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FCC Lifts AOL IM Limits 232

Posted by michael from the why-even-have-laws dept.
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.
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FCC Lifts AOL IM Limits More

FCC Lifts AOL IM Limits

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  • Great (Score:4, Insightful)

    by krisp ( 59093 ) * on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:02PM (#6738341) Homepage
    Good, hopefully AOL will make a decent cross-platform video/audio instant message system.

    • Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)

      by connsmythe96 ( 576445 ) <slashdot.adamkemp@com> on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:05PM (#6738382) Homepage
      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 Last I checked, the Linux version of AOL IM was horribly out of date.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.

      • Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)

        by krisp ( 59093 ) * on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:06PM (#6738397) Homepage
        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.

        • Huh (Score:3, Interesting)

          by autopr0n ( 534291 )
          Well, I doubt that AOL will host the video traffic themselvs. There's no reason why Gaim and iChat couldn't work together...

          • Re:Huh (Score:2)

            by krisp ( 59093 ) *
            Of course they won't. It will be peer-to-peer just like all the other AIM "features" like file sharing and voice chat. All AIM is is a medium for these 'features'.

        • Re:Great (Score:5, Funny)

          by notque ( 636838 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:57PM (#6738904) Homepage Journal
          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.

          Girlfriend? What are these girlfriends you speak of?

          I am imagining A/V chat on Gaim for my new D&D Half-Orc Paladin-Wizard!

      • Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bjb ( 3050 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:12PM (#6738471) Homepage Journal
        Mac version is just fine.. its called iChat [apple.com], and it comes with OS X.
        • Though, it wasn't written by AOL.

        • Re:Great (Score:2, Informative)

          by lordDallan ( 685707 )
          But AFAIK you still need an AOLIM account for chatting outside of your LAN (You can chat with anyone on your LAN through the magic of Rendezvous - which is really nice for a small business, free internal chat client) . However, you do get an AOLIM account if you subscribe to Apple's .mac service.

          • Re:Great (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Teese ( 89081 )
            AFAIK you still need an AOLIM account for chatting outside of your LAN
            Actually you can get a .Mac ID, even though you haven't subscribed to .Mac, and use that instead of an AOLIM account for chatting outside of your LAN. See Apple for more details [mac.com]

            They also give you 6 months free .Mac trial membership, but the iChat name will last past that.

        • iChat is not the Mac version of AIM [aim.com]. iChat is Apple's AIM clone. Other AIM clones include Fire [sourceforge.net] and Adium [adiumx.com].

          Personally I think iChat sucks, compared to AIM, with the obvious exception of videoconferencing, but I don't know anyone with a FireWire camera anyway. Hopefully this news means by the time I do, AOL will have added videoconferencing support to AIM, and it will interoperate with iChat. That would rock.

          In the mean time, Yahoo! Messenger [yahoo.com] is the best free videoconferencing app I've found, although it

          • Re:Great (Score:2, Insightful)

            by PaizuriTatsujin ( 674475 )
            I believe that Jobs addressed in his keynote [apple.com] that the video conferencing source for iChat would be open so any other program can incorporate it into their own.

            But then again, memory has always been an issue for me and I don't want to watch it again.

          • Re:Great (Score:3, Informative)

            by zephc ( 225327 )
            iChat: i use it as my AIM client now... it's not the same as Fire and Adium, as it uses the real oscar protocols rather than the older TOC which has far fewer features. I have an iSight, and it love it, it's the best webcam I've ever seen. I've only done the video conferencing in iChat once, with a friend who also has a firewire cam and DSL.

            Yahoo: I use my cam with this most of the time, but yahoo limits your frame rates big time usually to no more than 2 or 3 fps tops. Not having voice really sucks too.
            • iChat: i use it as my AIM client now... it's not the same as Fire and Adium, as it uses the real oscar protocols rather than the older TOC which has far fewer features.

