It would be useful for us to be able to get the IRC nicks of a user over the API for non-authenticated requests, using the https://launchpad.net/api/beta/ URL
Anyone can view the IRC nicks on a users page, without being logged into launchpad, but currently requesting a list of IRC nicks for a user with the API returns no entries in the json for "anonymous" requests, eg:
https://launchpad.net/api/beta/~tsimpson/irc_nicknames
{"total_size": 4, "start": 0, "resource_type_link": "https://launchpad.net/api/beta/#irc_id-page-resource", "entries": []}
I can see that I have 4 entries, but none are returned, using https://api.launchpad.net/beta/ (or sending my "lp" cookie in the GET request), return the entries as expected. But a seeing as the information is available to non-logged in users via the web interface, it should also be available to non-logged in users via the API.
It sounds like this field is protected by a permission that anonymous users don't have, but the website gets an un-security-proxied version of the object so it can display the information without a permission check. If anonymous users really should be able to see this information, it should be unprotected.