Slashdot Mirror
FCC Lifts AOL IM Limits
TypoNAM writes "'The Federal Communications Commission has agreed to lift restrictions that have barred AOL Time Warner from offering advanced instant messaging services including videoconferencing, according to a source familiar with the decision.'" A couple of years ago, the FCC made a big fuss about how it was watching out for the public interest in approving the AOL/TW merger.
I remember reading about these restrictions back when they were first imposed and thought to myself, "AOL will continue to lose market share and will eventually convince the FCC to lift the ban."
It sounds like a valid reason to me. As usual, most monopolies, especially in technology, get broken down by the market sooner (Word Perfect) or later (MS?).
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Maybe I'm missing the point a little here, but why would advancement in video confrancing technology for customers be against public interest? Surely advancement in technologies is IN the public interest?
Riiight..I don't think cross-platform is on their mind. Last I checked, the Linux version of AOL IM was horribly out of date. I don't think the Mac version is very good either, but I can't say for sure. Open source has been the only way to go for IM on linux for a long time now.
if(!cool) exit(-1);
But, if they implement it into their network, it can be cloned more or less as eaisly as the AIM service itself was cloned. Imagine, a conversation with your girlfriend's iChat A/V from your linux box with Gaim.
I have ICQ Pro (ICQ is owned by AOL) and it has features like this built in, though I have never used them. I do believe it makes use of external software like Microsoft's NetMeeting though, which is not distributed with ICQ Pro.
Do they get away with this because ICQ is not considered AOL IM? Even though ICQLite can talk to AOL IM, and I think AOL IM can add ICQ contacts to their list.
Seriously, since the current administration sees deregulation and tax "relief" as being the solutions to every business problem (real or imaginary), this isn't unexpected. And remember, what's good for AOL/TW is good for ...ummm, Steve Case?
Microsoft bundles the MSN messenger with their OS getting an unfair advantage over the other IM providers. Most workplaces don't allow their employees to install any software on them, thus they turn to MSN messenger which is already on their Windows systems. Has the FCC done anything to stop Microsoft from doing that? Anyone know?
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
AOL users aren't the only ones using AIM... I haven't been a AOLer for years and yet I have AIM or Gaim open whenever my computer is on. Why? Between ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Trillian, and AIM, AIM is the best IMO. Plenty of my friends are in the same boat.
Is AOL in such financial trouble that they have resorted to porn? I bet they will offer video services for the porno industry for an outragious fee which will help them financially.
While I applaud the audacity of calling people slashbutts (and still get moderated up), I have to ask: is it really necessary to have the article text posted here on Slashdot? I mean, news.com isn't going to get itself slashdotted, so there's little danger of the article text being unavailable.
I guess we're just doomed to be subject to rampant speculation, rumors, and hearsay here on Slashdot. We should really all be reading the article so we can draw our own conclusions, then proceed with the discussion...but hell, I guess I'm dreaming.
You slashbutts.
They don't need to come up with another incompatible standard. Go with Apple.
Steve Jobs already mentioned that his stuff is open, and that he's waiting for other companies to copy it. This would be the perfect way to do it.
iChat AV is awesome, but currently, it can only do VC with other iChat AV users (on the Mac).
Hell, iChat already uses the AOL protocol and everything... What are they waiting for???
-- askien
Well, I doubt that AOL will host the video traffic themselvs. There's no reason why Gaim and iChat couldn't work together...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actually, with broadband, Voice over IP sounds quite decent. Equally on par, and probably better than, cellular phone service. And this is usually with services that don't do much compression to the audio. Squeeze the bitrate down, and it sounds damn fine. Services such as Vonage don't exist due to crappy quality.
Video is another issue, but can still be quite good when done correctly. Phone companies are even offering television service via a set-top box and DSL lines. A couple of channels get streamed down to the box, and when you change to one that isn't being currently streamed to you, the server at the central office switches what it is sending.
I agree, obviously, that any of this done on a dial up link would be rediculous. Remember however, that you don't have to be an AOL subscriber to use their IM service. Hell, they even own ICQ which is the service with the most subscribers as any.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
It seems to me that part of the concern here is that offering these services will encourage further network effects that lock users into a particular IM system, which includes not only the service but the protocol as well. If competition really is important, then why wouldn't the FCC say something like this to AOL? "If you want to provide this kind of service, then you must use a standard format for delivery so that other service providers will be able to compete." It seems to me that the proprietary and constantly changing nature of AOL's AIM protocol and its clients is a large part of what is restricting choice (and, ultimately, innovation) here.
