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A warning salvo

This strikes me as rather draconian:

The software giant Microsoft declared war on internet paedophiles last night by announcing the closure of its thousands of UK-based chatrooms used by millions of people.

It will also restrict access to chatroom systems around the world, allowing only identifiable, adults living in the same country to use them.

The decision is a significant precedent, the first time one of the biggest internet service providers has cut off an element of the World Wide Web in reaction to concerns over misuse.

Calls to place all internet chat rooms under strict state regulation and control cannot be far off.

14 comments to A warning salvo

  • Katherine

    “It will also restrict access to chatroom systems around the world, allowing only identifiable, adults living in the same country to use them.”

    …living in the SAME COUNTRY?…..

    Wow! Some governments must have threatened MS with dire consequences for enabling their subjects to be polluted by contact with the Other.

    I can pretty much guess who would be the “polluting” element.

    As to stomping out the Internet: good luck.

  • Dishman

    Is this part of an anti-trust settlement with the EU?

    In my mind, international communications between individuals represent one of the best hopes for the future.

  • Guy Herbert

    My guess: another case of a corporation pre-empting disadvantageous regulation and wrapping itself in moral armour to do so. A number of idiot regulators have been calling for all chat-rooms to be moderated. That would be hugely expensive and impracticable–not normally a problem for MSFT–but also create a potential liability if moderation is in some way inadequate.

    They’re frightened of falling into the same problem as the Catholic church and being blamed and sued for third-party crimes.

    Corporate vulnerability to moral panic is often as irrational as the panic itself. Yahoo has for several months denied use of chatrooms arbitrarily designated “Adult” to UK users, blithely ignoring (1) the probability that users after contact with kids would do so through childish topics, and (2) users don’t have to tell the truth about their location to the servers.

  • Chris Josephson

    Very chilling.

    I think they are trying to protect themselves from lawsuits. People are sue happy these days and MS would make a very tempting target.

  • Anonymous for business reasons

    Working closely in this area for some years, I’m pretty sure that Guy Herbert has got the nub of it: service providers like MSN are under huge pressure from the likes of John Carr in the child protection lobby, not just in public but also in closed-door meetings in the Home Office. Clearly they’ve just decided that the game isn’t worth the candle.


    John Carr, Director, Children & Technology Unit, NCH and Internet Adviser to the Children’s Charities’ Coalition for Internet Safety, said: “This is a momentous announcement and MSN should be congratulated on the leadership position it has taken. Here we have the world’s leading Internet service acknowledging that open free un-moderated chat cannot be made completely safe for consumers and children. I hope this move will give a huge boost to industry-wide efforts to achieve a safer experience for on-line users. Meanwhile I think every other chat provider in the UK is going to have to reflect on how, or indeed whether, they continue with their own open access chat services.”

    – from MSN’s own press release

    Well there you have it. “Open, free, unmoderated” chat services are just too dangerous to be allowed. Next stop, “open, free, unmoderated” web sites, swiftly followed by “open, free, unmoderated” e-mail.

    Mind you MSN (or, for that matter, AOL) isn’t fundamentally committed to the free communications infrastructure that is the Internet. If Carr et al get their way and replace the Internet with a closed network of moderated consumer entertainment and marketing information they’d only be returning to the original pre-Internet CompuServe/AOL service, and the original corporate strategy for The Microsoft Network to be an alternative to the Internet.

    John Carr Delenda Est.

  • Rob

    I don’t see how IRC (an open, distributed chat system) could ever be (successfully) regulated. Presumably all the kids that can’t get on the adult Yahoo or MSN chat rooms will use IRC. And IRC can be a pretty sleazy place. Perhaps the law of unintended consequences strikes again.

  • What is going on here is clear… MS knows that this will do nothing about the (vastly overblown) problem of pedarists on-line… the ‘action’ will just move to non-MS forums. No, this is about getting political kudos for MS by ditching a system from which MS makes no money, prior to trying for force the whole world into its ‘Trusted Computing’ framework.

  • Dale Amon

    Yep, it will drive even more people to use linux and bsd solutions where they can simply install ircd and run their own chatrooms.

