Questionable Data Mining Concerns IRC Community

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?

[nurb432]

IRC is pretty much a shadow of its-self from the good old days of perhaps 10 years ago. Does anyone really even bother with it now? Between the scams/spam/abuse, why bother?

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:IRC is still alive?

[epiphani]

IRC has always been about social groups. If you have one (or more), then its still good.

I think DALnet has done quite well handling abuse. We've switched our infrastructure over to an anycast model that seems to have made us fairly resilient to DOS attacks, and we have made major progress in dealing with drones and abusing bots.

Re:IRC is still alive?

[kestasjk]

Freenode is also a good place to get help with various problems, and you do get a sense of community in most channels.

Back on topic; I already knew about this, and don't see what the big deal is. I often run into chat logs while googling, sometimes they have useful info. Does anyone really consider a public IRC channel to be a private place?
A lot of the things I've said on /. since 2005 I would probably cringe if I reread it, but if you don't want it to be public don't say it in public.

Re:IRC is still alive?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you don't want it to be public don't say it in public.

This attitude is widespread, but very problematic, because it is a departure from long standing social norms and communication modes: A free society has a need for public communication which isn't set in stone. If your only options are to keep something private or have it recorded for all eternity that you said it (and when, where, to whom), many important things will not be spoken publicly. It's not so much a problem of privacy or no privacy: A public channel is not private. It's a matter of forgetting the mundane, so that people need not worry about having their every public move inspected and reevaluated later on. The grace of oblivion is not implemented in our information systems. This lack robs us of our chance to change or start anew, and that stifles public discourse. Again, it's not so much the expectation of privacy which is violated by these archives, it's the perceived transient nature of IRC (and Usenet before DejaNews.)

Re:

[account_deleted]

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Re:

[Penguinisto]

But when Clinton did it, how many of the millions overlooked their own infidelities and called for his impeachment?

Point of order... Clinton was impeached nor for getting a blow-job by his intern (or even making her play the Human Humidor). He was impeached for lying under oath (a.k.a. committing Perjury). If you or I were to have done so to cover our asses as defendants in a civil lawsuit, we'd go straight to PIMTA prison for it. Remember, Clinton was a defendant in a sexual harassment lawsuit, and sex in the office was relevant to the whole deal (now whether it was justified or not isn't the deal - fact is he was t

Re:

[TubeSteak]

I think DALnet has done quite well handling abuse. We've switched our infrastructure over to an anycast model that seems to have made us fairly resilient to DOS attacks, and we have made major progress in dealing with drones and abusing bots.

I imagine it helps that you guys kicked all the xdcc channels out a few years ago.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:

[vertinox]

Has it improved?

I hardly use it that much, but when I do I don't use non-effnet servers but the smaller private networks that require authentification.

Re:IRC is still alive?

[Minupla]

Strangely enough I made the same decision in about 93, so I'd say 15 years ago is when it went downhill (I remember +channels, before #channels!). I'm not sure if there's not a formula related to number of years out of college you are as to when 'IRC went downhill' :)

Min

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[account_deleted]

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Re:

[rhizome]

IRC is pretty much a shadow of its-self from the good old days of perhaps 10 years ago. Does anyone really even bother with it now?

Some people say that all history is a shadow, so in a way aren't you saying that anything that existed in the past can be compared negatively to its "good old days?" I think in a different social circle this might be called "old-timer's disease." IRC is just as good as it's ever been in my 15 years of using it, but I don't use it for social purposes so my experience may be diffe

Ensuring the Privacy of Internet Communication

[reporter]

There are two types of communication on the Internet. One is broadcast communication. In it, a user sends a message to a medium, and the general public can access the medium. Examples include the SlashDot forum and a channel on IRC. A user of such media should assume that whatever she writes is readily available to the FBI, NSA, etc.

The second type of communication is peer-to-peer. A user sends a message to a specific user. Examples include e-mail, phone communication, and the like.

Anyone can ensu

Re:

[Achromatic1978]

If I've had a channel with my buds for years then I probably had a right to be surprised when the complete logs of our discussions appeared in a database somewhere. Granted, I have no right to privacy, but still.... how underhanded is it that they did this with stealth bots pretending to be real users?

The problem is, it's not quite like that. In your case, if so, I'd find it hard to believe that you had this user idling there for years without you ever once talking to it or figuring out that it was someon

Re:

[Carewolf]

Yes, IRC is very much alive, both for Open Source collaboration, but also for (actually usefull) conference calls.

