So it appears these efnext people are letting the administrator control freak method to "fix" problems. (The tendency to impose more authentication, more logging, more central control -- instead of fixing broken protocols -- the easy way out because it's simpler to implement, though politically and technically broken). Clearly they are making a mistake. What could be done to persuade them or educate them that endeavour is bad for net privacy? Some possible technical / social engineering backlashes: - someone will create some abuse that causes the central administrators and thought police to become legally liable. Perhaps even designer abuse -- "abuse" anonymously created for the effect it will have on the operators. (Where's Dimitri Vulis when we need him?) - they are probably dumb and have done a bad job of making their changes -- their new centralised controls will get hacked, and their network will prove even more susceptible to catastrophic DoS than the original ircd. - people aren't really trying hard to disrupt IRC -- there are doubtless many much more malicious and harder to stop ways to disrupt it. People might demonstrate some of these attacks on their central failure points. Adam