AOL locks out Trillian IM users

AOL locks out Trillian IM users

People using the popular Trillian software may lose access to part of AOL Time Warner's instant messaging system.
Firing another salvo in the battle over instant messaging, America Online is blocking people using the Trillian interface from linking to its AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) system.

Trillian, which allows people to access multiple instant messaging programs from one screen, has attracted nearly a million people who are hoping to streamline their use of incompatible systems, including AOL's AIM and ICQ, Yahoo's Messenger and Microsoft's MSN Messenger.

But in the past 24 hours, an elaborate game of cat and mouse has developed between AOL and Trillian creator Cerulean Studios--as the start-up has repeatedly released new software designed to get around the block, prompting AOL to rush in and stop people from using it.

Meanwhile, Trillian fans are snared in cross fire.

"AOL is being selfish," Trillian user Mike Cicciarelli said in an instant messaging exchange with News.com.

Trillian user Chris Hilbert said he's downloaded new software several times in the past day in an attempt to re-establish access with AIM. Hilbert said he uses Trillian because it's simple.

"I like that there are no ads, less bloat," said Hilbert, an Indiana University student and creator of the FileFlash Web site. "I don't have to have four different clients open."

But AOL said it's a matter of security and is framing the conflict as yet another chapter in the instant messaging wars. In recent years, AOL has clashed with other makers of IM software, including Microsoft and AT&T. Both companies tried to create systems that let people correspond with AIM users--only to have them blocked.

"It has long been our very public policy that when a service unleashes software that hacks into our system, and endangers the security of our system, we stop it," AOL spokeswoman Kathy McKiernan said.

McKiernan said that Trillian does not have a business relationship with AOL. "To the extent that consumers think they do, they were misled," McKiernan said.

Meanwhile, the creators of Trillian plan to keep up the tit-for-tat efforts. Since AOL first started blocking the software Tuesday, they have released one workaround and at least two more full downloads of Trillian.

Michael Gartenberg, a research director at Jupiter Media Metrix, called AOL's practice "predatory," but he said at least the media behemoth is consistent in blocking both large and small companies from accessing its system.

"There are no technical reasons they can't open up IM, but there are a lot of business reasons not to," Gartenberg said. "They're not going to unless they're forced to."

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-826707.html

God will you stop posting the ****ing news. Who cares if aol wants to generate revenue from services run on their servers that cost a ton of money to maintain.

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From the Trillian homepage
30 January 2002 - Trillian v0.721 Released!

Another day, another release. We've fixed another AIM connectivity bug this go-around and also re-enabled the SecureIM prefs.

Thanks for your support, folks! - The Cerulean Studios Team

29 January 2002 - Trillian v0.72 Released!

(...)

29 January 2002 - AOL Connection Issues

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Have a look at header picture, I added it below, it made me laugh :) Anyway, right now I'm using .0721, and I'm connected again to AIM. Seems that Cerulean won this round, but then again, how long can they keep this up?

The sad part about it is that I don't even have AIM-users in my contact-list... oh well :)

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Originally posted by oblio :dunce:
God will you stop posting the f**king news. Who cares if aol wants to generate revenue from services run on their servers that cost a ton of money to maintain.

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Oblio,
why don't you stop posting shite?

I've already thanked jared_c for posting another news article, I'd rather see something twice than not at all.

J.

In total contrast of what Oblio has said, I am grateful that you posted this news article, as for a few days now I've been getting frustrated with this damn Trillian cos it kept disconnecting me from AIM. Now I know why - damn those AOL bastards!! Thanks heaps for posting it.

Greg

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"It has long been our very public policy that when a service unleashes software that hacks into our system, and endangers the security of our system, we stop it," AOL spokeswoman Kathy McKiernan said.

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Unleashes software that hacks into their system....what a crock of shite. So, Kathy, will you answer my never-answered question of "When will you start actually preventing script-kiddy effort from aol?". It's supposed to be a "family-oriented" ISP yet they don't mind selling UIN lists for porn ads to people soliciting them on ICQ. And what's this 'hacking' when it's authenticating against aol servers in the same manner that AIM does? And what is this crap about "endangers the security of our system" when you consider the exploit AIM itself had?

Trillian is by far superior to any of the IM/chat clients out there and I've donated 50 bucks to date in support. I'll go donate another 50 right now just to keep them going and in the fight. I think AOL's just mad because it's two guys working on Trillian and they're smarter, better, and more proficient with the code than anyone at AOL. Good job Scott and Kevin!

To quote them (as Guus stated already):

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Another day, another release. We've fixed another AIM connectivity bug this go-around and also re-enabled the SecureIM prefs.

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Kiss off AOL...your IM is 'free' so it shouldn't matter if someone authenticates it along with other servers.

