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Monthly Archives: February 2005

GamesNET releases Partial Evidence from Domain Dispute

You might recall the domain dispute that took place between Donald Wasylyna, and the at that time GamesNET Board of Directors which we reported on. The case finally resulted in a settlement between the two parties on February the 4th of 2004. Part of the settlement is an agreement to remain silent over the outcome of the case from both sides.

The 15th of this month however, Donald Wasylyna, who regained the domain GamesNET.net as part of the settlement, published part of the evidence on the GamesNET website. Wasylyna explains that he was only able to gain access to the evidence over Federal court-orders. “This process is painfully slow and very expensive”, he wrote on the GamesNET website.

The document does not contain any evidence from Wasylyna himself, as that was left out prior to publication. “I will likely publish all of the civil and criminal evidence as time permits”, Wasylyna said on the website.

“CHL (CoolHandLuke, nick of Wasylyna, ed.) was extremely selective in what he assembled to post on his web site” said Entrope, admin on GameSurge. Entrope was one of the defendants in the domain name dispute. “I do not recall the exact numbers, but he produced somewhere around 2000 pages of documents, and we produced about 3000 pages.”

“I provided only highlights which seem most pertinent regarding criminal activity”, Wasylyna explained to IRC-Junkie in a reaction. “I will likely publish more as time permits.”

Wasylyna also explains his decision to release these documents: “It is my goal to provide awareness to the significant problem of identity theft, the failings of ICANN, and how both make domain theft a simple task.”

“We believe his motivations in releasing the documents are simply to defame us (the defendants, ed.) and GameSurge” Entrope continues. “His IRC network is not going anywhere, so he wants to diminish what we have done. [...] I believe that if  CHL had talked to a lawyer, any lawyer would have told him several reasons that such a post might land CHL back in court.”

GameSurge is currently listed as 5th largest IRC network on the IRC statistics site NetSplit.de, GamesNET can currently not be found back in the top 25, and was yesterday at position 214 with around 450 users.

Wasylyna explains: “Launching (or relaunching in my case) an IRC network is much different than it was in 1996.  Back then, GamesNET was the only IRC network dedicated solely to Internet-based gaming.  In addition, DDOS and botnets were non-existent.  It seems best to wait for the criminal charges to come before I re-contact my friends in the gaming and ISP industries.  I’ve been told a he-said she-said scenario would likely motivate them to become permanently disinterested in my endeavors.”

QuakeNet's Support Channel introduces Ticketing system

“We are currently trialling a new system for user support in #feds”, meeb announced on the QuakeNet website.

During the test period, users requiring assistance will need to join #help, and explain their problem there. The #help staff will then supply a ticket for #feds, if an oper is required to solve the problem. During this testing period, #feds will be an invite only channel. With that ticket you can invite yourself during a 2 day time period into #feds.

We asked Magpie how the invitation works, and if nick changes or disconnects will affect your invitation period. “Tickets are associated with a Q account, so if you reconnect all you need do is reauth to Q and you will be able to use your ticket (provided it has not expired) to invite yourself into #feds.”

One of the first reasons you might think off to introduce such a system might be to protect #feds against join floods. “Flood attacks were not really a problem before, due to channel modes that allow only authed (with Q) users to join, although they are essentially impossible now”, Magpie replies. “… it removes a lot of the load from #feds, allowing the IRC operators present to focus their time on users really needing help. The ticketing system allows users to be vetted before being given a ticket, to ensure that time that could be spent helping legitimate users is not wasted.”

Although a few bugs had to be ironed out already, Magpie is pretty confident this system will see improvements for both users and help staff. “The fact operators will have more time to concentrate on users with real problems should mean #feds staff, and especially users, will be very satisfied with the new system. Should the trial prove successful – and I imagine it will – the system will become permanent” Magpie concludes.

EFNet introduces Global Glines

EFNet is going to implement global glines. Previously, glines were only required on the European section of this network.

The vote, called for by Hardy, calls for glines with duration times from not less then 6 hours, to a maximum of 7 days.

“If the vote is approved, all servers will be required to activate glines within a 14 day period”, the vote explains. “Failure to comply will result in the server(s) being removed from the network.”

The glines were accepted with 10 no, and 18 yes votes.

Cookie.*'s delink draining Sorcery?

Word got to IRC-Junkie about the delink one of the last 2 client servers on Sorcery. This leaves the network now with 1 client server, 1 backup server and services, all being run from the same location.

Cookie.*’s admin announced the delink himself: “As of March 1, 2005, cookie.sorcery.net will be delinking. I’ve had a good time the 5 years I’ve been here. I’ve watched the network grow from a small one of about 12 users to a large one (in my estimation) or 5000 users. [...] I know that I am not able to add the value that this network needs, and ‘m finding my attention drifting to other pursuits, so a graceful goodbye is in order, I believe.”

We asked Sorcery’s network admin Onno if running the entire nework form basically one machine can seriously affect the stability: “The obvious problem is the single point of failure. However, this has always been the case for our services and mailing lists as it’s hard to make these things redundant. This means the only real difference is the number of client servers.”

“If we’ll end up with one client server, we’ll have less netsplits than before ;-) , but in case of an outage of this one server the entire network will be down. Fortunately, this server’s connection is pretty reliable and I don’t forsee any problems with it. More importantly, I don’t think we’ll get down to one server, so it’s a moot point.”

An application for a new client server last week was rejected 1-1. Onno however told IRC-Junkie that a number of applications for client servers have been received, of which one might be up and running beofre Cookie.* delinks.

During the period this article was forming Ryan, admin on DarkMyst, contacted IRC-Junkie; “The other day DarkMyst had quite a jump in registrations, apparently cookie.* plans to delink as of March 31, apparently many of the users intend on relocating to DarkMyst. Which means that, unless SorceryNet magically produces additional servers, the entire network will be operating on a single point-of-failure, and one has that proven to be unstable over the course of the past few months”

“A lot of ex-SorceryNet servers and staff have relocated to DarkMyst because of our level of stability. The users are following them. Not only server stability, but also administrative stability. There aren’t the fights or politics that have existed on SorceryNet”, Ryan continues.

Ryan additionally said to have been invited into a channel with channel managers on Sorcery to discuss moving networks. “Their intention was to move as a group, since so many roleplayers play in different channels.”

When confronting Onno with the above, he replied: “for some reason they tend to see us as their big competitor that needs taking down, and think they have to interfere with everything we do. (behing our backs, preferably).”

“We don’t understand why there has to be any hostility between different networks, and we’re definitely not joining them in their attempt to spread rumours about the other and get as many users as possible to move over. To us, DarkMyst is just another network and therefore not relevant. It’s our own network we have to keep running, not theirs or anyone else’s.

They weren’t relevant in any of this either, no matter how badly they want to. :-) ”

More loss for Undernet's Channel Service

Hard times for Undernet’s CService with the loss of a second member this year.

“Tuesday night, our good friend and Channel Service Admin, skewll aka Tonie left us. She was suffering from a serious pneumonia but as we knew, she was improving”, ColdAs1ce announced yesterday on the Undernet website.

A thread has been opened on the Undernet forum for those who like to express their feelings.