Welcome to the obvious.

Sitting of a given IRC network and going to the most populated channels is like sitting with a birds eye view of the back end of any given club in any given city, with all the elements. You will see all the shady entering, leaving, and doing of its thing. That place is one of connivence. Be sure there is either ignorance, or several cloaks, between its true participants and yourself. You may be the ignorant. If you cannot mirror the experience to the real world, hang out with me for awhile and I'll open your eyes with a pair of pliers.

Is this a good thing? In a place where freedom, law, and order all exist in concert, it is a fact of life. Be sure everything said is monitored and logged fifteen different ways by thirty different parties sharing resources. Welcome to what is called by some, the game.

Play your cards at your own risk.

In my case, I don't have any issues, content, or ideas I'm not willing to express in any forum, including that of my own creation. I find it an amusing sideline to the net culture I have grown up in and decided to uphold over the years. I would rather have something happen in the open then behind the closed doors of crypto and inaccessibility. There are many other options then the current, available given the need to further develop them out of theory. The reasoning for keeping it the way it is, is simple, but challenging to explain. Those who pursue the transgressors of the law are more likely to understand then the followers of the angry hurt mob, as the irony goes. The exceptions lie at the far upper and disconnected end, such as Tenet.

IRC is a protocol; a protocol used to create a multi faceted forum. A forum can be used in a number of ways. As any open forum, the uses of any given IRC network are up to the users of that network. It goes the way it is permitted go, like a growing and living organism. The author of this article holds up Freenode as a "good" use, and I agree (and hold an open connection to it most of the time). As I agree that "ErisFree" has more to do with the evils of lame management then the presence of malevolence.

Barlow in his Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace spoke of nations in the infinite space created by the Internet. If in terms of community and governmental structure on the Internet, if there exists a clear example of this, it lies in IRC. For better or for worse. Create an open space, and those who wish to have a space will inhabit it.

When any issue of illegal activity on IRC networks comes up, it should be viewed through this lens. If there is a point of scale that does occur, it is within a scope based upon limitations and allowances protocol. I hope that is understood, at least by the inteligencia, digirati, or whatever we wish to call it.

Defend IRC. Defend IRC networks. Defend the points of abstraction on the network which are open and free. These are the nascent market of ideas.

What you see when you view a community within a given space created by a protocol, is a mirror of what people expect out of the space created by the uses the protocol enables. This is the same situation created by a system such as MemeStreams. We do not have a crime problem here, but we could. Dare I say the word "torrent" in a threat filled world for the free exchange of information?

Free is a tough word. Freedom of information versus free beer is an old cliche of an old argument, but still a fresh problem. Any place it can rear its threatening head is a place of contention; a place we hope a solution can grow, or at best a market. When you view IRC, that is the lens you must look through. It is out of focus, like all points of significance, given time.