              TOC isn't older than OSCAR. TOC is text-based and documented, while OSCAR is binary and proprietary. OSCAR has been reverse-engineered, and I'm fairly certain that Fire uses it, as do Gaim and Trillian. However, AOL keeps changing their OSCAR servers to break unofficial clients, which has been a problem in the past. TOC doesn't support
        • Sadly it doesn't fully interoperate with other AIM tools: AV features are only available if both parties use iChat. Parhaps the limit will be lifted when it goes out of beta but for the time being I'm stuck with AIM on Classic (which DOES have the talk feature while the X one doesn't!) Now, I'm pretty shure Apple will drop the ridiculous limitation soon because as far as I'm concerned, iChat AV isn't worth a cent more than the 1.0 iteration if I can't chat with my windoze luser friends. Frankly I'm not goin
      • Hell, it's the only way to go on Win32 also. Whenever I'm forced to use the official client for extended periods of time, the ads begin to make me seriously ill.

        Use gaim [sf.net].
      • FWIW I've used iChat AV and frankly, I'm pretty blown away with the system.

        The other day, I was sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco's Union St., leeching bandwidth off a neighboring business's airport. While there, I got an iChat voice message from Bolivia. Amazing.

        Also, I got two one way video chats from Cape Cod and Virginia. The quality was good and there were a few hiccups connecting but considering it's a beta and this was happening over wireless, I am still blown away.
      • Instead of complaining about the out-of-date official AOL AIM client for Linux, perhaps you should write to Steve Jobs at Apple and convince him Apple should port iChat to Linux at a price. Currently, its in beta on Mac OS X, but it is fully compatible with AIM and it also has plenty of nifty features. Apple intends to charge $30 for the program for all Apple users who opt not to upgrade to OS X 10.3 Panther later this year. It works especially with Apple's Firewire-based webcam. Since the Linux platform

        • Re:Great (Score:2, Funny)

          by Xerithane ( 13482 )
          Here is a general letter for software Linux coders can offer to port:

          Dear Steve,
          My name is ______(your name, try not to use a gay sounding handle) and I am a Linux programmer. I can't afford an Apple, but I saw iChat at a local ____________(insert computer store name). I would like to port this software to Linux, on a free work-for-hire basis. If you could also send me a _______________ (expenses hardware, like: firewire webcam) for testing, I would appreciate it. I can't afford this hardware, whic

          • First off, I never said "free". If Apple thought they could make money off of it ($30 per copy), they probably would do it. Considering how many Linux-heads insist upon x86 architecture, I'm sure Steve and the rest at Apple have no illusions of "converting" them. If Steve and Apple were so rigid, they would've never allowed Quicktime to be ported to Windows; they would never have offered iPod models specifically for Windows; and they wouldn't be set upon making the iTunes Music Store available for Window

      • Re:Great (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Phroggy ( 441 ) *
        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
        • I'm not sure when you tried gaim last, but you might want to get the latest version. They've made a LOT of improvements in the past 6 months, including a switch to gtk2. It's pretty stable, it looks MUCH better, and it has a lot of features (useful ones, unlike most of the aim ones).

          The windows one last I checked (which was admittedly 4 or 5 months ago) may not be up to par, but the linux version is great.
      • > Open source has been the only way to go for IM on linux

        Not if you really just want one service. Look here [yahoo.com] for more details on the Unix Yahoo! messenger and go here [yahoo.com] to download the latest client.

    • AOL couldn't give a damn about anything in computer land which is not Win32. Witness their recent decision to axe their Mozilla developers and throw their lot in with Microsoft.

      If there were a more shortsighted and ultimately stupid business decision than to let your closest competitor implement your content rendering engine locking you into their operating system then I'd like to know about it. Why not allow a mental patient to shave your balls with a razor blade while you're at it?

      Well, I suppose Mac

  • ...i'm much more likely to give my info to a smiling face!

  • 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?).

    • You know, the relationship between AOL and AIM is interesting. Obviously AIM orginally began as IM's on AOL's network. AOL's huge market share is what pushed it all along. But now, I know only one person who stil runs AOL itself. Everyone else uses AIM or trillian, etc. It seems to me that the decline of AIM's popularity is only because of AOL's decline in popularity. Not because of the FCC's rule on videoconferencing. Just kind of a random thought I had.
      • I dunno, MSN messenger has been gaining popularity, most of the users hook up for voice and video or at least voice.

