Chat Rooms (Policy)

[Mallika Pichumani]

Elisabeth - it would be great if you could obtain a synopsis from Joel
Snyder on what is and isn't technically feasible with regard to
prohibiting chat and post it here. Banning chat is one thing, but
achieving it technically is another kettle of fish.  
Hope this won't be too huge a request - it would relieve Mr. Snyder of
being inundated with too many individual requests. I'm inclined to agree
with Chuck Bearden that a total ban on chat (particularly via telnet)  is
probably impossible to achieve. Our own dept., while not providing any IRC
clients, does not ban chat, but like most sites does impose time limits.
But the subject of chat manages to rear its head in nearly every
discussion regarding public web access. Thanks very much.

--Mallika
Montgomery County Public Libraries
Rockville, MD


On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, Elisabeth Roche wrote:

> The person to ask about this issue is Joel Snyder at http://opus1.com
> 
> He is a preeminent Internet and Telecommunications expert who has dealt
> with all these problems in detail, besides fixing up the White House
> e-mail security system and wiring the USSR (yes back when it was the
> USSR) as well as other countries and companies.
> 
> If there is a consensus on what the question is I would be happy to ask
> him, or you can e-mail him directly, go to the web site for the info.
> 
> He is a prince!
> 
> Cordially,
> 
> Elisabeth Roche Roche Internet Resources and Research Tucson, AZ
> eroche at opus1.com or eroche at sisnaaz.com
> serendipity RULES!
> 
> 
> Mallika Pichumani wrote:
> > 
> > It would be really useful to know (with all the discussion about chat
> > policy) just what measures (technical and policy-wise) sites use to ban
> > chat outright. It sounds to me that some sites do this only as a matter of
> > policy, i.e. putting up signs that say 'no chat' and some sites do this
> > technically as well (not permitting IRC clients to run etc.). It also
> > seems to depend on your environment (NT or Win95) whether you can filter
> > all chat. It seems that filtering software prohibits chat based on URLs;
> > though you can also ban the IRC ports themselves. But web-based chat is
> > still an issue - unless you disable java, there seems to be no way to
> > avoid this, unless you've got some strict firewall set up. Any ideas?
> > 
> > --Mallika
> > 
> > "The easier it is to do, the harder it is to change."
> >                           ~ Eng's Principle ~
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>