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AOL Class-Action Suit Over Pop-Up Ads
unigeek writes: "CNN --
Florida judge approves class-action lawsuit against America Online
At issue: 'Pop-up' advertisements.
A Florida judge has approved a class-action, multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the world's largest Internet service provider, America Online, on behalf of hourly subscribers who viewed so-called "pop-up" advertisements." I for one of dreamt of this day. It'll never win 'cuz you can turn them off of course, but it's pretty dang funny.
Hey, I'm going to follow this. If this is crazy enough to work, I might find a judge that would let me sue Net Zero for making me look at pop-up ads.
kwsNI
as long as people keep fighting against abuse of power by companies like AOL and Microsoft, all is not yet lost.
Finally someone makes sense! I hated Pop up ads since I first saw them on the web, they are especially annoying on the pr0n sites!
You can't handle the truth.
What I would like to see, is a lawsuit against porn sites who grab the 100 most searched words and put them in their meta tags for search engines to find. I hate when I search for something that I need, and the first 20 pages are porn sites. If I was looking for "cum guzzling sluts," I think that I would have put that in as my search, now wouldn't I?
Eh...
That is funny. Funny thing about pop up ads is how good they make banner ads look...I never really understood the philosophy behind them, it's "let's create as negative impression of our product as possible" and "if someone's browsing the web for news, logic seems to dictate that they'll want to sign up for our credit card." The credit card ads are the worst I think.
Now who will join me? ;o)
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Not only did one of us get hitched,
But now AOl is getting sued!
I'm getting a little fuzzy headed.
-----
If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
Florida judge approves class-action lawsuit against America Online [snip] It'll never win 'cuz you can turn them off of course, but it's pretty dang funny.
......
Ahh, but the attorney taking the case has also stated the following:
"That's a new thing," he said. "Our lawsuit period goes back to 1994. That wasn't the case for the five-year period we're covering."
So there's hope yet
Here's a link to a detailed Irish Times article
Pete C
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Does anyone else think that's ridiculous?
If you ask me, this whole thing sounds like a weak attempt by the people who are pissed at the unlimited rate plan. I read an article a few months ago in Wired about how the volunteers who patrol chatrooms and the such are suing AOL for back wages!! They claimed that since they don't get free hours anymore they should be paid. I guess they forgot what Volunteer means.
I hope that AOL's defense of "it is user-configurable" gets tossed - it would set a nice precedent of companies being responsible for the default configuration of their software (can we sue MS for all the virii propagated by poor Outlook configurations?).
Information wants to be free
Information wants to be free
So what? Guns want to kill, but we have laws against that.
Yes!
Now all we need is a rewritten and updated version of Dante's Inferno, and have it approved and endorsed by the pope!
Cower in FEAR, AOL, TELEMARKETERS, MICROSOFT!!!
The telemarketers will be FORCED to sit in a room answering phones all day and POLITELY LISTEN to mind-numbingly BORING advertisements!!!
Top AOL employees will have to DOWNLOAD programs to UPDATE their pitiful computers... only to have AOL CRASH on them, and give them BUSY signals!!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Allowing pop-up ads is part of the AOL ToS. If people do not want pop-up ads, they should find a real ISP. I think I'm going to sue FreeWWWeb because of that annoying sound that the modem makes every time it connects :-)
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
I know for a fact that disabling popup windows can be fixed in any browser simply by disabling Javascript. But is this really an answer. The reason a browser has Javascript is so that extra features can be provided other than simple HTML.
Maybe from a lawsuit like this, It may require browser makers to put in features to disable certain Javascript commands (ie for popup windows).
But still, it's the Web Site that has control over ads and not the ISP, so I don't see this lawsuit really going to go anywhere.
....about time something was done about possibly the most annoying annoyance on the internet.
Not that I'm an AOL customer, or I ever visit pr0n sites... 8^)
-----------------------
Moderator's essentials
Come on - don't complain that you're wasting online time when you're looking at ads that can be disabled. If you can't turn them off, you're dumb enough you need to pay... Think of it as a tax on stupidity.
kwsNI
t would set a nice precedent of companies being responsible for the default configuration of their software
Hey yeah! Then i can go sue Redhat for having an insecure default configuration, then the Gnome team because i think the default install is ugly, then Netscape/AOL again because Mozilla has a nasty default skin, then i can sue Andover because the default article reading setting isn't the way i like it....
Oh, no, wait. That would be a stupid idea now wouldn't it?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I've been tellign AOL users this stuff sucked for years! Just change darnit! (See: free-market-economy)
Tramont said the practice amounts to charging twice for the same product. "AOL gets money from advertisers, then money from subscribers, so they're making double on the same time," he said.
I hate to bust this wonderful anti-AOL bubble, but newspapers have been doing this for years. Same with Cable TV, if I have to watch commercials while watching that CNN i pay $50/month to watch, they are wasting my time. If you say pop-ups are worse because you have to actually do something proactive to make them go away, well it's the same as a whole page ad, where you have to turn the page.
