IRC in the Dog House? 94
Emperor Tiberius asks: "It seems more and more dedicated server companies are turning tail to the idea of hosting IRC machines. Hosts like Rackshack are adding 'no-IRC' rules to their AUPs at the risk of having one's server unplugged. Why is IRC (the once applauded chat medium) being thrown to the dogs? Some might say the horrendous botnets written for the protocol are a part of the problem. However, if we were to shut down the IRC protocol. Isn't it theoretically possible the botnet authors would just migrate to a different protocols like Oscar/AIM, ICQ, ICB, Jabber, just to name a few? If so, how would we manage the problem? Would we shutdown all ICB servers, and cut-off the ICQ network? Are we trying to kill off the problem in the wrong way, or is there a compromise to keep IRC alive, and keep botnets away?"
I remember.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Last time I checked in, the bots had gotten more powerful, and things had taken a nasty turn where nicknames were commandeered and others who dared to use them got punished.
You want Skynet? Terminator: Rise of the Machines? Just witness how bot evolution calcified IRC.
Re:I remember.... (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Cute ChanOP that I met. (I actually met her, and she WAS cute.)
2) Being nuked by some other guy that decided he loved her.
3) War scripts (defense only, of course)
Damn, those days were fun.
Re:Warez (Score:1, Interesting)
I assume you meant that there are even more people trying to enforce copyrights on IRC. If you did not mean this, then please pardon me while I use that assumption to make a point.
Isn't it a fucked up society we live in, where keeping an eye out for children's safety from child molestors is secondary to protecting the profits of the latest pop music regurgitation? I mean really, on one hand, we have a noble and humanitarian effort to protect kids from a very real danger. On the other hand, we've got media people in what is primarily an entertainment industry (music, movies, pictures, games, plus some business software) protecting an artifically-created system of-- supposed to be temporary, now permanent --monopoly over ideas so that they can "pay" their performers in shameful fractions of the total take, if anything at all.
Bravo for our priorities.
Re:Micropayments (Score:2, Interesting)
Certainly it would be effective at reducing spam, but at what cost?
It is the choice of a server operator (not IRC op, but _root_) to start the ircd of their choice.
If they want to charge, perhaps that should be their right, but the idea of IRC has always been the free (and independant) exchange of ideas over a public network.
Most sysadmins for IRC servers do it not for the immense profit and glory of controlling
Imposing micropayments on people would (assuming it goes to the s/ops) offset their bandwidth costs, but so would simply disabling ircd.
People would just as quickly shift to aim/chats and use Aim+, bittorrent, direct connect, or one of 1000 other protocols as yet unwritten to exchange ideas.
IRC is the de-facto for exactly the opposite reason you propose: people are free to use it, run it, propogate it, or ignore it.
If an ISP chooses to not accept a server (of whatever variant type) it is because they believe (however wrongfully we may decry) it is unprofitable to do so.
IF on the other hand an OP believes it to be
Sure it aint cheap, but its a matter of values placed by the people who run the network.
When I was 12, I ran a bbs from home.
I did it because it was free (+/- 20$ for the phone line) for me, and because I could meet new people.
I didnt do it to profit, or glean great deals from my callers. No, indeed, there was little to be had.
It was simply because it amused me.
IRC networks join and leave for the same reasons: because it amuses them to do so, or no longer does so.
Thats why we become dependant on the networks, instead of upon a single irc.com. Were we bound to a single source of our connectivity, perhaps a monitary value could be placed on it.
But if it were, would we still use it?
AIM, for example: if they charged per IM, would we continue to use it? ICQ? Email?
No, were it not free, but [fairly] unmetered bandwidth still readily available, we would simply sit down, write a new RFC, and use it.
If you want to foster quality chatting, run your own server. Or have a private channel. Or all else failing, write your own protocol and client.
Re:It has nothing to do with botnets (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, a few years ago every * was chasing users running warscripts (or any script at all, because it's really hard to tell whether a script is a warscript or not) or bots, because they were causing too much net traffic. I guess today there are too many users that would have to be banned. Not that banning an IP is particularly useful...
I wonder how webchat clients contributed to the problem. I can only assume that quite a few kiddies started with an easy-to-use interface and then migrated to more powerful clients.
I'd hate it to see IRC go down, since I really like it
Re:IRC Needs Improvements-but you missed security (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely nothing without a trust relationship beyond knowing that the same key is used to log in
That alone would be useful: If someone needs to prove that they hold a private key in order to sign on with a gievn name, you dramatically reduce the risk of DDoS wars caused by people fighting over a name.
instantanious if you are insecure (Score:3, Interesting)
The effects of an attack are instantanious, but only if you are insecure to them. Back when WinNuke was the latest things my brother challanged someone to knock him off. Strange that a Mac protected by a linux firewall (which was very out of date, and insecure) isn't vulnerable to winNuke. (and that was just a 28.8 modem, should have been easy to do if an attacker had any abilities) Now a days whenever someone brags about what a leet attacker they are, we point them to the guy working at an ISP. Very hard to DoS someone with a OC-48 to his desktop...
In other words protect your systems and you will foil a lot of attacks. Most attackers are too lazy to figgure out how to attack something. That is why they are called "script kiddies" they really are kids who only know who to start a script, and if that fails they are lost.