AOL 5 Gets $8 Billion Class Action Suit

ralian writes "According to Time Daily peeved users have filed an $8 billion class action against AOL-Time Warner because of AOL 5. It's sort of funny to see Time reporting on a lawsuit against their parent company. Check it out here."

Funny?

That's not funny. It would be funny if they didn't report on it. MSNBC shows talk about Microsoft's woes, and it would be almost unethical (almost) of them to ignore such things.

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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

Okay, so let me get this straight...

Does anybody else see the legal difference between these two statements?

1. I am going to become your default internet connection (I am going to be the default autodial in Dial Up Networking).

2. I am going to become your only Internet connection (I am going to delete the other connections in Dial Up Networking and make it impossible to get them back without removing me).

Number two is what's happening, right? This is textbook misrepresentation, right? This lawsuit will still fail because some law makes this kind of misrepresentation legal, right :) ?

Gotta love big corporations that think (and probably actually do) run the world.

Serves them right.

AOL can't expect to get away with this just by saying they gave users the option to click "no" when the installer asks whether AOL should be the default browser. The fact is, AOL is aimed at clueless newbies. Clueless newbies, almost without exception, just click away at the default choice without understanding what they're doing. Besides, there's no reason why AOL has to break other ISP setups. This is as bad as MS releasing versions of Windows that break competitors' products. AOL deserves whatever they get.
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Wait a second..

From the commentary..

It's sort of funny to see Time reporting on a lawsuit against their parent company.

No more funny than seeing inaccurate commentary on slashdot.
AOL doesn't own TW yet....

What do you mean, "almost unethical"?

it would be almost unethical (almost) of them to ignore such things.

What do you mean "almost?" It would be unethical, plain and simple. We rely on news sources to be objective (well, we're supposed to be able to rely on them...) and if they allow their affiliations to get in the way of editorial freedom, that's just plain unethical.
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Interesting lack of details...

I have to use AOL often (travel, work, if you want to flame, flame my unnamed employer, thank you!) and I have been using 5.0 since it's release.

I have not had any of these problems at all with anything.

Also, through AOL connection, I use Netscape (just select direct internet connection when setting that up), mIRC, F-SSH, various CuteFTP, AIM (can have your casual ID on while the one your boss knows is logged into AOL) etc. All with no problem.

I would like to know exactly what the real problem is and see if I can manage to replicate it on the antique laptop I use for the road.

Interesting details

A similar article [cnn.com] is running on CNN.com. Some interesting highlights:

• The plaintifs are asking for $1000 per person, with 8 million people affected.
• AOL is claiming that the lawsuit "has no basis in fact or law," (Big surprise there) and is claiming protection based on the users accepting their EULA by clicking on the box during installation.
• Prodigy is also complaining because of the problems with multi-ISP setups.

I seriously doubt that plaintiffs are going to get anything close to what they're asking, even if they win. $1000 seems like a lot of money, even if you include punative damages. More importantly, it sounds as though a reasonable percentage of users had no problems with the install. The $8 billion figure is just a headline grabber. A more interesting question is whether AOL is going to stick with their "they clicked accept, so tough luck" defense, and whether it will fly if they do.

Re:Serves them right.

Get it right, MS never released updates/versions of windows that broke competitors software. What they broke were drivers written by Microsoft by replacing newer versions with older ones. You must've read Brian Livingston's article on CNN/IDG, which was pretty blasphemous to those who legitimately dislike MS. AOL does not deserve whatever they get, because $8B is a ridiculous amount of money to have to shell out because they were trying to make their product easier to use. When it comes down to it, thats all this is.
I'm highly skeptical of the maliciousness of version 5.0. I truely believe that they wished to make it easier to use, which is exactly what it does.
I still think they're doing an excellent job marketing themselves and bringing the net to mainstream America. So being beligerant about something like this is pretty much ridiculous. No company is going to purposely disable competitor software and think they could get away with it, especially after MS' little runin with making it impossible to download Netscape through IE.

If anything, the story is overly harsh

The story takes the mere filing of a class action suit (something that happens very frequently, to all kinds of companies) and holds it out at a sign of Big Trouble for AOL.

AOL, through unnamed representatives, gets one quote in the whole piece -- and a legalistic sounding one at that.

And, to top the article off, the piece ends with two extended quotes from some managing editor at *Time* who essentialy sez that AOL has screwed up and needs to be more responsible. An editor at Time?! This guy is qualified to comment because he's the reporter's boss? I guess it cuts down on interview expenses when you only need walk down the hall for a few good quotes.