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The sad part about it is that I don't even have AIM-users in my contact-list... oh well

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HEHEHE!!! Me neither, but it still annoyed the crap out of me when it wouldn't connect :)
What's your contact? Then we'll both have someone on AIM!! :)

Greg

How greedy is AOL...you know in version 7.0 they actually have encoded in the source to blue screen fatal error when you try and uninstall. WTF can someone sue AOL please!?!

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Originally posted by hot_ice


HEHEHE!!! Me neither, but it still annoyed the crap out of me when it wouldn't connect :)
What's your contact? Then we'll both have someone on AIM!! :)

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hehehe, yeah, I hear what you're saying, I want it to connect to all servers too, regardless if i'm actually using them :) Look at my profile for contact-information.

And the battle continues...

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From the Trillian homepage
01 February 2002 - Trillian v0.722 Released!

With today's release, we've taken the opportunity to fix a few of the bugs being reported. Options should be saving properly across all mediums now.

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AOL is locking out everyone exept for AIM users.... I used to use GAIM for Linux..And now whenever I log on.. Im greeted with mesage that says 'Please upgrade to an authentic AOL-AIM client'. Pathetic isnt it... Just because AOL and M$ are fighting the users lose out :mad:

why one earth do you think that you deserve the right to use their services. They only provide them as a means of generating income. If the makers of trillian and gaim are so concerned with the internet community's ability to chat, then they can setup their own servers and do as they wish. Get a clue you idiots, you can't expect something for nothing.

Yet another awe-inspiring post by Oblio's sharp-ass wit...

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why one earth do you think that you deserve the right to use their services. They only provide them as a means of generating income. If the makers of trillian and gaim are so concerned with the internet community's ability to chat, then they can setup their own servers and do as they wish. Get a clue you idiots, you can't expect something for nothing.

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They ruined ICQ when they bought out Mirabilis and I used to get porn-ads every day on ICQ before I said "To hell with this ****". What happened to privacy? It means nothing when AOL sells UIN lists to anyone with money. **** that noise and screw the whole 'provide them as a means of generating income' bullshit because guess what. AOL is the number one "ISP" because of it's UI, which handholds every dumbass with a computer bought at Best Buy, Walmart, you name it. Give a good product and yeah, I'll agree to that but AIM isn't a good product (exploits anyone?), it's simply the most used IM out there due to the #1 slot it holds. As for 'generating income', you mean the ads you're forced to endure with AIM? There's only so much you can turn off and I'm betting money that only lasts a bit longer before you're forced to look at ads, look at stock quotes for AOL, and other useless **** that isn't worth putting up there. As for Trillian, they're making a product that's compatible for 5 chat mediums, not server-hosted chatting, you dumbfsck. GAIM was probably done by someone who had some spare time and said 'Why can't linux users use AIM?'.

No, let me tell you what it *really* is.. It's AOL being pissy because other chat clients can interface with their authentication (something *they* started with AIM/ICQ) and now that everyone does it, they're mad because said users aren't using "authentic" AIM programs.

Secondly, I *SUPPORT* Trillian. I've donated 50 bucks to date with another 25 on the way to keep them in the fight for a better program. And you know what else? I'm about to tell all my friends who use AIM that I'm going to Yahoo so that then I can say "Screw AIM" altogether. Until then, I'm supporting Trillian and watching 2 programmers beat out everyone at AOL.
Go Scott! Go Kevin!

Why don't YOU get a clue (aka, stop putting down every post I've had the misfortune to read by you) and go post somewhere else because frankly, I, and others, am tired of your bullshit posts.

uh, first of all AOL has provided a java version and a linux version of aim for quite some time now. As a matter of fact the java version came out less than a year after aim was first released. Next Mirabilis didn't have to sell to AOL, they CHOSE to 1) because the price was right 2) because they realized the astronomical cost of hosting servers for the FREE usage of millions of people. How can you possibly think that you deserve the RIGHT to use such servers? News flash you complete idiot, you do not have this right. Lucky for you AOL provides this service free of charge and the only requirement is that their advertisements be present. Who the **** cares who you donate your money to, that is IRRELEVANT. The fact remains that AOL is under no obligation to let you use their servers. By your logic, any server hosting FTPD should give you access because it is there and you have paid the shareware fee for WS_FTP. Kudos to you for supporting free software, but shame on you for being a complete idiot. You are obviously anti capitalism and I suggest that you look into distributed chat where everyone is equal. Until then shut the **** up and open your eyes greedy guss. Oh and as for selling UIN lists, this is just a claim you made up with no evidence. There are many programs available to send messages to a range of UINs. They do not exactly need to SELL UIN lists considering they are issued sequentially.

