OUR KITCHEN KNIVES AWAY TOO!

[TheFlamingoKing]

Actually, the UK is working on doing just that.

Lawsuits spelling the end of free / private chat?

[jason_resch]

I've run a small commercial chat application for almost 5 years and I know that when companies such as Microsoft or Yahoo close their chat services claiming to "protect the children" they are using it only as an excuse to cut either their liability or what accounting sees as a black hole.

When MSN closed their chat services in 2003, where do they think all of the children and pedophiles went? The pedophiles didn't just disappear and the children certainly didn't go back to riding bicycles. All they did was shift the burden of dealing with the problem to other chat services.

If an inappropriate or illegal room appeared on my service I would certainly take action, but there exist private rooms on my service which I do not monitor for privacy reasons. Lawsuits such as the one Yahoo is facing may spell the eventual end for commercial chat services and perhaps even domestically run IRC networks. My personal thoughts on the matter are that chat services should do what they can to prevent such activity but there needs to be a clear line drawn on just what a service can be accountable for. The phone company for example cannot be held responsible for a crime that is conducted or planned over its network.

Other Disturbing Chat Topics?

[nurb432]

Like ' Americans for the 2nd amendment '.. or ' people who dislike yahoo's service terms' ...

Somehow I think this is yet another case of 'but its for the children' nonsence.

Yes, i realize its a commercial company and we have no real free speech rights there. But its still somewhat concerning how people toss the concept aside. It *should* be universal.

Re:Other Disturbing Chat Topics?

[adzoox]

Yes, i realize its a commercial company and we have no real free speech rights there.

This is a consistently debated topic on Slashdot, but one worth repeating over and over:

Do you have free speech rights anywhere?

The 1st ammendment (concerning free speech) is:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This ammendment most precisely says - when saying things about the government or protesting the government you can say what you want - it doesn't say anything about the press or any entity having the right to say whatever they want - whenever they want.

Not sure what your "Americans for 2nd Ammendment" wording is about at all ...

You Don't Understand

[eno2001]

It's not the cliched one liners themselves that are funny. It's you! When you folks get so worked up about seeing the cliche one liners, we people who post them just sit and laugh at the outrage. Laugh, it's funny! ;P

Re:Lawsuits spelling the end of free / private cha

[Chatmag]

Jason, I know this is going to be modded off topic. We've had your site listed for some time, and would like to know if it is bringing visitors to your site. Pete

Re:Lawsuits spelling the end of free / private cha

[jason_resch]

Yes Pete, I've seen your site pop up on our referral logs. Thank you for the inclusion on your site and congratulations on surviving the slashdot effect. :-)

Simple: Yahoo got lazy; Sinclair caught them...

[cwolfsheep]

1. The ads are generated regardless of any chat room. Anyone who uses any chat room will be subject to these ads: its in the code. Their system was not designed to filter out "suspect rooms" from advertising. That said, they were lazy in not policing for something that would be a liability as it is now.

2. The Slashdot article linked to a story on WFTV here in Orlando. They're a Sinclair station: they got squeamish about airing "Saving Private Ryan;" they ran a lot of ads for Bush last election; and when the hurricanes came through, their weatherman got dumped on for freaking out too much ("Scary Terry"). The story doesn't even give the explanation I just gave about the ads: just rants about how Yahoo backs porn.

The BS filtered version: Yahoo is indirectly profiting on porn by being lazy with their ad system.

My Wording

[nurb432]

The intent of my wording was exactally what the constitution would have been designed to protect:

"American citizens, protesting the destruction of the 2nd amendment by the government"

As a side note, the excerpt '..or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..' clearly states we do have the right of free speech as an individual.. The directive that congress is not supposed to abridge it, means we do have it..

The key to a lot of the constition is paying attention 'or', not 'and'.. Rights, in general, are not mutually exclusive, nor modified..

( but i know, we are getting somewhat OT here.. )

Re:My Wording

[adzoox]

COMPLETE THE SENTENCE PLEASE!!!

As a side note, the excerpt '..or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..' clearly states we do have the right of free speech as an individual.. The directive that congress is not supposed to abridge it, means we do have it..,/i>

" ...to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The 2nd ammendment is about gun rights - what does it have to do with this conversation?

Re:My Wording

[nurb432]

The original post was an example of the government cracking down on dissidents who express themselves, an issue of 'free speech', which was on topic. ( the rambling that happened afterwards is what was beginning to stray OT ).

I used the 2nd amendment as a 'suppressed subject'. It wasnt meant to be a discussion about the merits for or against it. Though, from your narrowminded remark i can pretty much tell where you stand, which discredits anything further you have to say, about any subject.

Re:My Wording

[adzoox]

The 2nd amendment is about gun rights - what does it have to do with this conversation?

You still didn't answer the question - what does the right to bear arms have to with free speech?

used the 2nd amendment as a 'suppressed subject'. ...which discredits anything further you have to say, about any subject.

Mmmk ... black kettle.

As I have noted many times before...