If anything, I think the story reflects Time's fear of being seen as if it is pulling punches. The quotes from Mr. Big Editor guy make me think this is some sort of internal message to the troops that it's ok to jump on AOL.

Problems described

There's a great column at winmag [winmag.com] about the writer's woes with AOL 5. His basic opinion about AOL 5 after using it was that, with AOL, you're SOL. (Not only does it take over your connection, it tends to crash the system!)

Competition.

There is a more complete version of the story on CNN [cnn.com].

They point out that AOL did it to reduce competition from other ISP's (such as Prodigy) and the question 'Do you want AOL to be your default ISP?' is the setup part that causes problems.

Teaches people right not read their License Agreement [userfriendly.org].

This could be very bad precident to be set by courts, with poor documentation being grounds for a Class Action Suit.

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Gonzo Granzeau

Re:Funny?

I hate to say this... much as I dislike AOL, and think that their software sucks rocks, I hope they win the lawsuit. No, more than that - I hope they stomp the class-action suit filers into the freaking ground. Not because they didn't bother to read the installation instructions. Not because they didn't examine the "About AOL 5.0" documents on the installation CD. Not because they couldn't be bothered to pay attention and actually try to understand what the hell it was they were installing?

Because they didn't pay attention to the license and warranty... and even if they did, what good would it have done them?

There is no single entity in the software industry that provides any sort of guarantee that their software is fit for a particular purpose, even the intended purpose for which it is sold.

To reiterate: I hope the AOL class-action filers loose.... and I hope that they, their lawyers, their friends, the press, and random people on the street get peeved enough about the loss that public pressure forces the government to dump the UCITA and implement the software equivilent of the automotive "lemon laws" on the books in many states.

AOL becomes the ONLY internet connection

#2 "I am going to become your ONLY internet connection" is what is happening. A freind of mine wanted to switch from AOL 5 to FreeI, and required my help to do so. He was able to dial up to freei, but after the modem connection was established, NO TCP/IP connections would work.

It turns out (according to the network control panel applet) that AOL installed their own "AOL Dial up adapter" network driver and that TCP/IP was bound to this driver. We were unable to connect TCP/IP via another ISP until this AOL crap wa ripped out of the network settings and the TCP/IP bindings were reset to the "Normal" Dial-up adapter driver.

AOL: The New Evil?

Wow. This all seems reminiscent of Microsoft's tactics before the government started to go after them. AOL will gain a lot of market share when it aquires all of the Time Warner customers. I'm wondering if AOL will begin to try to use Embrace and Extend-style tactics to dominate the internet. They already have their software overwriting the dialup setups.

One evil empire was bad enough. Not that I'm for any sort of governmental control, but it seems they have the only direct power right now to stop corporations from becoming big and evil. What is the greater of the two evils: Big Monopolistic Companies, or the Big Bad Brother Government? (Sigh)

I mean, lots of people use AOL, but hate it. They just don't know of any other way to connect, much like they don't know how to use an OS besides Windows. While we can try to educate people about the internet, it is a daunting task, is it not? These people are at the mercy of AOL ^_^; Who will stand up for their rights?

"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"

I have installed the AOL 5 software ...

I have installed the AOL 5.0 software and the following is what occurs to "take over" your hard drive:

Message box pops up asking if you'd like to 1. Use AOL for EVERYTHING (ie. mailto: http: ftp: news: urls ..etc..) 2. No Changes 3. Further customize these settings.

When option 3 is selected, another box pops up allowing the User to CHOOSE what protocols are assigned to the AOL software. I have been using AOL for a few years now (don't ask why ;) and their software doesn't provide the greatest interface, particularly to ftp:// and news:// .. when in Windows I use WS_FTP-LE for ftp and Netscape or MS Outlook for reading my mail and checking my news. For those of you who haven't used aol's Mail tool, it is VERY restrictive. You must experience it to know how bad it really is.. hey, and they give you a free month to decide -- just install windows .. http://www.aol.com/ [aol.com]

Re:When the chickens come home to roost

To be fair to the "mindless sheep", even if they did RTFM (as you so nicely suggested) they would not have known that AOL was going to disable all their other connections. All 5.0 asks is "Do you want AOL to be your default connection to the Internet?" -- I don't know anyone who would expect it to do what it does, based on that sentence.