I'm not saying this class action lawsuit will not result in victory for the class, but if it does, someone in Florida really ought to try suing a newspaper on this same precedent.
-Alison
I have nothing against banner ads. They used to pay my salary. As long as they're non-intrusive and relevant to the audience of the site, I think they're great.
But then you look at things like a recent levis campaign. Every time you went to the home page of a site you got to be the proud downloader of between 80 and 100k of flash video for a popup levis ad. And you'd be sitting reading something, and it pops up right over what you're reading. Now this is intrusive and is starting to interfere with my browsing experience.
What's even worse is the Compaq non-stop campaign. My natural reaction to a popup ad is to click the x in the corner and kill it. The idea behind the compaq ad, was Compaq are non-stoppable. So they made their ad KEEP coming back up about 4 or 5 times. This is just plain annoying and adds stress and extra mouse movement to my already ruined wrists and my already stressed life. I don't need this.
So I guess, yeah, lawsuits are dumb, but as what happened with the Prof vs Demon where they settled, maybe this will scare the hell out of advertisers and sites that use this kind of advertising, and we'll all have a more pleasant browse experience.
/* Wayne Pascoe
Oh please, take some responsibility for yourself. If you run around running everything you receive in e-mail you're gonna get burnt.
You could find a problem of one degree in almost all software's default configs. Not just AOL or MS.
But the lameness of the suit just begs to be flamed. Why are AOL customers expressing their software behaviour preferences through a lawsuit? 2000 years of civilization, and the only way a collective groups of AOL (l)users can figure out how to ask for the ads to be placed at the END of the session is through a lawsuit. Why could they not have learnt to talk to AOL in a civilized manner? Software is a flexible thing. It is plastic, programmable, not set in stone, and their relationship to AOL is valuable enough that some kind of bargaining can be set up. Why make lawyers rich?
First off, this lawsuit goes back to 1994, long before popup ads could be turned off.
Secondly, the ability to turn the ads off isn't particularly simple to find(remember, this is a service that built its success on knowing exactly how to make things simple to find; anything that wasn't simple within AOL was made intentionally not simple.
Finally, and this is important, the ads would come back on their own. In security, we make things a pain in the ass when we want to convince the users to use a more secure alternative(i.e. ssh-agent and RSA keys vs. passwords at every prompt). For AOL, it's "Watch the ads, and you won't have to keep turning them off."
They'll settle out of court; they really don't want their advertising dirty laundry getting aired. Remember, this is the company that got UCITA in their state before anyone else.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
It's the same idea -- I pay for programming, but I can't see the content I'm paying for until the ads are over or until a push a button (to close the ad, or in the case of TV, change the channel). Would you get away with suing a cable company on these grounds? I doubt it. AOL has smart enough lawyers to bring up this fact, and then make themselves look like good guys by showing how you can turn off the ads altogether, something you can't do with cable. Just my 2 cents.
--
how would I get even with these idiots, to punish them for this stupid groundless lawsuit?
Give them lifetime subscriptions to my own service.
--Jeff
Let's suppose you're a lawyer in need of a few million bucks, or just greedy (note to lawyers: I'm not slandering you as a class!!!).
The solution to these ridiculous suits is to pass Federal (or State?) law(s?) to limit the percentage of fees lawyers can rake off class action suits, for example, to cover all documented costs of their suit plus no more than what 5-10 end-users of the product will receive.
Btw, Ralph Nader is running for President this year on the Green Party ticket; maybe we could all make lots of noise about that and ask him to include this splinter (well, it's hardly a plank, now is it?) in his platform?
Go to keyword "Marketing Preferences" and uncheck it. It's on the New User Tour (or at least used to be).
What's really annoying is that now AOL resets your marketing preferences every year, so you have to uncheck them annually.
I haven't used AOL since 1996, when I got a real ISP, but their popup ads were one of the main reasons I left them. (The spam was another.) If they can't afford to provide the service I've requested at the price they agreed to charge me, and they have to put annoying popup ads in to try and get more money out of my pocket, then their business model is flawed. I should go after my credit card company for annoying me with credit card insurance plans, travel clubs, shopping clubs, and car insurance. But that's a whole other topic.
viruses, not virii
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
I HATE pop up ads. I realy do. But one thing that is getting lost in all this is that these ads pay for "service" or information that we want.
I'm sure almost everyone is used to banner ads, and ignores them most of the time. but relize that someone or something has to pay to get a web site up, and these ads help to pay for it.. As internet companies struggle to make profits these ads are going to become more important (also as click through rates continue to drop...)
