this looks very interesting. however, the review contains one error.
while IRC itself doesn't include built-in encryption, people have been
chatting via encrypted messages over IRC for, i'd guess, 10 years.
ircII has included a CAST-128 implementation or about 18 months now
and has almost always included support for an extrnal program to
provide encryption/decryption. i know of at least one windows client
that also supports the CAST-128 cipher.
but IRC should die a horrible death and hopefuly gale can do this. :-)