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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

AOL

What people need to understand is the potential implications of a case like this. We had the recent case against Toshiba, settled for a paltry 2 billion dollars. And even then not everyone took part in the settlement. If this case suceeds it is going to shake the entire software industry. The implications that software manufactures can be responsible for what they do to someone's computer would be a fundamental change in thinking for almost every software company. This is really no different than Quicken installing Internet Explorer, or a dozen other such programs. This is just the first time that a lawsuit has gained class action status. In a nutshell, if AOL loses, it is going to force software manufacturers to be responsible for what they have created. Software that is carelessly written, documented, or creates security holes will be an open invitation to sue. Perhaps this country is too sue happy, but what does it take to make software manufactures to stop their lackluster quality control. (I work for a software co by the way). This is not really that different than what other industries have gone through. The result of this may be that software will come with warning labels. Imagine, "Installation of Personal Web Server will leave your system open to security risks at the following ports..." I think a lawsuit of this nature is overdue. There is no other industry where shipping a product with 100's of flaws is considered acceptable.

Re:Okay, so let me get this straight...

It isn't touching anything, it is merely making itself the default browser and dial-up program,

I haven't messed with Windows DUN is quite a while, but normally, it's quite easy to change the default dialup connection at any time. As I understand it here, AOL not only trashes the other dialup settings entirely, but even when they are manually re-entered, they don't work. The only solution appears to be ripping all AOL software completely out of the system (including registry editing). That's a whole lot more than any other install program does when it asks if you want it to be the default browser.

Sigh

First Toshiba, now AOL. Who do I get to sue if I install a newer version of glibc and the RPM breaks all my apps? Should I be able to sue RedHat because RedHat5 default install had a billion security holes and my box got rooted?


What if KOffice or GNOME Office core dumps and I lose work? (ala alleged Toshiba floppy leading to lost work)

You forgot Number 3

3. I am going to become your only Internet connection and if you click no, your system will be screwed because our programmers were not prepared for this eventuality and assumed you'd say yes.

I had to reinstall windows on a friend's computer because for some strange reason (at least on the machine I tried to install AOL 5.0 on for a friend) AOL 5.0 corrupts the msmouse.vxd file. You can test this easily by trying to install AOL 5.0 on a Windows machine and after it crashes have the machine boot at prompt you before performing each task on bootup.

After this occured the machine would always freeze upon booting unless booted in safe mode. Since I had no idea how to edit the msmouse.vxd file or even how to tell what was wrong (plus my friend was getting hysterical) I reinstalled Windows.

PS: In my opinion AOL deserves this lawsuit. Such an intrusive feature was bound to affect so many interactions and cause so many different problems that it was impossible for there not to be some problems. That said their QEs and QAs could have done a more thorough job of testing the software before releasing it.

It's Windows' problem, not AOL's

It seems to me that the problem is not with AOL's software, it's with the library model in Windows.

I.e., the fact that central libraries exist that can be overwritten silently by installing applications, which almost always install their own versions of libraries. AOL 5 isn't the only software with this problem, although it may be the most extensive. AOL wants to use their own TCP/IP drivers? No problem! Just don't erase the existing ones, please. Windows isn't designed to accommodate that.

Re:When the chickens come home to roost

(OK, I can use my +1 to post flamebait just as well as he can....)

I'm sorry, AOL knows its target audience is computer illiterate. The answer to "what exactly does saying 'ok' here" is probably undocumented, or, if it is, the docs are either online (after it's too late) or sure as hell not in the "Getting started" skinny version of the manual. If there was TFM to begin with.

In most other professional environments this practice has some dirty name or other, like "churning" or "slamming" or "psychology by the pill"; most are illegal, and the rest will get you a trip before the professional ethics board. What AOL did is not technically illegal, but it's highly unethical, and cost a lot of people a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. I think those people deserve to be richly rewarded for their trouble.... but (gods willing) a jury will be allowed to decide that question. In case anyone forgot, under British common law (which American common law is based on), the jury is allowed to judge the law as well as the facts. The AOL jury-to-be has the power to MAKE their conduct illegal-by-case-law. I hope they do.

Oh, and as for AOheLl and Slime Vermin being already merged.... according to the indications being given out, it's tantamount to a done deal. It might be interesting, however, if for some reason this case in itself held things up...

If nothing else, these so-called "clueless morons" are making a public spectacle of just how BAD yonder so-called ISP really is... and the more we have of that, IMHO the better. I think the plaintiffs should be given a medal for having the cojones to even attempt such a thing.

I know. Down with AOL'ers, down with my karma. But the previous poster noted it better than I... your chickens WILL come home to roost.