        I dunno if it is that feature that is doing, or that's it's integrated into the OS. Most of the same users are XP users... Here we have a monopoly, so what we setup goes. ME was simply unusuable, so it never got seriously implemented here. It's all 98se and XP, the userbase is about 50/50 to date. Since there really don't seem to be any 98 IM users out there, I'd say OS integration got Micr
        • I don't think all users of MSN messenger solely hook up for the voice and video features.

          I used to use solely ICQ back in the Windows 95/98 days and not many of my friends and acquaintances had computers.

          Nowadays when a user buys a new computer with Windows, the first thing which pops up is a bubble asking them if they want to add their .Net Passport to their Windows XP user account.

          I hate to draw comparisons between IE/Netscape and MSN/other IMs, but....

    • Colin Powell's son, who is on the FCC, and was appointed, by one George W. Bush, as the guy in charge of the AOL/Time Warner stuff, including the IM snafoo.

  • Is this going to matter? (Score:3, Informative)

    by fiftyvolts ( 642861 ) <mtoia@noSPAm.fiftyvolts.com> on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:04PM (#6738364) Homepage Journal

    Will having the FCC permission to add video capabilities to their clients really going to effect users for the worse? I personally am of the opinion that it will not matter too much. iChatAV already has the capability in it. If AOL's is similar I think this might be a great thing.

    Excuse grammer/spelling I am in a rush.

  • Encryption? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Hiro2k ( 264020 )
    Does this mean that the IM can have 128 bit encryption? I know gaim and trillian have it on their clients when you use AIM. I hope AOL will do this also.

  • I dont follow... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by killermal ( 545771 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:05PM (#6738373)
    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?

    • Re:I dont follow... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kircle ( 564389 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:40PM (#6738751)
      The restriction was that AOL needed to make their instant messaging network interoperable BEFORE they could begin including video conferencing technology into AIM. It was suppose to be an incentive for them to open up their monopoly on instant messaging.

  • Doesn't AOL already offer services like this? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by toddestan ( 632714 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:06PM (#6738401)
    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.
  • With the majority of AOL users still dialing-up it would be a shame to integrate this into their instant messaging clients. Even with broadband, Video/Audio over IP is still plagued with poor performance. It would only serve to increase the bloat of the client, something I'd rather not have to deal with.
    • 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.
      • But what makes it the best? IM systems consist of three basic components: the protocols, the service, and the participants. If we look at the protocols, AIM is fundamentally not awesome. I'll use some IM protocols from the 1980s -- years before AIM -- as a basis for comparison. IRC offers much greater flexibility, especially for multi-user chat. Zephyr offers hooks to an out-of-band authentication system (Kerberos) which allows for the possibility that a user can authenticate to the server in a way tha
        • The benefits you name would be of use to some people, but not really me. I've done multi-user chats like twice in the last few years. I don't really care about security either; I don't really care if somone intercepts this:
          ***: i'm coding!
          me: what are you writing?
          ***: a thing to check graphs to see if they have a non-zero mod 3 dominating set
          me: um... ok... hehe
          me: part of the research prolem?
          ***: he said i could read stuff and then he could tell me what to code later, but i couldn't contain myself (plus i

    • Re:Video/Audio in its infancy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jared_hanson ( 514797 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:16PM (#6738522) Homepage Journal
      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 [vonage.com] 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.
      • ghetto upstream caps and lag tend to limit the actual usefulness of voip from home, but with a "real" connection, it is much better. Don't forget that ISDN is still used to video conferencing

        And as for upstream "video" on dialup - I'm sure a few highly compressed 640x480 jpegs (or something similar) could be exchanged every second - not quite full motion video, but nothing too shabby for what you have to work with.
    • 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 B
    • More sinisterly, integrating such a feature could spur folks to actually want broadband. And since AOL really does not provide broadband, its not in their best interest.

      In other words, it will force people to learn what AOL really provides, and at what cost.

  • Relax, buddy (Score:3, Funny)

    by justinburt ( 262452 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:07PM (#6738412)
    Michael,

    Relax, buddy. "Why even have laws" (as dept.)? This decision is fundamentally about allowing a company to incorporate videoconferencing capabilities into its own software.

    They're not dismantling your beloved welfare state just yet. Don't freak out on us. Although I suppose the whole purpose of having laws is to keep the evil corporations from eating our children, right? So perhaps your concern is justified.