But I'lm willing to accept the ad to get at information on the net I want for free (as in beer). It would really suck if you had to pay for content each time you accessed it.
ads are a better way.
while this lawsuit seems somewhat silly to me...i mean, most of us realize that this particular suit has little chance of doing anything but getting the ball rolling on a much larger issue at stake: advertising windows that pop up automatically. sure you can turn them off within AOL's fantasy world, but what happens when you accidentaly follow a link to a somewhat "shady" site? on occasion, you will be bombarded with 15 pop-up ad windows and other various types of pop-ups. beyond this they continue popping up quicker than you can close them. now i'll admit, you're not likely to come across this stuff unless you're searching for some obscure stuff, but still i for one get pretty ticked off during one of those deluges. so what does this AOL suit mean now?
Have you ever watched an absolute newbie trying to read some web pages? The first thing they try to click is the banner ads. I often find myself explaining, "no, don't click there, that's just an ad". Of course, gaining experience, they learn to seperate ads from real content, but it does take time.
:)
Pop-up banner ads are probably even more efficient in this respect
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
When I cancelled my AOL account after almost 5 years of subscription, the CSR naturally asked, "Why?" Among other things, one answer was that I had finally gotten tired of all the ads.
You can indeed turn off a number of advertisements, but you can't escape all the little banners that now litter their interface. In addition to the average user having to go through more steps to get from point A to B than previously, each step is almost guaranteed to have a least 1 small ad graphic that will be loaded. Not that anyone's likely to click through, but talk about counting eyeballs!!
Re: the captive audience; I can't speak for today, but I've known a number of people for whom AOL was the only local access point. Much as I dislike AOL, there may be those for whom it is literally the only game in town.
We have met the enemy and he is us - Pogo (Walt Kelly)
Easy choice....ditch AOL, use Squid and SquidGuard to filter whatever in the hell you don't want displayed.
The difference is that I don't pay by the hour to watch cable -- and that I can change the channel to find a network that's not showing commercials at that moment. Yeah, I can play a few cards in FreeCell while I'm waiting for an ad to load in AOL -- but I can't use a web browser, telnet, IRC, check my mail, FTP a few files, or do much of anything else.
What's really funny about it is that the pr0n ads on warez sites are for pay sites. Yeah! Like I'm not going to pay for software but I will pay for porn.
kwsNI
I believe the difference between TV/newspapers and this is that other companies provide net access without advertising for the same price or less. But then again, AOL users are either just plain stoopid, or suckers.
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
Of course, for those impaired by windows, there are a number of software "cookie munchers" that work just this way (as a software proxie)
Sadly(?) there are a few site that will not load at all if you block the ad sites completely, because of the way the main sites are brought up via momentary redirection to the ad company servers.
It is amazing how fast a page loads when you are not wasting bandwidth on cookies and other net junk
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
crazy as it may sound.. and annoying as they are.. which i do agree with.. pop up ads keep a lot of web services and sites free, or cheaper than they would be. advertising is the only real revenue generator that a lot of sites have. i cant agree with aol, but lets all not sue the free internet providers. thanks.
-- whistler rules
if you don't want to view doubleclick's ads, just point ads.doubleclick.net to 127.0.0.1 in your hosts file. That way, your browser will never be able to find their ads!
Um, excuse me, where does it say that was me? Because it was attached to a Troll who mentioned my name? I have seen this poster somewhere before in another thread, also on a Troll post attached to one of my posts. It isn't me. I have a suspicion, but the guy is a mate, so i won't mention names ;) So hey, aim your flame someplace else, it's hot over here. Thanks.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
This is pretty dumb.
1. It IS easy to change marketing preferences (keyword preferences; click on marketing)
2. They do NOT come back on after a period of time, since I've never seen them since turning them off for my family years ago.
3. The vast majority of AOL users are on the "unlimited plan" now so there's no real issue of double-charging (though if this suit dates back to 1994 I guess there might be some merit there)
4. Lots of other services do this: cable TV, pre-paid phone cards, magazines (you mean I have to PAY for the paper it's printed on?)
Something about this suit seems fishy, like a publicity stunt. There's a bunch of other seemingly frivolous class action suits underway too (see link at bottom of CNN article). Can anybody figure out the conspiracy theory?
*LOL* How true. Of those people who search for porn on the net, I doubt too many are stupid enough to pay for it. (and by 'people' I am not including protazoa who can't find the 'any' key) If you have enough brains and patience to actually find these warez sites, you are probably smart enough to realize that these pay-for-porn sites are just silly.
In countless tough and tearful sessions with my sweetie she finally grasped the concept of hyperlinking.
Now those stupid $%#@&%!@$ introduce adds that look like legitimate links which is really, really annoying if you try to teach the virtues of the net to somebody who doesn't really care for computers.
Those advertisers should all be punished with a lifetime AOL subscription on a 2400 baud modem.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Try turning off javascript in your web browser. If the owner of the pr0n/warez site you are looking at happens to use a funky JS menu, just look at the source - javascript isn't exactly rocket science.
--
These are *MY* opinions.
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
The only answer to advertizing on the web is pay-per-click, except of course on catalog sites like Amazon or Sega which are one large ad already. It could be as little as $0.01 per search on a search engine, or $0.01 per page view on news sites. Some sites could even charge by fractions of a cent ($0.0001 per second per stock ticker, say) and round up to the nearest cent at the end of the month. And there should be some way to get kids into this because they'll accept it most readily. Of course the charges will add up, but in return you will have no ads, thus faster loading. That or make all web sites paid for by taxes.
