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Microsoft ditches chat rooms in child abuse crackdown
Concerns over child safety force shutdown...

By silicon.com

Published: Wednesday 24 September 2003

Microsoft announced Wednesday it is to shut down its internet chatroom in 28 countries, saying the forums had become a haven for peddlers of junk email and sex predators.

Geoff Sutton, European general manager of Microsoft MSN, said: "The straightforward truth of the matter is free unmoderated chat isn't safe."

On 14 October the software giant will shut down its MSN chat services in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and much of Latin America, forcing millions of messageboard users to find alternative online forums to discuss the topics of the day.

In those regions, Microsoft said, the chat was free and unsupervised, giving rise to a nefarious element that bombarded users with spam, much of which was pornographic and, in some cases, allowing paedophiles to prey on children.

The decision has triggered a heated debate among free speech advocates, children's rights groups and Microsoft rivals about the proper way to police online forums, which predate the web itself and have been critical to the internet's growth as a mass medium.

In the US, Canada and Japan, Microsoft will introduce an unsupervised chat service solely for subscribers, who are considered more accountable because their billing details and identities are on record with the company.

Sutton said: "It's a signal that some of the joyful early days of the internet have moved on a bit. Chat was one of those things that was a bit hippyish. It was free and open. But a small minority have changed that for everyone. It's very sad."

Microsoft said it would begin alerting users to the changes later this week. Users in the affected regions will still be able to chat online but must do so through Microsoft Messenger, the company's instant messaging product.