Re:

[Kjella]

IRC is as good as it ever was, in other words not that great anymore. The people might still be there, but basicly:

1. Netsplits - my primary hate object. Since IRC is adfree and without a corporate backer, the service levels are often poor to terrible.
2. No offline messages. Since there's no single backer, you can't send a message to someone that they'll get when they return.
3. Same goes for when you lose a conversation due to netsplits (you can DCC chat though, if you remember to use it).
4. No support for

Re:

[mph]

But it was designed in the 1970s and the world has moved forward a bit, and with IRC being design by commitee, IRC just hasn't kept up.

I think by "1970s" you mean 1988 [wikipedia.org], and by "commitee" you mean "a guy".

Anyway, didn't anyone learn from DejaNews? The response to this IRC transcript thing sounds exactly the same as when people on Usenet suddenly discovered that the stuff they wrote on their "ephemeral" public medium was being archived.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:

[cerberusss]

Say what you want, but the masses aren't running to IRC anymore. It's Jabber, MSN, Yahoo chat etc that are being used. Now you can answer GP with smart questions like 'it's solved at the client level' and while you are right, the point is that there is a lot more development effort aimed at the IM market.

Re:IRC is still alive?

[Alioth]

I don't agree. IRC isn't some homogenous thing that can go downhill - there are thousands of networks and maybe millions of channels - so while a particular network may have gone 'downhill', others may well have improved.

I've been using irc since about 1991. Our channel doesn't suffer from spam, bots or abuse.

Long live IRC

[br00tus]

IRC was and is a great thing. I was on IRC back when channels had plus signs instead of pound signs. I frequented a channel on EFNet of a particular clique I was in, or really a sub-culture. Many of the people from my local area I had known even before joining the channel, but I got to talk to people in that scene from around the country. When they came out here we would show them around, and when I traveled around I was often greeted warmly in a foreign city by the local group, whom I may have never ha

Re:

[Columcille]

But it's nothing like it used to be. Cesspools are everywhere. Most channels have died. Most connections are bots or idle clients. This varies from network to network but I don't know of any network that has actually grown stronger over the years, all have weakened. Freenode might be the exception just because of the amount of OSS discussions that take place there. But I know that my IRC home, Efnet, and others I visit on occasion, Undernet and Dalnet, are nothing like they used to be.

Re:IRC is still alive?

[RLiegh]

I was on IRC ten years ago too, and IMO it's stronger today than it was then -simply by virtue of the fact that it's more popular. Ten years ago it was very rare to see irc channels mentioned on people's pages; but now half the time you're reading some web comic or whatever you'll see a 'join us on # on ' message. The big names have petered out, but irc itself seems to be more pervasive than it was in 97 from a cultural point of view.

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.

What's the big deal?

[evolvearth]

Our nicks on IRC provide a level of anonymity, and we know that actual people do keep logs of us. Many of our quotes even end up on http://www.bash.org./ [www.bash.org] I go onto IRC knowing that my conversation is not necessarily private, and if I ever wanted to discuss private details of myself to someone on IRC, I could simple private message him. I could even set up a private room if I have to discuss private matters to a group of people. I don't know why I'd discuss private issues with those on IRC, but some people may for whatever reasons. It's silly to expect privacy on IRC. Never say anything in public that you don't want to come back at you. If anything, just set up a passworded channel if you're planning a violent revolution.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

I did not authorize anyone to redistribute my copyrighted material. All are in violation of law.

Re:

[KermodeBear]

I did not authorize anyone to redistribute my copyrighted material. All are in violation of law.

If your IRC text is copyrighted, then does quoting your comment in mine also count as a copyright violation?

Re:

[OrangeTide]

That's fair use.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

Oh so it's okay to pirate movies, TV shows, books, etc. because they are all publicly available? Thanks for the tip jackass.

Re:

[Columcille]

Slight difference between the two. I am annoyed by logbots and have tended to ban anything I suspected of being one. I don't like them, I don't want to see them, I want all of them gone, but they are breaking no laws. Media pirates are breaking laws.

Re:What's the big deal?

[ShieldW0lf]

Oh so it's okay to pirate movies, TV shows, books, etc. because they are all publicly available?

No, it's obligatory. If you pay for them, you're part of the system of oppression, which makes you an enemy. If you're not with us, you're against us, and a part of the Axis of Evil, and no longer subject to the bounds of common morality and ethics. People who pay for media should be caned.

Re:

[doti]

Yes, it is.