Pop-ups do suck, but why complain when you can just get rid of them? I've had web pop-ups disabled for a long time; I do it with a cute piece of freeware called "Proxomitron":
http://members.tripod.com/Proxomitron/
It has a lot of other (configurable) usability/privacy enhancements like disabling animated gifs and blink, not letting javascript use the status bar, etc. Plus, you can write your own regular-expression based filters!
Too bad it's only for windows; but I don't think it would be too hard for a Posix version to exist. Perhaps something like it already does.
It's a slightly different situation here in the UK (assuming you're not in the UK) - we have the BBC (1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7, of course), so we pay a licence fee for that service, and they don't show adverts. The commercial stations don't have a fee, and they show ads. A number of subscription-only cable channels don't show ads, but some do. They shouldn't, and AOL shouldn't, because users are already paying for the service. I don't object when a 'free' TV station (I use quotes because in the UK you HAVE to pay the licence fee just for owning a TV set, but I digress) shows ads, because that's how they generate revenue to run a service I use but don't pay for. If I was paying for internet access and the provider kept hitting me with pop-ups on top of that, I'd be annoyed. If a free ISP used them, I'd live with it. It's like, say, Geocities vs., say, Demon - you don't pay for Geocities, so you put up with their ad layer. You pay Demon, so you wouldn't tolerate ads there.
Actually I tihnk it might hold up. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the agrument that 5 years ago you couldnt turn them off, or if so, not easily. That just goes to show you, greed only pays off if its doen privately, not commercially!
I used to think it was keyword spamming too (and maybe it is to some extent). Then I started using the new version of analog which gives me a report of the search terms which users use to arrive at my site. Here's one day's results:
;)
reqs: search term
----: -----------
14: quake 3 stuff
5: scanterm
3: human copulation pictures
2: wordlist.txt
2: cannibalism snuff
2: genital jewelry
1: akasha
1: aluminize
1: quake 3 levels
1: emazing
1: antigravity backpack borscht
1: barmy badger backpackers
1: ssachs
1: axolotl adaptions
1: directory listing mp3
1: aerometer
1: wordlist barons
1: argumentive analysis of advertisements
1: isthmus algorithm
1: spacebar.org
51: [not listed: 51 search terms]
"barmy badger backpackers"?? Fully 75% of these searches have NOTHING to do with my site, and I do not keyword spam in any way.
Maybe, when search engines get bored or tired, they just return more or less random results?
If you want to filter banner ads out a simple way to do it with most browsers is to use the Internet Junkbuster filtering proxy, or if you're using a fairly recent release of Mozilla you can use their image manager (Edit | Advanced | Cookies and Images or Tasks | Privacy | Image Manager) which lets you specify hosts that you'd rather not display images (such as ads.doubleclick.net), or you can only allow images that appear from the site you're viewing or you can selectively allow images by means of an interactive dialog (a similar management system applies for cookies). Hopefully the image manager will be included with the next release of Netscape 6 as it's a useful ad blocking feature.
--
This is true - but I'd wager the majority of 'first-time buyers' getting used to their brand new Time rigs are using 'dangerously defaulted' (defaulty?) Outlook Express configurations, and don't know any better. The software / package provider IS responsible for the default configuration. The fact that (for example) Outlook Express CAN be configured to be less hazardous without too much effort only land weight to the argument that the provider should configure it that way. A highly distorted analogy would be a car manufacturer turning out saloons in which you have to prepare the airbag by removing a couple of screws before you set off.
"...and this is where my groin hit the steering wheel..."
"Oh, you should have taken some responsibility and configured the airbags."
There is a difference though. With newspapers, magazines, and all other media aside from the internet, you can't turn off those ads. With the internet, it's simple. Junkbusters (www.junkbusters.com) for linux, and webwasher (www.webwasher.de) for windows people. No more pop-up's, no more banners, no more paying to download advertisements. Get with it, people, it's the 00's, you don't have to see that crap if you don't want to!
Coolfish
First the government tells us what software companies can and cannot integrate together, and now they have the right to tell us what a company can and cannot charge for? WTF? What's next, are they going dictate when we can go to the bathroom? This bigger and bigger government thing is really getting out of hand.
If AOL customers are being charged by the minute, then I think they have a case.
Perhaps it's time AOL provided discounts for banner popups. I.e. you don't disable them, you get a time credit for each instance.
Believe it or not, there are people who use AOL for five hours or less every month (for things like e-mail and visiting the occasional web site). At $9.95 per month, and about $2 for every hour after the first five, they get a better deal that way.
For more information, click here.
I hope that AOL's defense of "it is user-configurable" gets tossed - it would set a nice precedent of companies being responsible for the default configuration of their software (can we sue MS for all the virii propagated by poor Outlook configurations?).
