Is the slashdot crowd turning into a bunch of nepotists that only see what they want to see? Yahoo! isn't evil. This is a tough problem. There could be all sorts of info/writings in his email that he wouldn't have ever wanted his family to see. Yahoo! isn't saying "No" - they're just saying "we can't make the call - bring a court order and they're yours." BTW - you KNOW the privacy folks will scream and attack if Yahoo! does give them the account w/o a judge's decision. It's a lose-lose for them and they're trying to do the right thing. Wake up slashdotters!
Maybe this is part of their move to fee-based IM for businesses. Companies all across the world are statrting to standardize on IM products from companies like Yahoo!, Microsoft and Jabber Inc., much like they standardized on email in the 80's.
My company recently purchased Yahoo!'s corporate IM product and it's pretty cool. It has encryption, I get to use my email ID for my screen name (with domain), it does single sign-on to our LDAP, and it even auto-generates a directory of the people in our company on IM to make it easy to add people to your buddy list. I also heard that they have a version with WebEx in it coming out and my company uses WebEx often.
And what sucks most about the patent arms race is that the average company can't afford to fight patent lawsuits. The typical total cost to do discovery of prior art, write a brief, and submit it for summary judgement on even the most absurd patent is near $500k!
They are the masters of leveraging patents. They come in with a big stack of fundamental patents and nicely say: "we've noticed that your company is enjoying our innovation... wouldn't you like to formalize the relationship?" Then two guys named Moose and Rocko help you with your pen.
>> You're confusing free with public. Just because the services are free does not make them open to the public to use how they please.
> One thing that is far too often overlooked is that the internet is an inherently public network. In attaching your computer to the public network, you have to accept reasonable (non-malicious) network traffic. You don't have to respond - but you can't complain if, say, some search engine crawler sending the string "GET/" to port 80 causes your computer to crash. It's more like a storefront - if you hang an open sign on the door and unlock the door, you can't sue people just for walking in.
We're not talking IP-level traffic, we're talking about application-level use. These are specialized servers that open and maintain socket-level persistent connections, store a username and password, store a user's buddy list, allow them to find buddies, view webcams, join chat rooms, and send messages. If Trillian we're a peer-to-peer (client-to-client IM service, then it would be fine.
>> Those servers are paid for by AOL dial-up subscribers in conjunction with...
> Wasn't that one of the big lessons from the dot-com era? There is no entitlement to a successful business model. There are limited protections for intellectual property, but noone ever guaranteed that a particular scheme should be entitled to work.
This is not about business model. Whatever their biz model, using their infrastructure outside their terms is putting a load on their servers and costing them money w/o the ability to recoup it via said biz model.
You're confusing free with public. Just because the services are free does not make them open to the public to use how they please. They are free when used under the TOS of the provider, which you are bound to because you must have a username/pwd from the service providers you use. Even to use Trillian you have to have atleast one username/pwd from AOL, MSN or YHOO, and that puts you directly under their terms of service.
This is even further accentuated by the fact that when you use Trillian with an AIM screen name, for example, you are using AOL's servers to host your presence and route your messages. Those servers are paid for by AOL dial-up subscribers in conjunction with an ad/sponsorship model - i.e., you do pay for AIM, just like you pay for phone or cable service. Using Trillian bypasses that model and violates AOL's TOCs.
I'm sure AOL would sue Cerulean Studios if they could do it cheaply. Litigation is expensive and not worth it if the other company has no money. That's why they've used technical methods to try to shut down Trillian use, and did the same with MSN when Microsoft originally launched MSN Messenger and tapped into AOL's IM system. I'd bet that they sent a cease and desist letter to Microsoft, but decided that fighting in court would be much more expensive than just screwing with the protocols every few weeks.
Browsers, web servers and page publishing are not quite the right metaphors for comparison. It's more like having an account with a webmail provider who offers the service for free because it includes ads, and then you create a client that scrapes their webmail pages and pulls your messages into Eudora.
BTW - I truly believe IM should be interoperable and am hoping the FCC will keep up the pressure on AOL.
They are not public servers. They are not behind firewalls, but their use is restricted and protected by a registration and authentication interface, along with a set of terms that users agree to when they setup an AOL, MSN or YHOO IM screen name and use the services.
As a result, these IM communities are similar to private email or phone systems. Trillian users are using the servers of the big 3 IM communities w/o their permission to do so with a Trillian client. It's the equivalent of using someone's email server w/o permission. The laws that are being broken are wiretapping, violation of terms of use, and copyright infringement (the protocols are proprietary and the terms of use prevent reverse engineering or copying).
Here's an ethics test for you:
If your neighbor has Wi-Fi at their house is it ok for you to tap in w/o their permission?
Is it ok for you to tap into a phone or cable line at the pole and use it w/o permission?
Is it ok for you to copy and use someone else's code w/o their permission?
The big 3 IM networks are private communities. They don't run on public servers at all. AOL, MSN and YHOO all have extensive server farms that handle everything from presence to buddy lists to message routing, and in all cases their terms of use expect that it is their client on the desktop, cause that's the only way they can maintain an affinity with the end-user and offer them other services, etc.
Trillian and some of the open source client software efforts have reversed engineered the protocols for these systems and are tapping into these infrastructures without running their own servers, nor licensing this access (like Apple has licensed use from AOL). This is equivalent to hacking into AT&T to make phone calls w/o paying, or stealing cable.