You don't _have_ to use AOL's software to get on

Up at my website (err, here [geocities.com]) is a mirror of some software written for Linux (err, Unix) to allow you to tunnel IP packets through the service. Yes, it's real. You may run into some trouble with using pthreads. I am actively working on the code. Does anyone know the issues with pthreads and glibc 2.1 (it compiles fine; it segfaults after running for about a minute; I've traced this to one specific function call)? By the way, it's written in C++ (yuck for me; one virtual function made it not work at all for a while).

Just because AOL is generally considered a "newbie's" "ISP" doesn't mean that all of its users are newbies. It also does not mean that none of them use Unix. I am not a newbie, I use Linux, and I happen to use AOL as an ISP for other reasons.

The great thing about this software is it is not at all intrusive on your system. Just one client program, maybe a shell script (haven't figured that much out yet), and a network interface. Maybe you might have to change your default route. Big deal. It doesn't mess with apmd. It'll leave cron alone. You can keep your dial-up settings for Quake. Very nice.

Kenneth

I was going to disagree...

...but then I read your last paragraph.

It looked like you were arguing that AOL (and the rest of the industry) has no responsibility for the quality of their software, even when it is flawed to the point of damaging their victim^Wcustomers' systems, since they have EULAs that disclaim all such responsibility.

It's true that the agreements have these disclaimers, but I, along with probably most people here, would argue that this does not excuse them, which also seems to be the main point of the class-action. I would protest that they should be held responsible, regardless of what "contracts" they print on the box, and that their attempts to get out of it should not be considered valid. Of course, the question of the validity of shrink-wrap and click-through contracts would come up again as well.

Anyway, you may have been just a bit too subtle: it took me a while to realize that you (at least seem to) share this opinion of the practice. If I understand it right, you're saying that you want the suit to fail so that the issue will be blown up, leading to a real reform, and not swept under the rug with a quick settlement. But, wouldn't a win in court be good for that purpose? If it's not a settlement, but a real court decision awarding damages for what they have done, wouldn't it establish a precedent effectively invalidating the shrink-wrap and click-through disclaimers?


David Gould

Re:AOL becomes the ONLY internet connection

ummm... this is exactly what *any* dialup or LAN connection does in win9x

That's not correct. AOL installs itself at the driver level. If you look at the devices on a typical Windows machine with AOL, you'll see something like:

Network Adapers:
Ethernet Adapter
Dial-up Adapter
AOL Dial-up Adapter

It works at that level, not at the PPP level, like every other ISP. (Because, of course, AOL doesn't use PPP.)

Re:It's Windows' problem, not AOL's

MS has actually kinda fixed this in NT 5, except it's a horrible kludge where they simple overwrite drivers with ones specified from a cab file. Not the most efficient solution, but fairly good considering the parentage of the OS. This is a classic case of weakly enforced checks allowing poorly written programs to barf all over the place.

(PS: The only other OS that is broken enough to allow overwriting of running binaries is Solaris, and I don't even want to talk about it ;-))

(And whoever moderated you as flamebait needs to learn more about OS architectures, I agree with you 100%)
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[Humor] Neo Installs AOL...

Agent Steve: "As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Anderson. It seems that you've been using two ISPs. On one ISP, you're Thomas A. Anderson, newbie and AOL user. You use AIM, read our Time-Warner content, and buy from our advertisers."

"On the other ISP, where you go by the handle Neo and have consumer freedom and decent ping times. One of these software installations has a future, and one of them does not."

"My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you but I believe that you wish to do the right thing. We're willing to wipe your registry clean, give you a fresh start and all that we're asking in return is $21.95 a month."

Neo: "Yeah. Wow, that sound like a really good deal. But I think I got a better one. How about I give you the finger... and you give me my DUN back."

Agent Smith: "Um, Mr. Anderson. You disappoint me."

Neo: "You can't scare me with this monopoly crap. I know my rights. I want my ISP back."

Agent Smith: "Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is an ISP if you have no Dial-Up Adapter? You're going to subscribe to us, Mr. Anderson whether you want to or not."

Neo: !!!

Re:AOL becomes the ONLY internet connection

You are allowed to bind multiple instances of a given protocol. At the moment, I have TCP/IP bound to an Ethernet device, Dialup networking, and an in-house parallel comm adapter.

As for the special 'AOL Adapter'; Its ben around seemingly forever. It is nothing more than a slip/ppp dialer customised to AOL's whim, and is perfectly happy coexisting with other network adapters.

Re:AOL is malicious

Bill the users, but sue AOL for anti-compeditive behaviour. It's not the users with the screwed settings that should be kicking up the biggest fuss, but the ISP's whose settings have just been nuked by an AOL trojan horse.