Yeah, then I could sue RedHat for their default installation being insecure since it almost lost me my job in the 3 days it took me to get all of the upgrades and patches applied that I needed.
Yeesh.... It's not RedHat's fault that someone found my open system before I finished patching all of the known security problems.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
This is different-you can't just wait out the ads on AOL like you can on cable. Plus, you're paying per minute. If Cable TV had you pay per minute, no one would use it.
Colin Winters
new pop-up ad for AOL, Fall 2000:
We notice you're downloading an illegal copy of the new Britney Spears album. Wouldn't you rather buy the CD at the AOL/Warner Online Music store?
[] YES []NO
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Slashdot uses a particularly hard version of banner ads to stop with junkbuster (internet.junkbuster.com) because they are coming from images.slashdot.org just like the icons.
If you want to get rid of them, add this to your sblock.ini:
images.slashdot.org
~images.slashdot.org/topics
The '~' negates whatever proceeds it. In this case, you are allowed to view images.slashdot.org/topics.
It's not banner ads on the internet that are bad. In the case of your site, nobody disputes it.
The difference between what you do and what AOL does is huge though.
You do not charge me money to see your site.
AOL *does* charge money to use their service.
Why should I have to pay to watch ads?
a) irrelevant - is it bad for a business to charge for their services? Remember, this is a *SERVICE*.
b) irrelevant - internet access is not a basic life necessity (like some people say the telephone is). If you don't like the AOL monopoly in those parts of the country don't subscribe. In addition, an ISP is not one of the harder businesses to start up.
c) no - what twisted logic are you using? Seriously! First, ads couldn't be turned off. Second, a lawsuit is filed against the ads. Third, before the trial ads can be turned off. Therefore AOL knew they were doing something wrong and evil by not allowing ads to be disabled? What demonstrates AOL's prior knowledge of the ads evilness?
Next up, doubleclick and all those other idiots collecting information about you without your permission and then sells it, again without your permission.
This should be illegal, but at the very least multi-billion dollar class action law suits in several countries simultaneously to put them out of business is a good start.
heyas =o) FL has already won several major court cases against AOL, mostly dealing with online child predators. FL will win this one too =o) (FL - the only state that will protect your kids)
Christ's love
It's called the lottery.
The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land
I'd rather be lucky than good.
On the contrary, Cable TV is a monthly charge! So by definition it is equivalent to paying per minute. But what is different is that you pay for it even if you're NOT watching it. Isn't that WORSE than AOL? Also you're paying for the time that you "wait out the ads" exactly like you are with AOL.
If Cable TV was pay per time you actually use it. Cable companies would probably see revenue dropping through the floor unless they raised hourly rates to some incredible level.
Why did you connect your Linux box to the net knowing that you still had security holes to patch?
There would be the issue of obtaining the aforementioned patches. I couldn't find any 'Complete up to the minute RedHat 6.0 Patch CD' for sale anywhere. So I had to download and apply all of the ones I needed. They had to come from somewhere. Where would YOU Suggest I get them?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Maybe they'll sue because the users didn't want to see a graphic or listen to a sound file that took too long (in their opinion) to download. C'mon, get real, all this is about is making some lawyer rich(er) and famous. The only reason any of you are jumping on this bandwagon is because AOL is the "bad guy". Remember, this will set precedence, opening the door to more and more of this kind of bullshit! Not just against AOL, Microsoft and the other perceived evil doers out there but against US!
Actually if the stupid AOLers would do some searching they would find it is easy to turn off the ads. Just go to My AOL/Preferences. Then go to advertisements and you will be able to turn off all of them. Of course this takes a long time so maybe someone should sue AOL fo making it to time consuming and wasting their precious time. Note: I am not an AOLer. I do use AOL which is because I got it when I was a clueless newbie and knew jack shit about computers. I am trying to get a T1 if my parents would let me.
Which do you think is scarier: a crashy, closed source OS, or a company that dumbs down the Internet and has the ability to influence the thought and buying power of millions of people? (hint: they are NOT one and the same, smartasses.)
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Do I have to spell it out for you? A month is about 43000 minutes. You (I) pay $60/month for digital cable. I therefore pay about a tenth of a penny for every minute that cable access is provided. The difference is exactly as I stated, that I cannot opt out of paying for the time which I do not use the service which is again, worse than what AOL is doing.
I guess you didn't read my whole post near the end where I explicitly stated:
> If Cable TV was pay per time you actually use it. Cable companies would probably see revenue dropping through the floor unless they raised hourly rates to some incredible level.
What else did you miss from my post?
BTW revenue by cable TV providers is not made by ads. It is made by selling their service to consumers. Remember that whole Disney-Time Warner deal a few weeks back? Time-Warner PAYS Disney to carry Disney's channels (ABC et al.). Time-Warner is a cable provider.
Disney/ABC makes revenue by selling time on their network to advertisers. Get it now?