[jd]

...The reason any law will be unenforcable is that Comgressmen are not IT specialists. How on earth could they know what would work? The only way they could make this workable is if they get together with IT professionals and present it as any other kind of technological problem:

• Congressmen: Here is our requirements spec, but we don't know how much can be done technologically (or how it could be done), and we don't know how much of the rest can be done manually or by whom.
  
• Technologists: Here's what can be done automatically, and here is a breakdown of who would be the best to do each part of the rest manually
  
• Congressmen: Ok, we'll mandate this as the minimum level of technology, and we'll assign responsibility according to who is best-placed to be responsible
  

Will this scenario happen? No. Congress is way too egotistical to ask for help and way too dependent on back-handers and voter lobby groups to do anything that might offend them, no matter how necessary.

Should this scenario happen? I can't think of any other way to produce laws that could actually work in practice, as those in Congress don't have the knowledge or skills required to understand these types of problem.

Re:As I have noted many times before...

[Qzukk]

Should this scenario happen?

There are all sorts of conferences and such that go on for the purpose of creating technical law. Remember that international telecom conference Bush's administration pulled engineers off of because they donated to Kerry? There are also numbers of hearings and panels and so on for the same thing on a non-international level.

But all that goes out the door when somebody wants the knee-jerk reaction soundbite on their way to re-election. And that's the saddest part of all of this.

Yes, I know this is overblown.

[Kizor]

Did you lose anyone you knew in the recent tsunami? Likely not. Did you care about the event?

RE: the "harm" in the chat rooms

[King_TJ]

Well, regardless of whether 12 year old girls really do or don't visit these types of chat rooms - I think the real issue comes down to advertisers unwittingly having their products tied to rooms with these titles.

As far as I'm concerned, there's really no point or value in trying to make it crime to have such a chat room. Anyone, at any time, can create a "chat room" using one of the instant messenger programs out there, give it this type of "topic" and invite random people to join. Same goes for IRC, where anyone could throw a server online and make any channels they want on it - even if you somehow banned them from using the most well-known/populated IRC servers.

If you don't want your pre-teen chatting with creepy older guys who want sex with them, then a little *education* and *parenting* is in order. Legislation won't substitute.

But there IS a very real and understandable complaint when you, as an advertiser, pay your money for product placement and then your product ends up being placed where you never agreed to the placement at all in your contract.

Even more shocking news...

[earthforce_1]

Your local telephone company has been racking up money from lewd conversations, pedophilia and and terrorist plots!

It it true - people have been picking up the phone for years and saying just about anything to the party on the other end, which may include attempts to lure young girls into illicit behavior, planning terrorist plots and criminal activity. And the phone company has been making a profit by turning a blind eye to this for years!

I demand immediately that the phone company put filters in place to filter out any illegal or immoral conversation. Write your local politician today!

Re:Even more shocking news...

[adzoox]

This is true to a degree ...

The thing about phone conversations is that - they are for the most part unadvertised or underground.

You're right it goes around, but the general child doesn't just out of the blue get a call from a pedophile - while the average child 7 and older DOES surf the web and CAN stumble on the type of garbage that yahoo has become a haven for - quite easily!

Re:This is really too bad,

[0racle]

There was a typo in your secret message, I'm not sure what to do.

Re:hysteria

[whitis]

Anyone notice how this happened right after they found that guy in California with names of 36,000 (not a typo) boys in notebooks?

Apparently journalists aren't very good at math. The man was 63 years old. If he started at 12 years old, that is 41 years. Subtract the 12 years he was in jail and you get 29 years, that is 1241 incidents a year or 3.4 incidents per day. Yes, the guy appears to have really molested kids and been arrested about 9 times. But 36000? It is physically possible but doing it without being arreseted more often than he was is another matter. That is 4000 incidents per arrest. Even Michael Jackson couldn't do that and he built an amusement park for kids. Even if his journals are real, they probably record more fantasies than reality. Or someone planted fake notebooks on a random repeat offender so they could pass repressive laws. This happened just three days after Jackson (who was distracting the media from news about important stories like the Downing Street Memo ) was acquited.

New moderation categories

[whitis]

Possible new Slashdot moderation categories:

• -1, In soviet Russia...
• -1, 1,2,3, Profit
• -1, All your base
• -1, First Post!
• -1, GNAA

Re:New moderation categories

[Travelsonic]

What about -1, frot pst/P>?

Finally

[THEUBERGEEK]

Yahoo is doing SOMETHING about all the garbage in those chat rooms. I have never been able to go into yahoo chats without being inundated by porn bots and other filth. Now id they would just find a way to end the bots life could be better

Re:In Societ Russia

[DrMrLordX]

You just got on my friends list. Should you be proud of that? Interesting question.

Subjective Moderation

[lullabud]

The problem with moderation is that if you let users create moderated rooms there has to be a hierarchy of authority, and that is coming from the perspective of the mod. Assuming the room creator is the mod, he's not going to kick anybody out of his chat room except people who find it offensive and complain about it. Assuming it's people that Y! pays or allows to moderate, I don't think the situation would be much different from how it is now that the rooms are shut down, except they probably would've only shut down the questionable ones. With an objective mod system it would be more like AOL's TOS violation reporting. However, maybe they could adopt something like what /. has where moderators get meta-moderated. Again though, it goes back to an objective measure of what is acceptable and what is not, but that could be difficult in a situation where creating a chat room happens instantaneously, rather than waiting to be approved by an editor like around here. Now I'm having flashbacks to AOL.. bah.