Re:What's the big deal?

[epiphani]

A level of anonymity is one thing, but given that my nickname is also linked to my real name, I'd prefer that my prospective employers can't pull up something I said in a moment of stupidity five years ago.

Many of us out there started our technical exploration on IRC. Some people get into computers and then find IRC. Some are the opposite - find IRC and then get into computers. I can credit IRC and the people on there with my entire career choice.

Re:

[pyrrhonist]

A level of anonymity is one thing, but given that my nickname is also linked to my real name, I'd prefer that my prospective employers can't pull up something I said in a moment of stupidity five years ago.

Five years from now you will regret that post, Mr. E. Pip Hani.

Re:

[Score Whore]

A level of anonymity is one thing, but given that my nickname is also linked to my real name, I'd prefer that my prospective employers can't pull up something I said in a moment of stupidity five years ago.

Sorry. That battle is lost. It was lost at least when the scammers started archiving NNTP.

Re:What's the big deal?

[A beautiful mind]

It's the difference between letting passers by see you on the street and having a 24/7 surveillance network watch you in every public moment of your life, with total search capabilities.

Re:

[Columcille]

And to clarify, the constitution protects you from the government performing unnecessary search and seizure. Granted if it is performed by a non-government entity we tend to call such things breaking and entering.

Sorta

[Moraelin]

Let me tell you my favourite "in Soviet Russia" kind of story. The story of how a handful of Party officials held some hundreds of millions of people in line.

Yes, everyone knows about Stalin's brutal mass executions and deportations. Very distasteful business, that. It also created so much resentment that it was unsustainable in the long run.

So it evolved into something more subtle: the idea that somewhere there's a dossier about you, containing a lot of the stupid things you've said in the past. You don't know exactly what or how much. (After all, they were the non-computer kind.) And you don't know when or how it will bite you in the arse later.

Maybe you can kiss any chance of traveling abroad goodbye. Maybe now your chances of promotion or of finding a better paid job, just became nil. Or maybe you're just this far from having to explain it all to the secret police and, if you're lucky, looking forward to a long career somewhere in Siberia. Or maybe it will bite your kid in the arse, if they can't get you. Etc.

In a nutshell, the idea was that you don't have an expectation of privacy. Anything you say, even nodding approvingly when comrade Piotr swears at the government at the pub, might become permanently attached to you and a factor in which way your future goes.

Worse yet, how do you know if comrade Piotr isn't an agent provocateur, trying to get you to say something you'll regret?

So people learned to think twice before opening their mouth, and avoid saying anything that might be used against them. It turned them into a mass of isolated (and thus vulnerable) individuals, because not many risked saying (or even listening to) anything that could have been the start of an organized resistance.

And now back to the topic, here's what I wonder: why the heck do we allow the same in the West, if it's done by corporate PHB's instead of the Communist Party?

The effects, way I see it, can be exactly the same: anything you ever say or do is recorded _somewhere_. Be it Google, or such recorder bots or whatever. And in an age where HR drone routinely google employees and prospective employees, it can come back to bite you in the arse.

And to get even more back on topic: even if you started a private conversation with comrade Piotr, how do you know if he's not just baiting you for something to post on Bash?

Yes, nicks are a privacy tool, but for most people it's not as unbreakable as they think. We already know that most ISPs would give away the owner of an IP address without even asking for a court order. Did you ever register that nick? Because if you did, now the IRC server has information linking that nick to an email address. If you think none can be bullied into giving it away, think twice.

Plus, are you paranoid enough to keep _all_ conversation at the level of "I'm evolvearth, you don't need to know my RL name and telephone number"? Well, kudos if you do, but most people don't. For most, online communication seems to be just an extension of RL communication. (And please don't imagine that said in a condemning tone or anything.)

So basically, all these attempts of recording everything we say or do... will they just turn us into some obedient serfs to our corporate overlords? You know, better not say anything that makes you sound like a maladjusted anarchist, because some HR drone will google you. That might be your job you're throwing away there. Better not say anything against the government too, because you don't know when your (current or future) company gets a chance at a government pork-barrel contract that requires a thorough background check. Etc.

Yes, you can password protect channels, do it all in private channels, etc, but I'd say even that might not help you much once enough people learned to just keep their mouth and fear strangers asking about certain matters.

