Read a nice case by Mark Rasch on Securityfocus.com, where a police man seemed to have offended the law when he was investing something over the chat program and he did the 'cut, copy and paste' act, just becuase he did not take the consent of the opposite person chatting to him. I somewhat agree to the privacy laws, but then which criminal will give you consent about storing the conversation you had it him/her and producing it in the court later??
Also, most of the chat programs do come with a logging option, should some blurb be added to it so when anybody install or logs in a chat room, they are made aware that what they type might be recorded or stored somewhere, so investigators and others can take the benefit of it. This might reduce quite a bit of nuisance on the chat room atleast but I can see the other side too. People will try black mailing other people and they can use this informatin and data to harm somebody or somebody's reputation, a online chat joke can ruin their lifes or can get sued for millions of dollars.
This leaves me to think on this issue a bit more further, legally and ethically.
Tejas Patel