Someone's working on it as we speak:
Posted on 03/12/2005 9:05:28 PM PST by holymoly
Edited on 03/12/2005 11:32:16 PM PST by Jim Robinson. [history]
America Online, Inc. has quietly updated the terms of service for its AIM instant messaging application, making several changes that is sure to raise the hackles of Internet privacy advocates.
The revamped terms of service, which apply only to users who downloaded the free AIM software on or after Feb. 5, 2004, gives AOL the right to "reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote" all content distributed across the chat network by users.
(Excerpt) Read more at eweek.com ...
AO-Hell can drop dead. Talk about Big Brother.
Still using version 4.8 here.
That's the rating I gave them about 10 years ago. This is just another outrage in a long list of outrages.
There are just so many good ways to get on the net - who needs 'em?
AOL is a joke. It's good for Shiits and giggles but other than that i would never consider aol for any kind of business needs.
Can you supply a link to the story please?
I'd be pretty damn leery about using AIM for ANYTHING AT ALL.
As a proposition for AIM customers, this is enough justification to log off and never log back on. As a proposition for AOL, this makes it harder for them to claim arms length from content. After all if you have rights to something, a certain degree of control and responsibility is implied.
Next time I see one of my kids engaged in any kind of questionable conversation with a friend, I'm suing AOL. Hey, if they own it, it's theirs.
Thanks
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
AOL - sooner or later economic Darwinism will send this buffoonery to the dustbin of bytes.
I've done my part. I canceled AOL last year and went to broadband. I'll never go back to AOL.
AOL is evil, just pure evil.
They don't call it GAYOL for nothing.
I suspect that since you are using the service, the instant message transport, the new naked before the world terms apply to you as well.
If you follow the links to the original story and its updates, you'll see that AOL claims the clause applies to postings on weblogs and discussion lists but not to user-to-user communications. I'm no friend of AOL, mind you, but their need for (nonexclusive) rights to the material posted on their sites and servers is basically legitimate as far as it goes. The terms in this clause are pretty much the same thing you agree to when you post a review on Amazon.com.
Spoken like a lawyer.
There is probably no reason for AOL's continued existance. Local ISPs can do a better job for less money and without the jaring, screw the customer schemes of America On Line.
The latest flap with the instant messages highlights their lack of an ethical base in business practices. Its a lot like what happens when communists decide to run a business. In fact, the AOL representative who tried to talk me into keeping the service identified himself as "Scha" He then spelled it for me "Che". I asked him if this wasn't just like the name of the heroic Communist Freedom Fighter and he replied that he was named after him.
Aside from privacy AOL also lacks respect for tangible property. Some time ago, I found that $99 had been subtracted from my credit card. Aol informed me that I was now a member of AOL autovantage. The claim was that I had cashed an AOL check that gave them permission to raid my credit card. In fact, I had a firm policy of never opening envelops from AOL I reported this to the FTC and soon received a call from a local police detective. It seems that the sole response of FTC is to relay such reports to the police department of the victim and to the AOL local jurisdiction in Washington, DC.
The police detective told me that he spends a great part of his day chasing down AOL credit card fraud and getting refunds for the victims. He was relieved that I had secured my own refund and said he would move on to the next person on the list. AOL avoids criminal penalties by claiming that the credit card raids are the result of accidental billings.
AOL owes its current success to mass advertising and those little discs they drop in your mail box. Around here, they even leave stacks of AOL CD/ROMs in the post office. They make challenging pistol targets but otherwise, fail to satisfy,in that they do not shatter when hit.
Did you ever hear the one about AOL stopping e-mail delivery of "The Federalist" because they criticized Ted Turner?
Oh yeah, it happened to some 27k - 32k AOL subscriber's......They never admitted it to those subscriber's either.
Nothing AOL does...should surprise.
I hang them in the garden to scare away birds.
I never understood the need for "chat" software. What, is waiting 10 seconds for an e-mail message too slow?
As implemented in Skype when using broadband on both ends, there is essentially zero delay for voice and chat text, and the voice quality is far superior to a phone line. Plus, free is a hard-to-beat price!
All that being said, I avoid using anything associated with AOHell, including chat. My chat is confined to very limited, specific circumstances and my ID is unpublished; the last thing I want to do is get tied down in chat mode with anyone who happens to come along.
Does that also exclude Yahoo and MSN messaging software? I don't use either one for business purposes, mainly because "MichiganStud" isn't really conducive to the contracts and corporate work I do.
"The Cone of Silence" (Maxwell Smart)
I don't understand the question.
How does this effect someone using Apple's iChat?
Anyone still using AOL should get a real ISP.
Shouldn't be too hard. The fundamental problem with a service like AOL's IM is that the IM server is involved all the way through the conversation. It doesn't really need to be that way, though.
Designed a different way, the IM server could simply be a rendezvous service, that allows users to register that they are on-line and to view which other users are on-line. From that point on, the individual client applications would be able to connect to other clients directly, bypassing the server entirely. The advantage from the server's point of view is that they are completely removed of the liability for archiving (and later being required to provide) content logs, because all they are doing is providing essentially a dynamic name service, not a chat service.
Once such an infrastructure were in place, it would be simple to allow clients to define different chat protocols (including encrypted chat) -- as long as the clients agree on what protocol to use, the applications can chat. The only requirement to use the IM network would be to support the server's protocol to advertise your presence and to view the presence of others on the network.
While most emails arrive nearly instantaneously, I beleive the service time guarantee for email is on the order of 2-3 days. IM is more approrpriate for shoter, more interactive messaging.
Good find. I searched for 3 or 4 minutes and gave up.
I was just wondering aloud whether other free "chat" software programs, like MSN or Yahoo, posed similar privacy issues as AOL. I have accounts for each but it never occured to me to use either one to discuss business matters.
While AOL claims the agreement does not include user-to-user communications, it sure seems to me that it could include user-to-user if AOL wished to do so.
A section of the controversial clause, which was first flagged by Weblogs and discussion forums, reads: "Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content.
Reference - http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1775743,00.asp
I am not comfortable with this agreement.
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