I don't buy this argument -
Reality Check But, hey who am I to say anything. Our Good old friend MS destroyed Netscape - so what are you going to do about it ....
I personally believe the conspiracy angle more .. after all this is the same FCC that adopted new rules that will permit broadcasters to expand their control of media properties. Michael Powell is not fooling anyone. From the same article "With even greater power, big broadcasters such as News Corp., Disney and AOL Time Warner Hey, look who's here ... will amass even more cash.", a lot of which will go to the Bush Relection coffers - so now you understand why Dean has to spam but Bush doesn't.
God help me ... I am so paranoid these days of this "New" world ... lol ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
I'm not surprised in the least that the current (toothless) incarnation of the FCC is letting AOL slide into video chat without getting anything in return. However, I had forgotten about this restriction when iChat AV came out and now my mind is filled with all sorts of questions.
How closely did Apple work with AOL on iChat AV? I thought the borked SIP implementation was to promote Apple hardware (iChat AV only videoconferences with iChat AV... which only runs on Macs), but now I wonder if that was a result of negotiations with AOL. AOL's IM, at the time, was the only major IM service to not support video, right? So, was the iChat AV-only restriction a way to prevent Yahoo IM/MSN Messenger growth on the back of Mac-to-PC video chat?
Was the borked implementation just a proof of concept for AOL IM-only video chat? (I find this hard to believe, as it implies AOL drives iChat develpment. iChat AV was an obvious evolution of the original iChat, which included some of the iChat AV widget images hidden/unused in the resources of pre-AV builds.)
Was iChat AV a way to build up a large (fanatical) user base for AIM video chat while working under the FCC restriction? A trojan horse that would give AOL an edge once the FCC (inevitably) caved? Only time will tell, but this would be my bet. Look for iChat AV to AIM video chat soon(-ish) and continued incompatibilities.
I mean, how likely is it that AIM will be able to video chat with MSN and YIM? If they were going to go for compatibility, they would have done it already (and by doing so, had the restriction lifted honestly -- by meeting the FCC's original concerns).
I actually like the Mac version of AIM a lot more than the Windows version of AIM. The OSX version is finally catching up to the usability of the OS9 version (I ran the OS9 version in Classic for a long time) - the only missing feature I can think of is voice chats, and lots of new features have been added - Buddy Alerts (much more advanced than the "pounce" feature that's been in TiK forever), encrypted log files (although it crashes whenever I try to copy out of a log - if this bug gets fixed in the next release, it should work quite well), the ability to select different voices for different people (for speech syntheses), icons to indicate whether someone's signed on via a cell phone.
Yes, the Linux version is horribly out of date. At least it works, and it's stable, unlike Gaim, which has never liked me.
By the way, I think iChat is mostly terrible - videoconferencing is great if you have a FireWire camera, and the Address Book integration is great if you've already taken the time to add everybody to your Address Book (which is a bigger pain in the ass than it ought to be), but otherwise... well, it's better than AIM for Linux.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
With the majority of AOL users still dialing-up it would be a shame to integrate this into their instant messaging clients.
Hardly any AIM users* use AOL. AOL has their own Buddy List thing which (finally) implements most of AIM's functionality (it was very limited and horribly broken for a long time; it's apparently better now), but AIM and AOL aren't even developed by the same teams. Adding videoconferencing will have no bearing on AOL's dialup software.
* I mean people using an AIM client, not AOL's Buddy List feature. Some AOL users do run AIM on top of AOL just because the AOL Buddy List thing sucks so bad.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Well, they have had it for a long time. Well, OK, it was one on one video but the infrastucture was/is there. I remember back in AOL 3.0 or AOL 4.0 they had beta tests of video conferencing in the IM software... on regular AOL (which is always last in IM technologies) and not AIM.
;)
Then it was going to go back into beta testing after a year long hiatus but the AOL-TW merger happened and it was put on ice for a little while. I'd expect some news from AOL soon
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"