    There is no rocket science involved. Any Unix computer can be set up to host chat rooms in a matter of minutes using free software. You can also get ones with encrypted connections.
    If you have a full time broadband connection, you can run your own. Even if they were to filter some things there are ways to bypass it. Hell, even a terror state like Saddam’s Iraq couldn’t stop people like Salam from getting out. Nor has the Chinese state firewall managed to stop people inside from bypassing it.

    These are very silly people. If government does step in to regulate they will run into the same problems their totalitarian buddies did. Hardly anyone will obey them even if they do make the occassional example of some kid (by taking his parents house like the RIAA wants to do for music downloads) for running a “unregulated communications channel”.

    It will also give civil libertarians of all stripes an influx of very angry man and woman power.

    Remember: Jui-Jitsu is the art of using the enemies strength to lay them out flat on the mat.

    May the light of a million chat channels burn against the darkness!

  • There seems to be more wide-eyed naivité here than I’ve expected from y’all.

    As with many of the services that MSN (and its rivals) used to offer for free, moderated chatrooms are something that have a value to consumers – and therefore can legitimately be charged for.

    But because Microsoft is an Evil Bad Corporation (TM), saying honestly “We’ve decided that it’s not economic for us to run free chatrooms. Give us a tenner” would attract derision and general negative vibes. Much better to surf on “Won’t somebody think of the children!”…

  • john b,

    That may well be closer to the the truth but it almost doesn’t matter. This will fuel the fire of those ‘concerned people’ who quite seriously and sincerely want the internet to be heavily regulated or, better still, shut down.

  • R C Dean

    I think john b hit the nail on the head. The folks at MSN (not MSFT) probably looked at these chatrooms and said “hey, these are free. We aren’t making a nickel off of them, and they are potentially a huge liability. Lets see – big liability, no income, what’s a capitalist to do?” Probably had to have a big ol’ meeting of high-powered MBAs to figure that one out.

    I have no doubt that they were whined at by various functionaries, but I wonder how much that had to do with their decision. It allowed them to take public credit for being “for the churlen”, but it was basically free for them (with a caveat mentioned below).

    Now, chopping up chatrooms may cost them some business as MSN subscribers go elsewhere to get some of that international chatroom action, but I don’t see how this has anything to do with MSFT software or linux.

    I don’t see how they touched or disabled MSFT software or browsers for this – it reads like something they did to the MSN servers.
    If you can’t install your own chat on an MSFT machine now (and I don’t know if you can or not), you will be able to soon because this will have created demand for it. The vast, vast majority of computer users do not want to abandon their familiar MSFT software to become unix, linux, or whatever geeks. Much easier to shift over to another ISP, or install your own chat channel on MSFT.

  • Tim

    Perry is, I believe, nearest the mark – trusted computing would stop the peadophiles in their tracks – as well as all of us – and MS needs all the kudos it can, to get this through – not with governments incidentally but with those people who don’t see that “trusted” in this case is spelt “treacherous”.

    As a father, I am uterly unconvinced by the peadophile “spin” and, since US chatrooms are not included in the shut down, litigation fear doesn’t seem to be the issue either.

    Money must be part of it although the direct costs of moderation, covered by a subscription fee for the US chatrooms, would seem to have made that issue addressable.

    I’m just sorry for Bill who seems to have lost his copy of the Cluetrain Manifesto – perhaps I will send him another.

  • Guy Herbert

    Pace RC Dean, nothing strategic like that moves at MSN without MSFT say-so: it has really always been a branch of marketing since first launched as a proprietary service before billg “got” the internet. But the point that it is getting people to pay for formerly free stuff on the pretext it is promoting “safety” for kids is at least plausible.

    This gem from the London Evening Standard leader approving the decision:

    “An unknown but growing number of children have been preyed upon by paedophiles who contacted them through chatrooms.”

  • Good god, ‘unknown but growing’.

    Someone needs to hit a journalist with a math textbook.

    Not that I’m surprised by innumeracy, especiailly in a journalist.