Just some (admittedly pessimistic) stuff to think about, if you're bored enough ;)

Re:Sorta

[j0nb0y]

http://xkcd.com/137/ [xkcd.com]

Re:

[j0nb0y]

I'm not alone. There's the comic's author for one. Then there's the /. mods that modded my post up. Five is not a huge number, but it's a start.

I refuse to live in fear about what people may think about what I've done or said. I'd rather live with consequences than live in fear. Even if that means I'm first against the wall...

Best summary ever

[Moraelin]

The problem with Soviet Russia, and currently in the U.S., is that the people are afraid to say things in public for fear of losing or not gaining employment, of being arrested, and just simply being blacklisted. That is how we lose our freedoms to begin with.

Essentially, yes. You've summarized my concerns better than my verbose roundabout style ever could. Thanks.

My only question was just how much such logging bots, "do no evil" Google, etc, just move us closer to... well, slavery. "Do no evil" Google has brought a lot of good, for example, but also brought us the reality where you _will_ be googled by your potential employer, and might suffer the consequences for some dumb thing you've said in freshman year.

Sometimes the road to hell can be paved with good intentions. Sometimes the government is just one of the possible evils.

Perhaps I'm still naive since I have a year left till I even have to worry about the world of graduate school, but I hope my potential employer is reasonable enough to hire me based on my qualifications and the opinions expressed by my colleagues over my silly behavior on IRC.

1. To start with the most important part: If you're a highly qualified expert -- I fancy myself one too -- you have that option. Most people don't. Most jobs involve interchangeable peons. Noone will lose any sleep over whether they hired someone uber-qualified to operate the cash register, or just the obedient peon who doesn't rock the boat. In fact, in most cases it can be argued that hiring the latter is the _better_ thing to do.

What I'm getting to is:

A) Most people don't have that option to be defiant. So if saying the wrong thing can spell even one extra month of unemployment, they'll rather say what a potential employer wants to hear.

B) A world where only the upper 1% experts can afford to speak their mind, is a world which has lost the battle. A small inteligentsia can be bought, arrested on trumped charges, discredited, whatever. Stalin did that too.

If everyone except you is too afraid to even listen to your crusade, you've already lost. You've just become the liability to a totalitarian regime -- either the totalitarian government kind, or the corporate-owned kind -- and they'll find a way to render you harmless.

2. In an ideal world, every employer would be logical like you describe.

In the real world, employers are swamped in resumes, and are just dying for a reason, any reason, no matter how arbitrary or lame, to discard some. Some will just mix them discard the bottom half of the pile. Some smart and successful people argued that you should discard anyone whose email address you don't like the sound of, or whose picture looks unprofessional, or whatever. At least one corporation is using numerology. Add the numbers for each letter in your name (where A=1, B=2, etc), add the digits of the result, repeat the last step until you have a single digit. If it matches the digit for the company's name, you're eligible, if not, noone will even read your resume. At all. Several corporations use tarot. Literally. Etc.

The only thing that matters is having a repeatable criterion, and one that doesn't fall afoul of discrimination laws. So even if you're not allowed to refuse employing someone because they're black, you can safely refuse to hire them because their name sums up to 3. Or because your HR department found something they dislike when googling them.

So even for the top experts, some will realize that they increase their chances of a better job, if they just keep their mouth shut. Even if it's a slight increase, hey, every bit helps. If keeping your big mouth shut gives you even a 1% chance of landing a better paying / more stable / better quality-of-life / etc job, there will be people who'll gladly take that advantage.

For the replaceable peons I've mentioned before? Doubly so. In fact, make it 10 times so.

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd]

and we know that actual people do keep logs of us.

And you don't think that the scale is a concern? It's one thing that people keep a log, but now, even that's not necessary, just have 'bots log in.

Freenode as OSS?

[epiphani]

So what exactly makes an IRC network FOSS? Almost all the major networks have been publishing their code since their inception. Given that I've been part of the coding team for DALnet for the last seven years - and publishing Bahamut as GPL the entire time, saying that freenode is the "largest FOSS network"...

As a side note, DALnet has banned tor nodes quite a while ago, because of services abuse coming from those IP addresses.

Re:

[jargon82]

It's that the network is dedicated to supporting and promoting FOSS, not that the networks code is FOSS (although it is).

Re:

[epiphani]

Ah, thanks for the clarification (to the other posters as well).

Re:

[Compholio]

... saying that freenode is the "largest FOSS network"...

They're not talking about Freenode as being FOSS, they're talking about how the community on Freenode is mostly composed of FOSS projects. Many FOSS projects hold their meetings or make their developers available on Freenode, I know when I'm looking for help with a particular project that Freenode is the first place I go.

