MSN is going to shut down their free unsupervised chat services. Users got confronted with “nefarious elements”. Odd how this is mentioned specifically for “Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and much of Latin America” and not the US, but ah well. The solution to the ongoing problems of spam and porn? A paid service of course.

People will have to pay to use MSN for unsupervised chat. Sure, maybe some people will be wary to do anything “nefarious” when their name and credit card number is known to MSN. But eh, folks, the point remains that it is still an unsupervised service. If all you wanted was people being careful because you have their information, you could've come up with something else. Let's see, a quick alternative:

- have people subscribe with personal information (credit card, or send them a letter with a first pin number to use). Cumbersome, yes, but free (well, people would pay for postage perhaps).

- have people pay a yearly fee for the service through credit card, paypal, bank statement, whatever, and refund this at the end of the year.

They want to stop (child) porn and spam, sure. That is why they start charging $20 to use their service. They should charge everybody who uses Outlook $20 too, because they are the ones sending out the most spam and viruses, much more nefarious than some porn message in a chat room.