Slashdot Mirror
AOL To Charge for AIM Videoconferences
gwoodrow writes "In some of my college computer classes, we discussed the necessity of some sort of profit to be made eventually from major software. AIM was often sited as a rare example of a large company offering up a free service that generated almost no profit whatsoever. Well, that's all changing. It seems that AOL will begin charging for both voice and video conferencing services via the buddy list. Some AIM addicts are surely getting worried that AOL may eventually charge for regular usage."
The article doesn't say anything about charging for video. AOL is introducing a conference call service (like a group chat, only for voice) that they will be charging money for. Now they say you'll be able to integrate video with these conference calls, which sounds cool, but nothing users can currently do free will now cost money
Right now it means NOTHING.... everyone is jumping to conclusions instead of RTFA'ing (shrug, I feel new here).
They are taking services from two other providers (I've used WebEx, it's a decent web conference) and allowing them to initiate a voice and/or web conference (multiple particpants). This is a new service for AOL and does not effect a one on one conversation or video conference in any way.
It doesn't matter, this is a NEW service for AOL that allows multi-user voice and web conference. It doesn't affect one on one iChat...
Congratulations America - Antitrust law is now as worthless as the paper it's printed on!
A provision of the original terms of the AOL/Time Warner merger was the AOL would have to open it's AIM protocol before it implemented voice/video services:
In a January 11, 2001 statement by FCC Chairman William E. Kennard, upon AOL's merger with Time Warner, the FCC noted that "We require AOL to interoperate with competing instant messaging (IM) providers before it can offer videoconferencing and other streaming video over IM. This condition guards against AOL's ability to leverage its existing dominance in current IM into the broadband IM marketplace."
The FCC never followed through on this - and now AOL is officially offering voice/video and charging for it to boot. So go ahead enormous corporations! Merge to your hearts content! Merge up and down the supply chain, across competitors, whatever you want - Its all good! We'll slap provisions on you to pretend we're protecting the marketplace but won't enforce them!
Remember last week's column on abolishing the FCC? Maybe it deserves a second look at this point . . .
Yep, that and the damn commercials my cable company has been shoving down my throat to try to disuade me from switching to satelite. They are so full of BS and outright lies that I threatened to leave them if they didn't stop showing the ads and had all my friends do the same. They scaled the ads WAY back but unfortunatly didn't stop em.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Uh, wrong. You can video chat between AIM and iChat, it's just audio that doesn't work right now...
According to http://www.apple.com/ichat, iChat AV 2.1 supports videoconferencing with the new AOL Instant Messenger 5.5 for Windows, giving you immediate access to the millions of people in both the Mac and PC communities.
I dunno who it is
but it prolly is fhqwhgads.
This is already happening in many countries. While I was in Turkey, every movie was preceded by cellular sevice commercials, hair care products, beer, cigarettes, and the usual movie previews. Then the middle of the movie was punctuated by intermission. There were no commercials, but static ads. It's only a matter of time before that idea leaks to more parts of the worls.
Damn misleading writeup. They are NOT charging for their existing video service, they are creating a "new paid service" directed torward business customers. Before I RTFA'd this article had me worried that I wouldn't be able to chat Mac to PC anymore (the other alternatives before AIM iChat were crap).
The new service is a video conference and web meeting, not a 1 to 1 video chat.