There is no privacy on the internet...

[rthille]

If you're posting something on the internet, you should have the expectation that everyone in the whole world may someday know it was you who wrote it.

David Brin's essay on the end of privacy is probably appropriate reading here...

But isn't anonymity a privacy right?

[Kohath]

So anonymity for individual people is a privacy right of the holiest nature, but anonymity for bots is bad because then you can't discriminate against them. Hmm.

Re:

[Sique]

As Bots are not human, they don't have human rights.

Re:

[Columcille]

My philosophy on IRC has always been an op can pretty much ban anyone for any reason. Not everyone likes that, and certain rooms have policies saying when an op can or can't ban but my general approach has always been to just ban if I think there is any reason to do so. I've been wrong at times and so the bans were lifted, but usually it turns out to be a good call. So yes, it's fine to kick lurkers off the channel because they might be bots. If they prove otherwise, sure, let them back in.

Wow...

[Blakey Rat]

The three people who still use IRC are going to be *pissed!*

(Last time I used IRC was in an attempt to get support on a particular open source software package. Worst. Support. Ever. In a room with 50+ connected people, seemingly every single one was AFK for a solid 5 minutes. Of course when someone got back, they just told me I was in the wrong IRC room to ask that question, [you know, the one in the product's documentation!] and I was stupid for not knowing it. The other 49 AFK people never said a word, so I kind of wondered why the hell they even bothered to connect. Of course, maybe they were all secret IRC logging bots, heh.)

Re:Wow...

[radarsat1]

I agree that IRC is an odd medium to get support for a piece of software, but I've personally had the exact opposite experience. I've been getting to know git [git.or.cz] lately. Seeing as it's a bit of a strange beast, I've run into a few problems occasionally due to using the wrong command or whatever. Twice, I decided to try popping onto freenode (using Pidgin) and had my answer within about 10 seconds.

That said, I personally don't really _expect_ "good support" for FOSS, I usually assume that it's up to me to figure it out, and otherwise, that mailing lists are usually the best place to look. I'd say that about 95% of the time someone else has previously had the same problem and I can get my answer through Google in a few minutes.

Sure, there are times where I have to browse through pages and pages of hits, but often it's a really special corner case, and then I decide to make a post so that my question and answer might be archived somewhere for someone else to find. Don't forget to check newsgroups! Google Groups in particular contains tons of answers.

Re:

[Blakey Rat]

It wasn't my *choice* (I didn't even have an IRC client on my computer.) The product's documentation said to go into that IRC channel for help. If IRC is the worst place to go for support, why would the documentation point me there? And assuming that IRC is the best place to go for support... well, that open source product just had really crummy support, I guess is what it comes down to either way.

For what it's worth I much, much prefer web forums to mailing lists and to IRC. I don't want to subscribe to a

Re:Wow...

[Alioth]

I was searching Google Groups in about 2002, for information on a linking problem when building Nethack (a missing library) on a rather oddball MIPS machine running Linux. The first hit that came back... ... was me, asking exactly the same question in 1992.

It was a very strange moment.
(Incidentally, no one had an answer then, either. I don't remember how I solved it then, or how I solved it in 2002, but I do remember eventually solving the problem).

Re:

[christurkel]

IRC is hit for miss these days. Some are really active, others you have to wait for hours for an answer, for anyone even to type anything. My feeling is, if your project has an IRC channel for support, there better be someone there ready to answer a question 24/7.

Re:

[Blakey Rat]

Here's the greater point, why do people even go INTO channels if they're not going to chat? There were 50+ people in the channel I was in, and only one of them typed *anything* in 5 entire minutes. If I didn't know better, I'd just assume that IRC was a buggy POS that didn't work. (Look it says 50+ people are here but I can't see what any of them are typing!)

Re:

[AdamInParadise]

Maybe because they are in a different timezone? Maybe because sometimes logging in a channel is just a way to signal your presence and that no one is chatting on this specific room anymore?
Nowadays, IRC is mostly a social forum and each well-established room as its own, sometimes peculiar, rules.

Re:

[Blakey Rat]

Maybe because they are in a different timezone?

If they're asleep, why don't they log out? Like a normal person?

Maybe because sometimes logging in a channel is just a way to signal your presence and that no one is chatting on this specific room anymore?

Then why does the room even exist? If they didn't log in and do nothing, there'd be no room, and then people like me wouldn't get confused as hell seeing a huge list of people NOT typing.

