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Ruling in Aimster Case
Circuit Breaker writes "A short history of Aimster: Got noticed by the RIAA, lost their domain name to AOL, changed their name to Madster. More recently, a preliminary injunction has been issued against them, according to BBC News and Associated Press. Who's next?" Aimster declared bankruptcy months ago, so this is really a formality: beating a dead horse.
It was one of those 3,000 other Napster clones hoping to hit big-time.
Listen to the retarded business model they had:
Combine AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) with Gnutella client to build upon the existing user base of AOL customers (IM side) who would in turn chat and exchange files.
I tried to install it a year or so ago when there was this instant hype, but it was just horrible. The only p2p model that has a remote chance to survive in this hostile world of RIAA omnipotence is the Direct Connect (DC)
Well, I definitely realized I was taking a risk, however it never occurred to me that Aimster would do what they did, i.e. totally shaft the employees. I figured even if the company tanked, they'd give us some warning. With even 2 weeks notice I could have made arrangements, but they chose to be cowards and allow us to all continue working for 4 weeks even though they didn't have the money to pay us.
:-/
As for the AIM trademark thing, I don't think anybody realized AOL had a trademark on AIM. After the initial ruling was handed down that ordered us to give over aimster.com to AOL, I suggested we change the name of the application. I thought something more generic, like imster, filetrader, or anything would be better than Aimster. John ignored this and decided to just fight the ruling, only to be shot down later on. He even suggested moving the Aimster service to www.aimeedeep.com/aimster/, yet another bit of evidence that his main goal with Aimster was to propel his daughter to stardom.
Regarding the previous missed payrolls, the most recent one before the Aug 10th one had been about 6 or 7 months before, so it wasn't like they were constant and I would have been expecting it.
While I was definitely partly to blame, it would never, in a million years, have occurred to me that anyone would do what Aimster did to me. Looking back now, I see that Aimster wasn't the only company to treat its employees as mere chattel, however I was naive enough to think that they would act honorably. As others have said, it was a hard, expensive lesson learned.
And to whomever said it: yes, my mother was right, and believe me, she lets me know it every time I see her.
rooooar