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AOL Wins Anti-Spam Case
saikou writes "CNet writes in this story: 'A Virginia federal court awarded America Online nearly $7 million in damages as part of the Internet service providers' legal victory over a junk e-mail operation, AOL said Monday.'
Now, given tough times we should see more and more ISPs sue (and, hopefully win) the evildoers if not for their users mailboxes sake, then for their own budget. How long until there will be a major ISP whose plans include discounts for spam-fighters? (Help us to sue every spammer than sent mail to you and get $9.95 disount on your next bill :) )"
http://legal.web.aol.com/decisions/dljunk/cnprod.h tml
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Actually, ICQ and Winamp were great apps long before AOL had anything to do with them. In fact, AOL can be blamed for the current state of ICQ (ad ridden, bloated POS).
I write code.
Lots of speech, or free expression, is dishonest, annoying, and unethical depending on your perspective. It doesn't mean that it isn't protected.
Commercial speech does not get the same level of protection as non-commercial speech. Look up "Central Hudson test" on Google to get more information on this.
They are a media conglomerate, but they are about as non-evil as they get.
Time Warner was one of the biggest backers of the DMCA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
AOL is evil.
You ever try to cancel an account with them? Good three monhts before you get any results. Plus the asshole who gets rude on the phone with when you try to cancel.
There was a time when AOL was the only National ISP and most techs kept an AOL account for travel to hit email and keep in touch.
And AOL sells its own customers to spam lists. Plus the advertisements they inundate you with.
AOL bought all those companies to further there share in the marketplace. They bought Netscape(where is it now) they bought Winamp, and ICQ, which totally sucks now and gives its own nice little pop ups.
Time Warner inventing phone telemarketing as we know it. I worked in a call center running dialing systems in the early 90's.
We called people whos subsciptions were about to end, had ended, and even vaguely looked at a magazine in the airport.
Entertainment Weekly, People, Time, NewSweek, and we were hired outsourced to other magazines. And this is a Time Warner org. Still operational today. All sanctioned by time warner. BUT NOOOOOOOOO they are not evil.
AOL hates Microsoft cause they took a big part of their business. Because AOL is all about the content they want you to see. And with IE and other Browsers, it is about what you want. Sour grapes all over the place.
GEEZ
PUTO
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Responsible? ICQ, Mozilla, and Winamp ALL were created independently and then were bought up by the giant AOL.
...but they are responsible at least in part for...
:) Mozilla is an open source project that makes no money, which is the base for a browser that also makes no money. Winamp has never made any money except for a very brief period of time that they asked for a registration fee of $10, which I paid, and which was discontinued before AOL/TW purchased Nullsoft.
First of all, you misquoted me, or didn't understand my message:
Second, perhaps you would care to explain how ICQ and Mozilla, let alone Winamp, make AOL/TW more money than they cost? Let's see... Some versions of only official ICQ beta clients display banners. We all know how successful those have been at sustaining revenue.
AOL/TW is responsible in that they are funding these projects.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Courts routinely do not respect such conventions, especially where damages apply. It's called "piercing the corporate veil".
Yes, it is a roadblock, but not insurmountable.
There is a little feature in AOL that's not advertised very much. If you go to Keyword: Marketing Preferences, you can turn off pop up ads on AOL. Very useful and it actually works. Also, while there you can specify not to be contacted by e-mail, snail mail or phone.
You know how they keep saying "1000 hours free in the first 45 days"? Ever go and figure out how many hours, exactly, there are in 45 days?
1080.
That's right, you have to be online for 41 days and 16 hours of those 45 days to fully take advantage of thier offer. Only 3 days, 8 hours of downtime. Good luck.
While it's true that a single asshole rep shouldn't be taken as a smear on the entire company, they do have a big problem here, not just one rep. It's a structural thing. They have taken it upon themselves to make cancelling very difficult, on the apparently accurate assumption that their subscribers are rather easy to manipulate. They have a cancellation department, and those people are the only ones that can cancel your account. If you ask someone in another department, they can't transfer you, they can't even give you the number normally (unless you tell them you can't get online at all) rather they are to send you to 'keyword cancel'. There you find the number to call. There are one or two other choices, I think you can snail mail them (certified mail!), and maybe send a fax. Most people will call on the tollfree number, and it's set up to encourage that. When you call the tollfree number, you wait on hold for a fairly long period of time normally. If you hold on long enough, you eventually get a 'cancellation representative.' Now these guys are trained and expected, not to cancel your account as asked, but to find some way, any way, to talk you out of cancelling! In fact, their job performance is rated by the percentage of calls they 'save' from cancellation, and if that percentage dips below the goal, they are out looking for a job again. This can be turned to your advantage if you really didn't want to cancel, as they can and will give you free service for a month or sometimes more in order to get you off the phone without cancelling, but it's annoying as all hell if you really don't want the service. And given the pressure these kids are under to 'save' you whether you want to be saved or not, and the training they receive (adapted from the training developed for hard sell telemarketing) it's not surprising at all when one gets rude. She may, in fact, be fired for cancelling your account, so why wouldn't she be stressed out?
Your experience is somewhat dated btw, AOL in 1994 was a very different company. I don't know exactly when the system I described was put in place, but I know it's been this way since '99, and almost certainly a bit earlier, but probably not in '94 - there was a huge cultural shift at AOL after the huge expansions of the mid to late 90s.
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