I understand that the lack of interoperability sucks, but using products that illegally side-step the problem is unethical IMO.
Companies are starting to buy IM not only for internal communications, but for fast and cheap communications with customers, such as for customer service or alerts. With encryption, a broker can comfortably talk to clients about stock trades over IM.
BTW - GAIM and Trillian might have it as well, but they illegally draft off the big 3 networks (they have no license to tap in), so expect them to be under some serious pressure now that money is starting to flow to the big 3 for enterprise-class IM.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the slashdot crowd turning into a bunch of nepotists that only see what they want to see? Yahoo! isn't evil. This is a tough problem. There could be all sorts of info/writings in his email that he wouldn't have ever wanted his family to see. Yahoo! isn't saying "No" - they're just saying "we can't make the call - bring a court order and they're yours." BTW - you KNOW the privacy folks will scream and attack if Yahoo! does give them the account w/o a judge's decision. It's a lose-lose for them and they're trying to do the right thing. Wake up slashdotters!
My company recently purchased Yahoo!'s corporate IM product and it's pretty cool. It has encryption, I get to use my email ID for my screen name (with domain), it does single sign-on to our LDAP, and it even auto-generates a directory of the people in our company on IM to make it easy to add people to your buddy list. I also heard that they have a version with WebEx in it coming out and my company uses WebEx often.
Heads up - DMOZ is owned by AOL.
And what sucks most about the patent arms race is that the average company can't afford to fight patent lawsuits. The typical total cost to do discovery of prior art, write a brief, and submit it for summary judgement on even the most absurd patent is near $500k!
They are the masters of leveraging patents. They come in with a big stack of fundamental patents and nicely say: "we've noticed that your company is enjoying our innovation... wouldn't you like to formalize the relationship?" Then two guys named Moose and Rocko help you with your pen.
> One thing that is far too often overlooked is that the internet is an inherently public network. In attaching your computer to the public network, you have to accept reasonable (non-malicious) network traffic. You don't have to respond - but you can't complain if, say, some search engine crawler sending the string "GET /" to port 80 causes your computer to crash. It's more like a storefront - if you hang an open sign on the door and unlock the door, you can't sue people just for walking in.
We're not talking IP-level traffic, we're talking about application-level use. These are specialized servers that open and maintain socket-level persistent connections, store a username and password, store a user's buddy list, allow them to find buddies, view webcams, join chat rooms, and send messages. If Trillian we're a peer-to-peer (client-to-client IM service, then it would be fine.
>> Those servers are paid for by AOL dial-up subscribers in conjunction with ...
> Wasn't that one of the big lessons from the dot-com era? There is no entitlement to a successful business model. There are limited protections for intellectual property, but noone ever guaranteed that a particular scheme should be entitled to work.
This is not about business model. Whatever their biz model, using their infrastructure outside their terms is putting a load on their servers and costing them money w/o the ability to recoup it via said biz model.
This is even further accentuated by the fact that when you use Trillian with an AIM screen name, for example, you are using AOL's servers to host your presence and route your messages. Those servers are paid for by AOL dial-up subscribers in conjunction with an ad/sponsorship model - i.e., you do pay for AIM, just like you pay for phone or cable service. Using Trillian bypasses that model and violates AOL's TOCs.
I'm sure AOL would sue Cerulean Studios if they could do it cheaply. Litigation is expensive and not worth it if the other company has no money. That's why they've used technical methods to try to shut down Trillian use, and did the same with MSN when Microsoft originally launched MSN Messenger and tapped into AOL's IM system. I'd bet that they sent a cease and desist letter to Microsoft, but decided that fighting in court would be much more expensive than just screwing with the protocols every few weeks.
Browsers, web servers and page publishing are not quite the right metaphors for comparison. It's more like having an account with a webmail provider who offers the service for free because it includes ads, and then you create a client that scrapes their webmail pages and pulls your messages into Eudora.
BTW - I truly believe IM should be interoperable and am hoping the FCC will keep up the pressure on AOL.
As a result, these IM communities are similar to private email or phone systems. Trillian users are using the servers of the big 3 IM communities w/o their permission to do so with a Trillian client. It's the equivalent of using someone's email server w/o permission. The laws that are being broken are wiretapping, violation of terms of use, and copyright infringement (the protocols are proprietary and the terms of use prevent reverse engineering or copying).
Here's an ethics test for you:
If your neighbor has Wi-Fi at their house is it ok for you to tap in w/o their permission?
Is it ok for you to tap into a phone or cable line at the pole and use it w/o permission?
Is it ok for you to copy and use someone else's code w/o their permission?
Trillian and some of the open source client software efforts have reversed engineered the protocols for these systems and are tapping into these infrastructures without running their own servers, nor licensing this access (like Apple has licensed use from AOL). This is equivalent to hacking into AT&T to make phone calls w/o paying, or stealing cable.
I understand that the lack of interoperability sucks, but using products that illegally side-step the problem is unethical IMO.
BTW - GAIM and Trillian might have it as well, but they illegally draft off the big 3 networks (they have no license to tap in), so expect them to be under some serious pressure now that money is starting to flow to the big 3 for enterprise-class IM.