Questionable Data Mining Concerns IRC Community 306
jessekeys writes "Two days ago an article on TechCrunch about IRSeeK revealed to the community that a service logs conversations of public IRC channels and put them into a public searchable database.
What is especially shocking for the community is that the logging bots are very hard to identify. They have human-like nicks, connect via anonymous Tor nodes and authenticate as mIRC clients. IRSeeK never asked for permission and violates the privacy terms of networks and users. A lot of chatters were deeply disturbed finding themselves on the search engine in logs which could date back to 2005.
As a result, Freenode, the largest FOSS IRC network in existence, immediately banned all tor connections while the community gathered and set up a public wiki page to share knowledge and news about IRSeeK. The demands are clear: remove all existing logs and stop covert operations in our channels and networks.
Right now, the IRSeeK search is unavailable as there are talks talking place with Freenode Staff."
IRC is still alive? (Score:2, Interesting)
And no, I'm not trolling, i was there in the beginning, but watched it degenerate into a virtual cesspool years ago, and got out before it hit rock bottom. Has it improved?
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Interesting)
just like DejaNews (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm actually all for the principle that if you put it on the web or in a chat or on the public airwaves, people should be able to copy it, archive it, and redistribute it. However, such a principle needs to be formulated and enforced uniformly; it simply isn't right for some groups to get away with ignoring copyright and others to get charged with copyright infringement.
why are people so lunkheaded? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:IRC is still alive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and I think that as far as networks go -rizon.net and quakenet (just to cite to examples off the top of my head) have done very well for themselves. I'm sure if I paid attention to IRC I could rattle off more networks.
IRC isn't dying any more than BSD is dying -less so, probably.
Re:why are people so lunkheaded? (Score:3, Interesting)
Easy Cure (Score:2, Interesting)
I mean--I hate to advocate flagrant abuse of copyright--but when their idea of "unobtrusive" basically means getting tor banned, lying about their client, and polymorphic usernames to wholly disguise the presence of a logger--pretty much anything you do to undermine them becomes fair game.
I for one used freenode (in particular) under the impression that I would be logged--but only by private, noncommercial parties who would likely only publish limited portions for clarification. This isn't about legal rights--freenode makes it clear that they don't restrict logging--it's pretty much inevitable with a decent client. But I at least would like to know when I'm being logged for commercial purposes. If they can't at least behave respectfully in this regard, I see no reason to grant them the courtesy of prior notice when they infringe a registered copyright--I'm not required to do that by law either. Decent people would give notice of course...
They've already published a clarification on their site http://www.irseek.com/blog/?p=3 [irseek.com] . But What I want to know is--why lie about their client, and masking their origin through tor nodes? What non-malevolent purpose could that possibly have had? Their whole bit about being "unobtrusive" is a load of BS--an extra name in the channel that I can mask on, particularly with the name BOT in it works fine in every other channel.
Until they can justify their past subversive behavior--any future behavior loses the benefit of doubt with respect to intent. In any channels I run, they're now expressly banned in the topic line.