Nowadays, IRC is mostly a social forum and each well-established room as

Re:

[jargon82]

Particularly in a support environment, the stuff that happens when you are not there can be just as important as what happens when you are. I don't know if I'd call it "the norm" not to log out of irc, but it's quite common.

Re:

[Blakey Rat]

So you come to a room with a whole bunch of people and you have no way, whatsoever, of knowing who's actually there or not? And this is considered normal?

Re:

[Columcille]

Teachers experience this everyday. Classroom full of kids, only two really "there"...

But as for IRC, when I'm on IRC I always leave the client going, even if I'm not active. People can still msg me and such and I can see it later when I get back, and I can scroll back and see what I've missed on current conversations, etc. For my own use I always tend to log conversations so I can always look back at stuff, though even that practice is frowned on by some.

Re:

[Timothy Brownawell]

If they're asleep, why don't they log out? Like a normal person?

Because they're not stuck with the limitations of dialup, so there's no good *technical* reason to not stay logged in? On developers' channels at least, the scrollback buffer can be very useful to see if any issues or important discussions came up while you were away.

Re:

[junglee_iitk]

Wow indeed! I log into #gentoo and when I do, I stay online. And you ask me why? Wow indeed!

Because I am a user, not a master! I get help and I try to help. I don't know most of the things. But I occasionally look into the window if some question is asked that I know. I am there to tell what I know. When I don't know, I stay quite.

Or did you wanted someone to tell you as soon as you asked a question that "hey! I don't know. I feel sorry for your problem and it should not have happened, bla, bla?". See, it i

Re:

[Fweeky]

Many, many people idle on IRC; logging out means ^A-d in screen or disconnecting from their bouncer, especially the geekier people you probably want to talk to. Barring network hiccups and reboots I've been connected to FreeNode pretty much 24/7 for the past 3 years. I do speak on the channels I'm on, but your chances of having me respond to your particular query (assuming I want to and know how to help you) in the space of 5 minutes are pretty slim, especially if you're on the other side of the globe fro

Re:Wow...

[AlXtreme]

Here's the greater point, why do people even go INTO channels if they're not going to chat? There were 50+ people in the channel I was in, and only one of them typed *anything* in 5 entire minutes.

Welcome, you must be new here!

Seriously, IRC is not IM. A lot of people are in multiple channels or are merely idling while they are actually doing useful stuff. You can't jump into an IRC channel and expect support on-the-spot. IRC doesn't work that way. Join, lurk a bit, if you notice some activity launch a question and don't expect an answer immediately.

I use IRC as a secondary support method (next to a mailinglist) for a project with a small following. The people who get IRC are relaxed and polite, even if they have to wait half an hour for an answer and I go out of my way to help them out. The people who don't get IRC frequently leave the channel just seconds before I help them out. C'est la vie.

Re:

[The MAZZTer]

Well you obviously don't like IRC because you've only used it for support. For those of us who use it to just chat it's fine. And guess what? We usually leave our clients connected 24/7 even when we're not there. Would you have rather joined a support channel to find it empty? Maybe they could rename #support to #peoplewhocareaboutyourproblem.

Some IRC communities are hostile towards newcomers, giving a bad impression. But if you look around enough you'll find some that are ok.

One time I joined a c

Re:

[Jugalator]

(Last time I used IRC was in an attempt to get support on a particular open source software package. Worst. Support. Ever. In a room with 50+ connected people, seemingly every single one was AFK for a solid 5 minutes.

Yes, that's MUCH worse than a commercial package with phone support! You're NEVER put on hold for 5 minutes there, I tell you! ;-)

Re:

[Blakey Rat]

It's unfortunate that I'm currently in a room with 1049 users that is currently scrolling at a mile a minute, otherwise that joke might have been funny.

No, you need a sense of humor for things to be funny. Since you took my posting so literally, it's obvious that you don't have the pre-requisites in place.

I noticed this a while ago

[Raul654]

I use #wikipedia on Freenode almost every day. Posting logs from that channel to the internet is strictly prohibited, and if we find someone doing it, we ban them. Now I tend to cycle through lots of nicks there, most of which had 0 google hits when I started using them. Now they get dozens of hits (like this one) and that's because of these logging bots that post to the internet.

Re:

[Raul654]

Whoops: like this one [google.com]

Re:

[Raul654]

Banned from the channel, yes, but not from the site.

Easy solution.

