I think that the point that they were trying to make is that IRC was meant as a chatting system. And regardless of how many fileserver channels there are, it's still a chatting system.
The excessive number of file servers often deduct from the quality of the chatting experience and for many IRC'ers, who have been there for a very long time, it's somewhat irritating.
So regardless of whether or not IRC is being used for file transferring today doesn't mean that it's meant to be used as such - or that we have to facilitate it.
On a personal note, I used to get files from IRC but now Kazaa is my preferred method .. no queues and disconnects and things like that to worry about. But then, I guess it all depends on what you're looking to download.
