irclover

Seriously? Is that what happened? Completely unprovoked, the government did something bad?

I kinda read that he broke the law and the government were prosecuting him for it.

IRC is battle worn. It's tried and tested. It has extensive support everywhere. It's simple to knock up a client/bot/etc in any language you want (Or using telnet).

It's still used by millions day in day out. Millions use it from websites without knowing that it's IRC under the hood.

It's unsurprising that people are defending the defacto chat protocol. Just as they'd defend email.