Part of that's right, part of that's wrong. I won't tell you which. I'll leave that up to you to decide considering you're "oh so wise" in all aspects of security/programming/etc. Go back to your java (something you like to point out knowing) until you decide to actually post helpful messages/responses. Until then, you're useless.

Points to me for giving someone of your kind credit for my erroneous post but you'll never admit that, would you? Not everyone using linux has java installed. It's not a 'requirement' for netscape/mozilla to load, it's simply a plug-in. As for being anti-capitalism, where the hell did you get that theory from? Oh wait, I remember now, you're Oblio, the guy who posted points as other people, cause trouble, post useless shite, and other nefarious activities... I'll end that rant now, seeing as it's a waste of time and space. We see who's really a complete idiot.

BTW, you don't happen to use AOL, do you? I'd be forced to laugh at you mercilessly if you did. :D

Enjoy the postive points I gave you just because it's a different aspect. We can all get along, I'm sure.

i never give points ever. A requirement of GAIM is that gtk be installed, a requirement of gtk is glibc. What point are you trying to make when saying that not everyone has a jre. Not everyone has glib and gtk... And yes I know java, which only is made in reference to java related posts. Java is an easy language to learn and I by all means do not consider it a great feat to know it. You need to calm down. Oh by the way the JRE that comes with netscape now is an official sun JRE and is not a plugin by any means.

I'll calm down when you make actual beneficial posts just like the one I'm replying to. It was actually informative and I'm not at all "hostile" as I may appear. As for JRE, that's something that you can download and install but by no means is necessary for your browser to work. If all browsers agreed, it could be straight Java (JRE) or .Net (something that MS seems to be betting the bank on but has bugs to work out). Yes, you're right, GTK is not on every machine but if you don't have glibc libraries, you're not doing much of anything. /usr/include and /usr/lib are default directories for all of this. As for Netscape, I don't keep up with it. Opera's my choice (bought copy) and I'm hoping it'll have official support for Java 1.4.1 (I think that's the latest, maybe beta). Systems administration is my job, not java or other plugins for browsers.

java 1.4 has not had an official release. And I dread when it does. The java AIM is not an applet, it is a standalone java application and has been around even longer than gaim.

I heard a rumor at my office,(( www.ev1.net )) that AOL is working on their own Operating System. Its supposed to be senior citizen proof.I havent heard much eles, which is why I am posting this to see if you guys have heard anything.

I think it would be a great idea...even though i hate aol with a passion.I think it would make a big difference for the whole software industry. If they didnt integrate it with windows or some other existing OS. AOL is widley spread through out the counrty it would take a percentage of MICROSOFT's customers. There fore loosening Microsoft's MOnopaly..

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java 1.4 has not had an official release. And I dread when it does. The java AIM is not an applet, it is a standalone java application and has been around even longer than gaim.

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What's wrong with 1.4? I'm not as savvy in java as I am hardware/system-wise so I thought, generally speaking, that an updated java version would be a good thing. Are they changing some core component that screws something up or something like that? As far as java AIM, if that's a standalone application, why not just bundle it as another program? AFAIK, the java AIM client was a workaround for firewalls, allowing anyone behind a rather restrictive firewall to bypass it because it's part of web traffic (port 80). Lots of programs use that trick now, and it's getting interesting to see how rulesets for firewalls will work in the future.

The whole point on my support for trillian (for clarification only) is that trillian does nothing more than authenticate and pull a buddy list from a server. If people want to use AIM, they will as I've met a lot of people who use AOL and AIM and won't use anything else. However, if people are wanting to try other programs, there are a very limited few out there. Running an IM client with fast servers is very expensive, as stated earlier, but that's par for the course for a 'free' program (albeit, free with ads and other things) that's used for garnering other clients (income, as you put it). Maybe with the support Trillian's getting, they'll be able to put up servers themselves and then what? I would guess AIM programmers would then figure out how to pull clients from Trillian servers or cross-authenticate AIM with Trillian/etc. Would that then not be the same as what AOL is trying to prevent? I see AOL as the sulking kid in the corner right now, mad because they're not keeping 100% of the people on AIM/AOL. It's no surprise that they're in a 'fight' with MS right now over the browser frontend (AOL wants theirs up front, MS wants IE up front, to put it in very short terms).

Moral of the story: let everyone cross reference to everyone else. If IM clients are to be free and used to get other customers, then let the servers be used for authentication purposes only. And if Trillian does put up servers (unlikely), then I'll be telling everyone I know to switch to them, and I'll be getting off everything else.

Last note: MS has done plenty of nasty tricks like this to prevent other programs/applications from working on windows operating systems. Anyone have opinions on that? Netscape on 95 anyone?
That's a whole hell of a lot more anti-capitalistic than anything Trillian's ever done, that's for sure and AOL's 7.0 BSOD upon uninstallation isn't much better, rofl...