I also do not understand why anyone would be against this. If you said something publicly in the chatterbox, you knew it was public. Don't even start on me about 'invasion of privacy' or anything of the sort. As for anyone thinking that what they say is a fleeting comment, just blah! Here's a list of contexts your CB text might have been about:

• Simply talking: if you're just carrying on a normal conversation, then what you are saying is most likely not of too much interest and you shouldn't be ashamed/angry/happy/ (heck, you shouldn't feel any emotion) about it being recorded.
• A joke or a humourous comment: okay, so you said something funny. Why not have it around later so people can laugh about it?
• Something pissy/PMS: okay, here's one. You said something in a fit of anger, something that you probably wouldn't normally say, but your emotions overtook you and you insulted someone. You might not want this recorded, as you may think it will give you a negative reputation. Well guess what? Take responsability for the words that you speak. If you don't want your negative actions recorded, keep them to yourself.
• "I was talking about someone who wasn't logged in. I don't ever want them to see the message I just posted about them." Well guess what? If you insult people behind their backs, you deserve to be caught in the act.

Somebody mentioned that people could opt out of having their messages recorded. IMO, that just can't be done. Not only would you have to not record that person's messages, you would have to scan over every message that everybody else says to ensure those messages don't refer to the user that has opted out. If I wanted to opt out for example, you'd have to not record anything I say, as well as not recording any message that contains the word 'Coruscate'. The existance of this system is one of those 'everybody agrees on it or it doesn't get done' things. And, seeing that several monks don't like the idea, I doubt the system will ever exist.

One partial solution, of course, would be completely removing all names. That way all the messages would be anonymous. Once again however, it is quite impossible. Try removing all usernames from a CB message.