[compwizrd]

"The company says a channel is dropped when file sharing activity is detected and private conversations are not eavesdropped in anyway."

Well, that sounds like an easy fix... a few fake XDCC offer bots and they'll go away.

Violates privacy statement?

[Black Parrot]

If it violates their privacy statement, you should sue their asses off.

just like DejaNews

[m2943]

USENET used to be similar to IRC, in that it was used for casual, short-lived conversations, with expiration times for articles ranging from days to a few weeks. Post-1977, those articles should be automatically copyrighted and companies should not have a right to repurpose them from their originally intended usage. Well, that didn't stop companies like DejaNews from putting everything up on-line and making it searchable. Now, this company is doing the same thing for IRC.

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.

Re:

[Columcille]

I started using Usenet in High School with no idea that the content might be available later. Now I'm amazed at how much can be found. Just a week or so ago I dug through Google Groups looking at archives of messages I posted over a decade ago. Amazing stuff, and sort of scary in many ways. I can see the value of such archives, but I also would prefer not to have any of my old content online anymore. Like most people, my High School years would be best left forgotten. :)

why are people so lunkheaded?

[Anonymous Coward]

why is it that people on slashdot still are beating this dead horse? you should have NO expectation of privacy in a public forum. that's what public means. get over yourselves. stop acting like your rights to privacy are being trampled when you make an ass out of yourselves in public.

Re:

[kisielk]

You're right. Someone should just be allowed to follow you in public and record all your conversations in a public space on a tape recorder, transcribe them, and then post them online in a searchable database for the world to see. After all, you have no expectation of privacy in a public space, right?

"What happens online, stays online. Forever."

[Timothy Brownawell]

It seems very silly (at best) to expect "privacy" on a public communications channel, especially when probably a lot of the participants keep their own logs anyway.

Ultimatum

[illegalcortex]

Freenode's demands to IRSeeK are:

1. remove all previous logs
2. make the bots easily identifiable and on a OPT-IN basis only
3. make it easy for a channel owner to part a irseek bot from a channel should he/she change their mind
4. its heavily advertised on join of a channel that it is being logged

Additionally, Freenode wants a public apology to all their affected users.

Or?

Short of suing the company for copyright infringement (which I think would be difficult to make stick in court), I don't really see what kind of leverage they have. Basically, their demands are "go out of business", because that's what complying with their demands would mean. So why should IrSeeK comply?

Re:

[Alioth]

I don't see how making things opt-in and the bot easily identifiable is a demand to go out of business; it sounds very reasonable to me.

Some channels (particularly support types) will have use for a search bot.

It seems a bit underhanded how they disguised the bots as a human and used tor to hide the activity. Look at the web: the only search engines that try and disguise themselves and which ignore robots.txt belong to spammers. Legitimate search engines obey robots.txt and are easily identifiable by their

Information wants to be free...

[flyingfsck]

Once all information is publicly available, we won't need spy agencies anymore...

What is the complaint?

[PPH]

That IRC traffic is being logged or that it has been made available on a public database?

If its the latter, you might be able to get it (the public access) taken down based on terms of use. If its the former, good luck. You are using the Internet. You are being logged. Live with it.

This just in...

[A Guy From Ottawa]

Communicating through plain text on the internet no longer considered private.

More at eleven.

Change of heart? (IRSeeK responds)

[pongo000]

FWIW, IRSeeK seems to have had a change of heart, or at least is being receptive to privacy concerns:

http://www.irseek.com/blog/ [irseek.com]

Sounds like a genuine response of concern to me...

Will degrade the IRC experiance.

[EddyPearson]

This is just a sure fire way to cause more chans to go invite only (+i).

IRC is not automatically public

[wikinerd]

As an IRC user I dislike IRSeek's business model and practices very much. Discussions on IRC channels are by definition available only to the people who join in, and making any log available without asking is bad etiquette and in most places it is against the terms of use. If we wanted to make our discussions public, we would speak in a Web forum or USENET newsgroup, or we would use our own logging facility and post the logs on our webpages.

People who believe IRC is dead or don't appreciate it are obviously not worthy of being called nerds. IRC is alive and well, and it is very interesting and useful. Remember that there are many IRC servers across the globe and many channels in them, just as there are many USENET newsgroups. If one network or channel is touched by the Eternal September, go to another server and at some point you *will* find interesting people.

Re:

[surgen]

"How many times has someone come into a linux channel asking for help when the same question was answered 5 minutes earlier."