As for Y!'s chat room service in general, I never thought it was that great, but probably the best use I ever saw of it was people using the audio-chat to take turns DJing their favorite music to the room.

Re:hysteria

[adzoox]

It was a record with 36,000 entries - it's not being reported as 36,000 separate kids or separate instances.

Many of the instances are repeats and are recorded as "recurring thoughts"

Some journalists have just been reporting sensationally - apparently the parent post caught one such report.

Either way - I don't care if it's 36 or 100x times that - it's maddening that this guy wasn't stopped at arrest #3.

On topic - it's maddening that Yahoo has done little to nothing to clean up their act. As the parent pointed out - if the "36,000 kid molestation accusation" brought more attention to their harboring and welcome perversity - I'm glad for it!

Re:Your Wording

[nurb432]

Bite me. The original post was just an example of the government cracking down on dissidents, which becomes a issue of 'free speech', which was on topic. ( the rambling that happened afterwards is what was beginning to stray OT )

Poor grammar and spelling? Sure, I'm guilty of that. Paying attention to either, and correcting any typos, is not worth my time or trouble in a forum such as this. You want more careful posts? Pay me for it. Otherwise, you may shut your face.

If you want to know what is REALLY disburbing, is that people like you are allowed to continue to exist. You should have been eradicated along with the rest of your kind long ag

FBI Agent fetishes

[typical]

Maybe. I just find it hard to imagine that the citd chatroom "Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys" actually has any real women, let alone girls, in it, aside from perhaps (older) hookers and female FBI agents.

"Men into FBI agents, sign in here"

Re:Shows you what $10,000 U.S. will get you

[rsynnott]

I am frightened to death by the tacit admission of most people that in America you have to bribe the government to get anything done...

Re:This is really too bad,

[rsynnott]

Well, they still haven't adequately cracked down on the KKK, have they?

Those politicians...

[tdaxp]

... are just like the Iranian mullahs. Can't handle of content flow, so they try to ban it.

If you don't like something, ignore it, turn it off, don't pay for it. But try to criminalize things you find weird? Fit for the thugs of Tehran.

-Dan tdaxp

Yahoo Chat in general.

[bmo]

So I never used Y! chat. Ever. I clicked on GAIM's chatroom option...

And within 5 minutes, I got spam.

Mein Gott. People put up with this shit?

--
BMO

Yahoo don't care about LEGAL...

[bwcbwc]

...unless it actually starts costing them money or jail time. They only pulled the plug because their advertisers started pulling the plug. Until this got notices, they were laissez-faire to the point of stupidity. Now they come down all "violation of terms of service", "have to comply with our advertisers' contracts". They're just another media conglomerate that will use as much sex as they can get away with to sell ad space. They just need to redefine what they can "get away with".

Alrighty then

[phorm]

It's a friggin ROOM NAME, not an admission of some act! Read it any way you want!

Step a) Stick an ad in the paper advertising that underage females can come to your private club for "underage girls looking for older men"

Step b) Set your watch after it gets published

step c) Wait for the cops to show up at your door

Sorry, but a lot of things can go past the point of implication. Sure you can obfuscate things or claim misinterpretation but quite often the intent is pretty obvious.

Private chat rooms OPEN but invisible

[davidwr]

Yahoo private chat rooms are NOT closed down.

I repeat, Yahoo private chat rooms are NOT closed down.

They've just been removed from the public directory, making it hard to find them. If you belong to an email list or Yahoo group, and want a chat room, go ahead and create it, and tell your friends to join any public Yahoo chat room and then type "/join YOUR GROUP NAME."

My guess: codes include legal stuff too

[davidwr]

I bet if they get him to admit what he did, they'll find the more popular codes refer to legal things, like looking, touching a boy in a legal manner, getting to know his mom, etc. etc.

Some of the codes may be merely descriptive, like "short" "tall" etc.

The cops say there are lots of duplicate entries, and that the number of unique boys is in the 3 or 4 digit range.

My guess is when all is said and done, you'll find a few dozen to a few hundred unique victims of illegal activity involving minors. He's also guilty of numerous counts of failing to register as a sex offender, illegal use of an alias, and possibly probation violations, among other crimes. Even if no child-victim comes forward, they'll be able to keep him in jail for quite some time on those charges.

Re:This is really too bad,

[sillybilly]

Kudos to me for refuting straw-man arguments. Yay!

I dunno

[davidwr]

I think someone at yahoo likes running

#/usr/local/bin/shoot --victim=self --target=foot

They keep this up and their precious advertisers will be advertising only to bots.

Oh wait, that's no different than it was last month.

Re:The REAL tragady of P2P

[colbyucb]

The law just lets them go? Check out the convictions, my friend.