Perhaps it is a sign of the times that a class-action lawsuit is brought against an ISP. Could it be that, especially in rural areas, AOL is truly the only game in town? Due to the lack of sophistication by the user, they may really believe that they have no other option then to stick with AOL. Since the class-action suit is being allowed, isn't this a sort of de-facto admission that AOL is big enough to do 'bad' things like this?
Obviously the better solution is for someone to create a different ISP that keeps its users happier, but that gets back to the technical sophistication part. There isn't enough of a marget in Dullvsille to support the staff of a new ISP, and the mid-sized ISP's aren't going to want the support headaches -- they'd be pumping a disproportionate amount of money into their low-revenue areas.
Damned soul-stealing fish. :)
:(
btw, if your spanish is usable, read Cortazar's "Axolotl"--it's one of the best short stories I've ever read. Unfortunately, my spanish is no longer up to the task, and the english translation doesn't compare
I am a lawyer, but his is not legal adivce. If you need legal advice, consult an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
.)
That is usually the case (though htere are ethical rules about frivolous actions). However, in a class action, it *is* the lawyers doing the choosing and suing. They have to find a representative agent, but it's really a matter of deciding to file a class action, and then finding someone who can be part of the class to be the named plaintiff.
It is *rare* that the class gets anything comparable to what teh attorneys receive. Typically, the attorneys get paid in full as part of the settlement, while the class gets pennies on the dollar for their purported (often silly) claim, or a coupon. The *only* exception I know is about Iomega's failure to pay their rebates (which is also the only class action I can think of offhand that should have been filed in the first place . .
hawk, esq.
You get them from RetHat's site. Using a machine that is secure. And put them on a floppy. Duh.
Admittedly, RedHat (and other vendors) could make this easier on novice users. For example, during the install they could, leaving all services disabled, go to the RedHat site and get the latest security updates.
Until then, y'all should check out Kirk Bauer's AutoRPM, which is an excellent way to keep your systems up to date. It runs from cron, letting you know what has been updated. And it will optionally install the goods for you, even checking signatures first.
Unlike M$, there is actually competition to AOL, so you're not exactly stuck with one choice. That being said, AOL does provide a valuable service: they keep most of the idiots in one domain. You're not going to get the losers off the Internet. AOL is your last, best hope. If you break up AOL, the idiots in your area just might be tying up YOUR ISP! Think about it... half of AOL's problem isn't the company, it's the people who subscribe!
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Something cleverYes, this is on topic. AOL users have nothing to bitch about. I should sue for all of the wasted time spent on CIS, 300 baud, at $7.00/hour! :)
(B6900 refers to a Burroughs 6900...)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1982 22:04
From: Ken Weaverling >>>---> Ken <47869 @ UCSC-Site>
To: Bob Rahe <BOB @ UCSC-Site>
Subject: Re: Monitor
In-Reply-To: Your message of 24 Jun 1982 09:19
Message-ID: <0322.06.24.1982.22.04.44 @ UCSC-Site>
This terminal is quite nice for $399. It's an RCA. It has a modem built in, color graphics, and sound from 14 Hz to 230 KHz. (Why the heck do you need 230 KHz. I probably can't hear past 15KHz.) It even has a white noise generator. (Don't ask why).
The graphics are pretty HI-RES, 240x192, but it takes forever to draw at 300 baud. One could make impressive graphs but one won't ever see Pac-Man here! You can also hook up a cassette recorder to store a heck of a lot of data for off-line viewing.
I got a free hour on CompuServe with it. Ever been on that? They say it's simple, but it took me the whole hour just to look for one thing. The say it's menu driven. GEEEEEEZZ, they must have their menu's nested 50 levels deep!
I was looking for the multi-user Star-Trek game that I read about. Also the CB simulation (Randall probably wrote it).
The story of my quest:
After drifting thru 10 pages of menus, I found the newspapers that were on-line, so I choose New York Times. They wouldn't print the %&$#& thing out unless I subscribed! The subscription was free but they wanted name, add.... I said "SCREW IT". I could imagine how many menu's were on the other side of that subscription.
Now I had to "back up" thru the menus before I could move on. After another 10 mins. I found the home entertainment menu! I was getting closer. I didn't see Star-Trek but I did see "ELIZA - Artificial Intelligence". I decided to try it out, real quick.
This program CompuServe has (called DISPLA) is polite. Instead of saying #SCHED 1234 it says "Please wait. I am processing your request." Sure, I think that the computer down there realizes that it's getting paid by the hour. After 2-3 mins., it starts "Tell me what's on your mind." After 5 mins I was ready to leave, "QUIT, BYE, STOP, " nothing worked. She just kept saying, "Your "Tell me what's on your mind." After 5 mins I was ready to leave, "QUIT, BYE, STOP, " nothing worked. She just kept saying, "Your being short with me.". I was getting desperate, I started punching all the control codes I could. I stoped the program but I hung the terminal. Oh, well. Call back. Back to the first menu page. But I was getting better, I typed "GO HOM" and I went straight to the home entertainment section. After about 200 more menus (estimate) I found "CB simulation"! Quick, read doc. Got it, run CB. "Please wait......". After 5 mins it comes back "Your free hour is up. Would you like to subsribe?".