    Justin

  • ...the FCC made a big fuss... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06NO@SPAMemail.com> on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:08PM (#6738424)
    What you don't seem to understand is that if AOL/Time Warner (soon to be back being just Time Warner) is not allowed to solidify, amplify and expand it's market position, then the terrorists wi... wait, that one doesn't really fit here.

    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?

  • In January 2001, the FCC ruled that the combination of AOL and Time Warner could pose problems for competitors trying to develop their own IM products. Regulators and rivals were concerned that combining AOL's leading Internet subscriber base with Time Warner's entertainment content and regional cable monopoly would create an unfair advantage in the market.

    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?

  • iChat AV (Score:4, Interesting)

    by askien ( 123118 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:14PM (#6738502)
    I really hope that AOL interoperates with iChat AV.


    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???

    • I really hope that AOL interoperates with iChat AV.

      Unlikely in the extreme.

      As another, very informative post in this thread pointed out was noted in the dissenting FCC opinion, AOL-Time Warner has had the option to deploy instant messaging for the last two years, with all of these features, provided it interoperates with others (such as iChat).

      They have chosen not to do so, because they anticipate greater profits through customer lockin despite the fact that it has taken them two years to buy off the FC
  • 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
    • Indeed, protocols and file formats should all be open. Closed protocols serve only to stifle competition. Congress can pass laws banning anti-competative practices. They should ban this one. Won't happen though.

  • And how exactly is stifiling competition (Score:3, Insightful)

    by loraksus ( 171574 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:23PM (#6738597) Homepage
    I (sorta, because I use trillian) am pissed that none of the networks work together - it reminds me of small children fighting over a glass of orange juice and spilling it in the process.

    At the same time I think deliberately crippling a product like this isn't going to help the average user - if you really want competition between the im makers, let them compete - add features in this case. Tit for tat, and soon somebody is paid by ??? to research a new streaming codec and comes out with something that kicks ass.
    Software doesn't get better if there is no push (from customers / marketing / management, etc) for it.

  • Details of the Dissenting Opinion (Score:5, Informative)

    by nsda's_deviant ( 602648 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:30PM (#6738655)
    One of the key players in the persuading the FCC to let AOLIM be kept [com.com] is William P. Rogerson [northwestern.edu], former FCC chair and economist at Northwestern. I couldn't find his paper but the dissenting opinions of Gerald R. Faulhaber and David J. Farber; both UPenn Econmics professors give a great opinion on why AOL has been behaving badlly [fcc.gov] (All gentlemen have held high ranking positions on the FCC). Its in PDF but their criticisms of Rogerson's draft are striking,

    "AOL Time Warner's strategic behavior has not changed, and that is perhaps the most compelling evidence that they believe they can eventually tip the market by refusing to interoperate. Such strategic behavior only makes sense if the market leader expects the market to tip in its favor; otherwise, interoperation is their best strategy. But the Petition and the Affidavit are strangely and tellingly silent on this key piece of evidence.

    We also note that AOL Time Warner failed to exploit its newly acquired cable assets to deploy an AOL Broadband service. Since the firm had no Broadband service, it had little reason to care about advanced IM services such as two-way video that are not feasible on dial-up connections. However, AOL Time Warner has just recently begun marketing AOL Broadband, apparently now trying to capitalize on its cable assets. It should not come as a surprise that as AOL Time Warner rolls out its new broadband offering, it wishes to be relieved of the requirement to interoperate if it offers an IM-based high-speed service. Their behavior suggests that they may well have such a service ready to roll out soon as a feature of their AOL Broadband, and wish to keep their network effects proprietary. In fact, it is precisely this case that the Merger Order anticipated when it imposed the IM condition.

    We urge the FCC to proceed cautiously. While conditions have evolved since the Merger Order that suggest network effects and tipping are not as urgent today, other evidence suggests that it is perhaps even more urgent. The FCC needs to recall that AOL Time Warner has in its own hands the ability to offer advanced IM-based highspeed services without let or hindrance: it need only interoperate with its competitors, as it promised the world it would do two years ago, to the benefit of all customers."

