So Microsoft's closing down their free chat rooms, ostensibly to "protect the chilllllldren."
Well, pardon my cynicism, but I think it's rather a matter of Microsoft looking out for its bottom line (not, as an unrepentant capitalist myself, that there's anything wrong with that).
They've got to be running that service at a loss, and saw the opportunity to roll it into a subscription package as the only way to make money at it. (They certainly won't be getting mine -- my opinion of chat is the same as Dave Barry's: "Citizen's Band radio with lousy typing.")
Then too, their lawyers are probably starting to get concerned about possible liability. Ten years ago this might have seemed paranoid -- the courts have consistently ruled that ISPs, bulletin boards, etc., qualify as "common carriers," with pretty much unlimited immunity from civil or criminal consequences.
People plan and carry out crimes using the phone system all the time, but no one expects telephone companies to be held responsible for that. Nor are they required to monitor every call on the chance that someone, somewhere, is conducting illegal activities.
Somehow it's all different when it comes to the scary scary Internet, though, and in a legal climate that countenances the raping of legitimate businesses (see tobacco, asbestos, firearms; and soon at your local courthouse, fast food), Microsoft's lawyers are just being prudent.