MSN is a closing down info

I heard that mircosoft is closing down msn chat in the uk does anyone have any info on this.

yeah, they are. article here. I guess they're trying to limit their liabilities if people plan something illegal in chat rooms. (well, and to make more money off of people that pay to subscribe to the chat rooms.)

When I was watching the news this morning and this item came on, they were says its more to stop the pervert's than anything, as many kids (young ones) were getting abused on-line.

Which is wrong for a start, and some had met up with these people thinking they was kids themselves, only to find that they were alot older. (the rest, as they say is history)




blackwidow




[Edited on 24-9-2003 by blackwidow666]

according to the free paper published here, the chat rooms are staying open in Aus, NZ, ....... and a few other places I cant remember now , but they will be " monitored for innapropriate content", whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.

Originally posted by MorningtonCrescent
yeah, they are. article here. I guess they're trying to limit their liabilities if people plan something illegal in chat rooms. (well, and to make more money off of people that pay to subscribe to the chat rooms.)

Good old Microcrap, taking away freedoms just like the NWO. The corruption of this world has to stop. I for one will fight with my life if/when the NWO takes over.

I am sick off all this #... Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Information has already been dramatically reduced.

The war against terrorism was created to gain control of the masses and people who think that 9/11 was 100% Al-queita related have to relook the facts.

I still stand adamantly that the US govt (AS ALWAYS) had a 50% part in the planning and execution of the terrorist attacks.

I sort of veered off topic... sorry

Interpret and Analyse before you draw a clear conclusion

Originally posted by MorningtonCrescent
yeah, they are. article here. I guess they're trying to limit their liabilities if people plan something illegal in chat rooms. (well, and to make more money off of people that pay to subscribe to the chat rooms.)

IRC (MIRC) is the place for those.. its free.. etc.. one doesnt need MSN..

I'm not a big fan of chat rooms.

In any event, what is happening as I heard it, in many countries, is the unmoderated MSN chat rooms are being closed down in the interests of protecting minors.

I understood that covered at least UK and NZ, I heard no comment on Oz.

In NZ the story was linked to a 26 year old male who had relations with a 14 year old female he became acquainted with in MSN Chat.

So microsoft closed down a chat room. Whats the Big Fu**ing deal? There are still millions of chat rooms to choose from online.

Whilst I'm all for the freedom of speech and information, I agree with these unmoderated chat rooms being taken offline.

At least until Microsoft (and whoever else runs these rooms) can address the very obvious problem of minors being preyed upon by the worst of this world.

BBC News article

Here's another link from REUTERS:

www.reuters.com...



Just the same as the others really!




blackwidow

Originally posted by UniversalFiction
At least until Microsoft (and whoever else runs these rooms) can address the very obvious problem of minors being preyed upon by the worst of this world.

BBC News article

Its not microsoft's responsibility to police the internet.

Oh and by the way. Any responsible parent would NOT allow their children to use chat rooms in the first place.

I think some are missing a key point here...

With proper parenting, this wouldn't even be an issue... I know for damn sure, that my future kids will NOT be chatting in chat rooms without me knowing about it, and what's being said. Privacy/Schmivacy, I'm more concerned with their wellfare... I know my kid isn't going to have unsupervised internet access until they are in their mid teens... They can have a computer in their room, but it won't be online... For that, they'd have to go to one in a public room of the house...

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
I'm not a big fan of chat rooms.

don't give me that. you know you love chat.

more on topic, I wonder if this will make AOL reevaluate their chat rooms. AOL's chats have long been the gold standard in internet stupidity, although they may have started moderating their chats since I was last on AOL.

it's kind of sad that MSN has to take a top-down solution to preventing stuff like that, but a lot of parents just don't seem to be aware of stuff like this. when my brother was 11, he managed to give our phone number to a wanted child molestor in an IRC chat room. (bear in mind he's now 18, so this was a looong time ago.) I don't think my parents had any concept of what chat rooms were at that point. long story short, the FBI eventually got involved, pedo man landed up back in jail, and me and my brother got banned from chatting. (my 14-year-old self was not happy with him for that. that was probably not a happy year for my brother.) I eventually reinstalled mIRC and my parents got tired of fighting with me (hell, I wasn't giving out personal info), but it did scare common sense into my brother. he hasn't been anywhere near a chat room since.

my point being, I have no idea what a parent would do to keep a determined kid away from whatever, aside from throwing away the modem. standing over their shoulder doesn't work (parents do leave the house now and again), nor does the standard Windows password protection (it wasn't that hard to break then, and it's probably no better now).

I'm surprised that no one here has mentioned the fact that Microsoft intends to make their chat services subscription-based in that users must pay for at least one of Microsoft's services in order to use it.

While this might make it easier to track down people via their credit card details, they are also making more money out of this from what was a once completely free service.

Originally posted by SimonGray
I'm surprised that no one here has mentioned the fact that Microsoft intends to make their chat services subscription-based in that users must pay for at least one of Microsoft's services in order to use it.

While this might make it easier to track down people via their credit card details, they are also making more money out of this from what was a once completely free service.

Which is scary, because it makes it look like they are "in it for the money", not the protection of minors. Surprise surprise.....I think there are much simpler ways of moderating chat rooms, and if they were doing this just to stop pervs, they would have done it a long time ago, this certainly isn't a new problem.

But I don't care because most chatrooms are full of perverts anyway, and it's quite obvious most of the time....I don't see the attraction

Am I the only one who NEVER uses chat?

Serious thinkers and pedophiles use forums.

It is rumored that M$ chat rooms are a money loser and thus they are going out in a less PR challenged fashion. Wouldn't want to leave the impression that the new philanthropic Bill Gates is profit motivated.

Originally posted by MorningtonCrescent
I have no idea what a parent would do to keep a determined kid away from whatever, aside from throwing away the modem.

Actually, Microsoft Windows have a method available to parents to set up different "user levels", keyed to passwords to grant access. There's other commercially available software that can be used by parents to restrict access to a much more specific detail than Windows can, but I can't think of any specific software titles right now.

If these parents would simply take the time to understand *how* they can keep their kids from getting into the "dangerous areas" of the 'net, then there wouldn't be problems like this in the first place.

As with any other problem or complaint of this nature, the final responsibility still falls upon the *parents*. Not only should the parents "lay down the law", so to speak, but they should also try to explain *why* they've set down the rules so that the kid understands the potential dangers & will try to actively *avoid* those dangers.


[Edited on 25-9-2003 by MidnightDStroyer]

chebob is right its all about the money!