All that and I never saw the program. For $5.00/hr plus $2 for Telenet, they can forget it.
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME ON THE B6900 !!!!!!!!!
>>>----> Ken
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Uh, did you even attempt to read this article? It doesn't appear so, because this is a _class action_ lawsuit. In other words, it is brought by the citizens of your country, not your government.
Why is it there is a "Panic, this is one step closer to 1984" post in every thread these days?
The impression I get this side of the atlantic is that you'dbe better worrying about your corporations, rather than your government.
Sorry if this is a litt rant-y, but every time I see people reffer to the government, it irks me a little. Paranoid scare stories also, and the combination gets silly.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Same with Cable TV, if I have to watch commercials while watching that CNN i pay $50/month to watch, they are wasting my time.
This is totally different. You said that CNN you pay $50/month for _UNLIMITED_ access. You could leave your friggin TV on for a whole month if you wanted. You don't have to pay per hour you watch. In this case you have to pay _PER HOUR_ so the ads you see are costing you money. If you had to pay on an hourly basis for you TV I think you would probably turn the TV off during the commercials instead of wasting money.
ok they are suing on behalf of @2.5 million people and asking for between 15 and 20 million dollars. Now assuming the lawyers dont get any of thaat (yea, right!) that comes out to between 6 and 8 bucks per person.
Now, once you factor in the lawyer's take which is gonna be between 30 and 50 percent, it comes out to between 3 and 6 bucks per person. And all thise becuase these people on aol were too stupid to either
a) go use another ISP
or
b) use their marketing preferences to turn the ads off.
and lawyers wonder why so many people hate them.
On another note, the one of the lawyers suing said that this was a problem because "Only after a customer reads through a series of advertisements, or clicks the "No thanks" button, is the pop-up removed from the screen and the user is able to resume using AOL's services, such as e-mail or the Internet. "If you have kids and they read slowly, or they read each ad, that time adds up."
Ok, fine lets get every single person who is stupid enough to go along with this class action suit to get up on court and testify that they read all the ads before heading off to one of the chat rooms.... err, i mean off to do important stuff like email and and surfing the internet.
"I mean, All you can definately say about a fellow who thinks he's a poached egg, is; He's in the minority." James Burke
You get them from RetHat's site. Using a machine that is secure. And put them on a floppy. Duh.
Oh gee yes, I'll just fire up this SECOND computer I have laying over here that just happens to have a secure install of RH on it already. Silly me, why didn't I think of that....
We don't all have multiple linux boxen strewn about our homes.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Not to flame, but... From somebody you know who has as secure box and a CD burner?
Hrrmmm... Let me see.... That would be no one.
I don't know anyone who is running RH in my area that would be willing to burn me a CD of anything.
So what am I left to do? Leave my computer sitting turned off and unplugged? Switch back to Win98 (At least that never got cracked in to)? No. I turn the thing on, plug it in and start getting patches. But oh horror of horrors, I don't have an infinite amount of free time and happen to have to actually go out and DO something in the middle of that. So my box gets left unsecure for a couple of days. Tragedy beyond belief....
Yeesh. That shouldn't be a concern for newbies. What about those newbies who don't constantly follow slashdot and bugtraq and etc.. etc.. etc..? How are they supposed to know that when they isntall this thing it's going to leave their system open to anyone and everyone who wants to waltz in and screw around with them? It's not really RHs fault if someone knows their system is insecure and fails to patch it in time. But if they don't have a huge warning in the manual or on the box (I didn't see any) that says 'THIS SYSTEM IS ABOUT AS SECURE AS WET TOILET PAPER!' then they are at fault when someone wanted to try linux out gets it installed, gets rooted, and then gets in trouble because someone was doing something from his machine.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
A better class action suit would be one against AOL for AOL 5.0 for it's blatantly anti-competetive (and also extremely annoying and computer-disabling) acts of removing other TCP/IP stacks, changing network configurations back when you try to change them, making itself very very hard to remove, completely disabling dial-up networking when installed, and a couple other things I can't remember off-hand.
All of this is, of course, denied by AOL.
---
END OF LINE
Yeah, I mean, 1982 was a helluva long time ago. I was like 22 at the time and can't remember details. If it wasn't for that old mail message, I would have swore that that couldn't be true.
Speaking of that message, I've been waiting for someone to tell me I spelled "telnet" wrong! :)(telenet was a dialup comm network at the time)
The RCA terminal mentioned was some weird dumb terminal that you hooked to your TV and got 40x20 display. Had a built-in 300 baud modem, a good deal for the day considering external 300 baud modems were selling for around 250-300 by themselves. Keyboard was similar to the Atari 400.