  • IM is for nancies (Score:4, Funny)

    by CausticWindow ( 632215 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:31PM (#6738667)

    Real men use SMS (because real girls don't use IM).

  • I don't buy this argument -

    "Sorry dude I put the gun on you, and it misfired ... so lets just forget about everything because you are lucky to be alive"

    .. how many businesses died because the this behemoth's intransigent attitude ... And they are STILL THREE times bigger than the nearest competitor ...

    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. [tvweek.com] 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 ...

  • Not really *that* bad (Score:3, Insightful)

    by imnoteddy ( 568836 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:39PM (#6738743)
    Given that Apple has added video to iChat, and that MS is planning to fold video messaging into Longhorn (or whatever) why not let AOL compete in the market?

  • yay? (Score:2, Funny)

    by TheCyko1 ( 568452 )
    After seeing what QTPie123 looked like through a web cam, i can't say this is a good idea

    *shudders* so many chins...

    • You know her too? I wonder if she still has her job at Siebel... :)
      • My name is Jeremy and I have an I.Q. of 6,000; the same I.Q. as 6,000 P.E. teachers!

        This line is better known as

        "I am Holly, the ship's computer, with an IQ of 6000, the same IQ as 6000 PE teachers"

        from Red Dwarf

        dave

  • Don't flame AOL on this one. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:45PM (#6738790) Homepage
    The field was clear for years for someone else to develop such "advanced" systems. Everyone (except Microsoft, whose system was unwieldy and difficult to work with, despite its being included with Windows) dropped the ball despite having an open field. If AOL can now develop such a system, and people like it, more power to them!

  • iChat AV -- Technology Test or Trojan Horse? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BrotherPope ( 8102 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @06:45PM (#6738791)
    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).

  • its a bout time... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Lynxpro ( 657990 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [orpxnyl]> on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @07:14PM (#6739073)
    The FCC restrictions were bogus. AOL NEVER restricted its own userbase from downloading other IM clients. They had just as much right to try to block out others illegally hacking into their network (hint hint--> Microsoft) as any ISP has over blocking out spam. Microsoft complained the loudest over AOL's potential monopoly (isn't that irony for you?) and then contributed a substantial amount of money for campaign contributions. Now let's look at Microsoft with its closed Xbox system (which I own one). Do you think for a moment they'll allow AOL or Yahoo to port their instant messaging to the Xbox(or Mozilla Firebird as a browser)? No way. Incidentally, Sony sought out AOL to provide the Playstation2 with IM capabilities once Sony gets serious about online playing with the release of the PS2 hard drive. To stick these restrictions on AOL for the past three years while failing to break up Microsoft's OS and Office productivity packages screamed of hypocricy. AOL should be complaining to Justice, the FTC, and the FCC about how all the other cable companies have blocked AOL from offering AOL Broadband directly to their customers... BYOA is not the answer, it should be single-source billing...

    • AOL NEVER restricted its own userbase from downloading other IM clients.

      Perhaps you haven't heard about OSCAR [wikipedia.org], the main protocol used by AIM. AOL has gone to great lengths to change the protocol in order to prevent others from reverse-engineering it and developing fully AIM-compatible clients.

      AOL lets people use a depreciated protocol, TOC, but the TOC protocol doesn't support anywhere near the feature set of AOL's client.

      Sure, you have a right to try MSN or Yahoo! clients. But if you want a better AI

  • 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 ;)
  • Is there any movement out there to create a standardized IM protocol? We have one for just about every OTHER major IP application, (Mail, news, etc) so why not develop an open IM protocol and let people release their own clients with their own feature-sets that operate within these designated standards?

  • The world was different then (Score:3, Insightful)

    by salesgeek ( 263995 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:30AM (#6742840) Homepage
    When the rule was made IM was regarded as the next killer application. The fear was that IM was going to replace email and AOL would corner the market. Reality was IM is a usefull utility.

    AOLs current problems have nothing to do with IM clients. They did well in the modem era because they had a easy to use product that was well marketed. AOL has done a great job fscking up the transition to broadband. Plus TimeWarner already had an online service prior to the merger... Roadrunner...
  • SightSpeed [sightspeed.net] uses a much better videoconferencing codec than H.323. It was first developed as the Linux-based Qvix [sourceforge.net].

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