The Internet's Wilder Side
Seth Schiesel,
New York Times,
May 06, 2004
Inter-Relay Chat, or IRC, is one of the internet's older services. At any given time, according to this article, about 500,000 people may be using it to exchange ideas or, in some cases, software, MP3s and video files. The author captures the free-for-all spirit of IRC effectively, but although he notes that it can't be stopped, the story contains overtones that suggest it should be. That might not be so easy, though. As the diagram in the right column illustrates, IRC is a distributed network of connected servers and free-floating channels. Via Corante.
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