If that question is asked as frequently as you make it seem to be, the person asking it could have found the answer with a websearch. The fact that they didn't search the web tells you that they certainly won't use an irc search engine first either.

Re:

[Bert64]

While it may be slightly useful in "help" channels like the ones you describe, some channels already had searchable logs online years ago.
Being in a channel dedicated to help where you are fully aware a clearly identified bot is logging all your traffic to a website is one thing...
Having a third party unconnected with the operators of the channel or the network it sits on covertly monitoring channels using intentionally hidden bots is quite different.

Re:

[jargon82]

Couple things here... hiding your mask is quite possible on freenode, and can be done in a few minutes time upon request. As far as irseek on efnet, they are not using tor there as far as I've seen and not attempting to hide their hostname, either. I'd say that does point towards the use of tor being an evasion tactic rather than a hostmask hiding tactic, since they haven't attempted to hide hostmasks elsewhere.

Re:

[maxwell demon]

...that says the Bush administration is behind this somewhere.

Probably not. I strongly doubt they would put the logs on the web.

Re:

[mabhatter654]

I'd put IRC the same as having a conversation in a bar on Friday nite. You don't expect what you say to your companions to be "private" or "secret", but you don't expect the owner of the bar to bug the joint and post your recorded conversations on the internet so your wife, SO, Boss, etc can read what you said about them to somebody else. In most states audio recording of a "public space" is almost always illegal without express permission of EVERYBODY in the room because 2 seconds of a conversation record

Re:

[remahl]

A conversation is typically not copyrightable.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

It is a live performance AND a written work. Easily something copyright covers.

Re:

[Columcille]

Good luck defending something like that in court. I think you have a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the scope of copyright or the nature of conversations.

Re:

[mabhatter654]

but in most states a conversation is illegal to record unless all parties expressly allow it. The owner of a bar can't just start audio recording at all the tables if they want to...(video is OK with NO audio, and audio is allowed in "general" or at a register, but recording individuals is highly unethical and probably illegal, let alone to publish that somewhere. I don't see how IRC is any different other than it's "written" because it's typed on a computer so that may change the rules.. from an oral con

Re:

[sribe]

...but in most states a conversation is illegal to record unless all parties expressly allow it.

Not true. In most states a conversation can be recorded by any participant without the knowledge of others.

The owner of a bar can't just start audio recording at all the tables if they want to...

True, but the owner of the bar is not a participant in (most of) those conversations.

Re:If Tor is so easy to block

[lostfayth]

It's a feature.

8.4. You should hide the list of Tor relays, so people can't block the exits.

There are a few reasons we don't:

1. We can't help but make the information available, since Tor clients need to use it, so if the "blockers" want it, they can get it anyway.
2. If people want to block us, we believe that they should be allowed to do so. Obviously, we would prefer for everybody to allow Tor users to connect to them, but people have the right to decide who their services should allow connections from, and if they want to block anonymous users, they can.
3. Being blockable also has tactical advantages: it may be a persuasive response to website maintainers who feel threatened by Tor. Giving them the option may inspire them to stop and think about whether they really want to eliminate private access to their system, and if not, what other options they might have. The time they might otherwise have spent blocking Tor, they may instead spend rethinking their overall approach to privacy and anonymity.

http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#WhyBlockable [noreply.org]

Re:

[Columcille]

This is like DRM? Oh please. A public chat room means available for public chat - anyone can come in and chat. It has nothing to do with internet archives so people can go back later and see what was going on. Channels like to encourage public chat, not some loser staying up late at night to dig through old logs on the web.

Re:hmm

[shakestheclown]

What would make you more upset?

1) You walk into someone's office at work and find a list of the funniest quotes by you, that they had remembered from previous conversations.

2) You find out that they have been secretly tape recording every conversation you had with everyone at the office.

Re:

[Kadin2048]

It's DejaNews all over again.

The first thing I thought of was DejaNews, too. There was a lot of knee-jerk resistance to the idea of a universal Usenet archive when it first got going (although there have always been smaller archives of particular groups, and there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it), but now I think it'd be tough to find someone who doesn't find it occasionally useful. (Google Groups, the web-to-news system separate from the archive, on the other hand...) Many newsreaders today are even built with integrated supp

Re:

[makomk]

The thing is, all the channels that want archives - the software development channels, etc - already run their own which they control and can prune information out of that they don't want public. (In practice, I think a decent proportion of the Freenode-based channels I spend time in have some sort of official public log.) I can't see this going down well at all.