We've come a long way. Current AOL users bitching about paying $2.50/hour for 56K access should all be shot! :)
What I would like to see, is a lawsuit against porn sites who grab the 100 most searched words and put them in their meta tags for search engines to find
What actually happens is extortion. There are mafia-like organizations that jump on any "legitimate" domain name that is let expire (maybe because the original owner did not pay the registration fee in time) or domain names that have a familiar ring to it. They then add a site under this domain name, filled with porn or other "inflammable" material. Often, real companies do not want to be associated with the filth, and then pay money to get hold of the domain name.
For instance, my company had a product line named "Amplitaq Gold", and a website 'amplitaqgold.com'. Not exactly the kind of domain name you would come up with out of the blue. The domain was let expire after we didn't need it any more; the day after it was filled with pointers to a porn site in Russia.
To make matters worse, searches on Altavista for terms related to our company, our product lines etc would invariably turn up pointers to this stuff.
We got the domain name back through legal action. However, not everybody would go through that hazzle, and would rather buy the domain name back even if it meant giving in to the Russian mafia.
I'm not sure if it still goin on as I've boycotted them because of it, but if you went on their site, they decided that you must love them so much that you would want their logo as your desktop background. That's just far too intrusive for any website to be.
The chains are broken
Loki is free
Ragnarok is at hand...
I know, lets sue alladvantage.com and make them remove their banners. They still have to pay us though! Too bad they are going belly up soon.
I happen to have an account on Yahoo, and am very interested to note by way of comparison that a) The ads in AOL's mail area are bigger, and b) There's less junkmail on a service that is supposed to be supported by advertising than on AOL. And AOL wonders why old customers like me (I convinced my family to switch when I was using their account) are leaving in droves? Duh.
This case is almost definitely a loser, which is sad, because AOL subscribers were paying for Ads to be thrown at them.
The reason it is a loser is that if AOL argues that part of their cost structure was a factor in the price that these users DID pay per hour. After the switch to the unlimited plan, the concommensurate change to "turn off this option" occured, in recognition that their cost structure was misaligned. If the class that's suing were to win, the closest parallel I can think of would be suing Wired for its increased Ad content while retaining the same cover price. It's part of the service that you're subscribing to.
Or suing a cable operator for that spare channel that lists the coming shows and runs previews over and over.
It's just part of the ToS. The users are not losing anything, because it's part of the bargained for exchange. Even the poor schmuck with the 2400 modem, the 8088 and no mouse is still getting what he paid for, because it was part of the bargain he made with AOL. If he didn't like it, exit was possible at any time.
I would love to see the brief for the class on this one. "They made me watch ads that I didn't want to watch!" which applies as much to the superbowl as it does to the side of your local buses.
1. "My AOL" menu list on the toolbar.
2. "Preferences" in that menu
3. "Marketing" in the window that comes up.
4. "Pop-up" in the following window.
5. "Continue" in the next (mostly informational) window
6. "No" radio button
7. "OK"
Or you can stop being such a pussy and just pay for the flat-rate service. Even when AOL was $8 an hour (and named Quantum Link and served only C=64 machines) we didn't complain about the marketing popups. We realized that the reason we had to pay _only_ $8/hr was _because_ of the fucking popups.
And if you're going to complain now because "I have to click thru so far to get to..." you can go fuck yourself cuz EVERYONE already knows AOL's interface is a labyrinth of window on top of window on top of window.
Last I checked, FTP runs on other platforms than Linux. And my copies of RedHat have come with pretty little cards telling me where to get updates.
And you were talking about work, not home. Is this really your very first computer at work? In 2000? No wonder they almost fired you.
Ok, I think I must've misunderstood your third point. I thought you were saying that for the whole time the ads were forced, AOL had full knowledge of the harm to consumers that was caused by charging for the time AOL was sending them ads... and AOL was purposely doing it. I don't believe that AOL purposely plotted to get two sources of income (one from the user, one from the advertiser) by showing ads to users paying per minute but at some point they did realize how it can be quite objectionable.
BTW I'm hardly libertarian but simply have an understanding of what a profit-oriented company like AOL should do if they are solely after money but still following the law. So my point about free choice is that if AOL is the only ISP in a small town, then there simply isn't enough demand for another ISP to make money there. If AOL is operating at a loss in those regions, from a purely economics point of view, they should simply leave. If they stick around, they really are being kind by providing a service to those subscribers that no other profit oriented business wants to provide. Even phone companies are subisidized by taxes to provide service to remote rural communities.
If you were looking for "cum guzzling sluts" you would've typed in "star trek money bill clinton backstreet boys brittney spears free food news". If you were looking for any of the above things, just try typing "cum guzzling sluts"! *duh*
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
And you were talking about work, not home. Is this really your very first computer at work? In 2000? No wonder they almost fired you.
No, I was not talking about work dumbass. I was talking about my home machine.
Yeesh... It's a rather long story but someone compromised my home machine and used it to attack someone, when I logged into my home machine from work to get some work done it got traced back to there and they called the company I work for.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji