The National Children's Home (NCH) and National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said on Thursday that Microsoft made the right decision, regardless of its motives, because children will now be safer.
John Carr, director of the children and technology unit at the National Children's Home, told ZDNet UK that Microsoft should be congratulated because it has taken a "radical and bold step" in shutting down its chatroom services. He admitted the company's motives for doing so were not clear: "People speculate about Microsoft's motives and maybe they have a range of different motives for doing what they have done, but all I can see is from the child-protection perspective," he said.
According to Carr, reducing the number of chatrooms in the UK will, without doubt, reduce the number of kids using chat services.
"I think some kids will stop using chatrooms altogether -- partly because of the bad publicity they have had and partly because kids are more used to the Internet and realise what a load of rubbish a lot of chatrooms are," he said.
Carr's comments come after Lycos and Freeserve attacked Microsoft's decision to close its chat services, labelling the company "irresponsible" and "reckless". Alex Kovach, managing director of Lycos UK, said on Wednesday that chat is here to stay and will not go away when MSN pulls the plug. "It is more important to provide a responsible service, otherwise chat will get driven underground and the risks will increase," he said.
Carr disagrees. "If a company realises it cannot run a service that is safe for children, it would be strange logic to keep it running simply because other chat service providers didn't see the world in the same way as you," he said.
Carr said that chatrooms are generally in decline because they are part of the "old anarchic Internet", and kids are moving to technologies such as instant messaging. "The old Internet is dying. Children are shifting away from chatrooms to IM systems, because there you are talking to your mates, not a load of weirdos," he said.
The NSPCC, which works closely with the NCH, told ZDNet UK that it is in complete agreement with Carr's comments.
Critics also accused Microsoft of primarily wishing to drive chat activity to its MSN Messenger instant-messaging service, something Microsoft mentioned in its announcement. Unlike chatrooms, instant-messaging applications are proprietary and are controlled by the software provider. Yahoo and AOL make two of the most popular MSN Messenger rivals.
Talkback
Are we going to stop e-mail because very often (specially in the free Hotmail from Microsoft MSN) you get spam and porn on it?
Should we stop search engines because you can get a huge number of pages with content which could be not good for children?
And actually, why not shot down the whole Internet? A curfew at 10 pm for young children as they do in France?
Let's face it: the paedophiles have won yesterday on war...They managed to shut down a service use by millions but disturbed by a tiny disgusting minority...And don't you find funny that MSN kept the USA chatrooms, in a paid basis? Is the end for free chat rooms, but nothing changes if you pay...A bit like these sex swingers of high society people in London....
I found the whole lot the biggest cynical act on the Net in years...And another thing: MSn is a part of the Internet, NOT the whole internet....
In 7 years using the Net, I have use chat rooms sometimes, but actually never in MSN.
MSN did stop too their free pages a few years ago, as they were unable to properly monitor their contents...Yahoo and AOL, their main concurrents did carry on succesfully offering free pages and they will, I am sure, will carry on offering free chat...
As for the old anarchic Internet, many of us like it, and dislike with disgust the "new" (?) commercial .net stuff not for children Net.
The Internet can be fantastic to educate kids, and closing down services will not stop this: kids are kids and they need to learn, and obey their parents...It's not Microsoft or AOL or any company who must monitor young children, is their parents and teachers...Many parents are far too happy to keep their kids in front of the screen computers, as long as they keep quiet...
If we apply the Microsoft philosophy, we should close pubs to fight alcoholism. We should stop the sell of cigarrettes. We should stop selling food to avoid obesity.
And perhaps we should show our credit card to ask if we can breathe...
It's unbelivable that Microssoft, whose number one and two are in top 5 fortunes, with a revenue close to 100 Billion dollars, can not simply reduce the number of chat rooms available in their services (instead to allow anyone to start one) and put paid people to monitor the whole thing.
Microsoft people have become blind with their thirst of money: the moe they make, the more they think they are the only ones to do something on the computing world, and worst, the more they win, the more they want to win even more.
The real obscenity if that someone could have so much money (cf Bill gates) that he could run several contries on his own, and still have a large amount for himself...
And the NSPCC has Microsoft as one of the main people giving them money, so no wonder they approve what Microsoft does...
Even that way, by giving huge amounts to "selected" charities Microsoft has become a real third power, with a main difference with the rest: they are not elected people, they simply are rich...Too rich indeed...
Anyway, I am sure my words won't be published as I am very poor myself, and who gives a dam of my opinion...
Should I add that I think that we should apply death penalty for peadophiles, which would be much more efficient than close the chat rooms? 99.9% of chatrooms users are not paedophiles, why should we allow those perverts to stop this.
What about disabled people whose main social activity is chatting on line?People with sensor impairment or illnesses like that have on chat rooms the only way to express themselves to the world...Chat allows them to get a new identity, one in which they are equal to the other people in the chat rooms...
It's the permissivity in our decadent societies which has made our kids aware of too much too young, which is the source of all this problems....
In UK girls as young as 12 get pregnant, and this should not be...It's teachers, parents and politicians who are responsible, and nothing to do with chatrooms, or indeed
As an observer of the growth of the chatroom phenomenom it does rather seem that Microsoft is reacting on the basis that its services COULD be used as a channel for people to entice children into danger. It is of course a high profile stunt which is about as appropriate as banning cars because they kill people sometimes! Their main motivation is that they dont want to spend money monitoring a free service and so will set up subscription services instead! I would have thought the Microsoft corporation was making enough money out of all of us to spend a little in this direction!
However shocking this may sound to readers children are sexual sometimes and yes of course they engage in chats on the internet which many parents would disaprove of. As a parent I always took a responsible interest in what my children did on line ( I monitored for any real dangers) but I never made any attempt to censor them because I recognised it as the same playground talk that I used to have as a child - I was confident in them that they would not go off and meet a stranger and even the offical reports on chat rooms admits that this rarely happens. One of my concerns is that their activities will switch to even less monitored environments like the mobile phone. I have observed in adult chat rooms that there are a great many younger people who lie about their age to be able to chat with older more experienced people out of choice. I have no idea whether that is a good or bad thing but what I do know is that they will still seek and make contact with older people, maybe in less safe environments. Of course the rather inapropriately named "grooming" for real meets is not something I would wish to see growing but on the other hand many young people need a safe environment where they can express and explore the sexual feelings that many parents refuse to believe they can have. I would guess that many young teenagers engage in this kind of on line chat as an alternative to actually doing things they are not quite ready for in the real world.
However for older teenagers, and up into adulthood, the internet has provided a means of making friends - particularly as it removes many of the barriers that hit at peoples self-confidence in the real world - looks weight etc. I have seen people coming out of their shells this way - particularly young gay people who are wanting to test their sexuality in a less exposed environment.
Which one of us, if we believed we were gay for example, would want to open the discussion with our parents or people that we know?
Chat rooms are just another playground with all the risks and dangers present in any playground. If we seek to protect our children from all danger at any price soon there will be no playgrounds. Learning about risks and dealing with them are an important lesson in growing up and without these lessons they will be poorly equipped to deal with the people they meet in adult life.
I am 18 and have been chating on the net since i was about 15. I have a few things to say about takeing off the CHAT. Frist of all i would like to say, were is the parents? arnt they waching what there children are doing on the net? I mean come on its not all the MSN its the parents thats doing this to kids. my mom put a block on chat sits she did not like and untill i was 17 i had to tell her that i was on the net and y. and then she would cheek up on me.
the other thing i would like to say is this. kids are not going to stop just b/c you tell them to. they will go on CHATing no mater what you do. there will be othere sits that have chat rooms in it. and children will not stop b/c they are used to the net. the kids get on the net because they have nothing eles to do, have low self of steem, or want sex. i know this vary well and i have desided that when i have kids i will wach what they do on the net. i would like to thank you for lissoning to me
Marlana