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Ruling in Aimster Case 91

Posted by michael from the dead-as-a-doornail dept.
Circuit Breaker writes "A short history of Aimster: Got noticed by the RIAA, lost their domain name to AOL, changed their name to Madster. More recently, a preliminary injunction has been issued against them, according to BBC News and Associated Press. Who's next?" Aimster declared bankruptcy months ago, so this is really a formality: beating a dead horse.
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Ruling in Aimster Case More

Ruling in Aimster Case

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  • Have to say it... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @08:01AM (#4219765) Homepage
    Does their homepage have a picture of a dead kitty's tombstone, drawn in MS-Paint?

    If not, they're not officially dead yet.
  • I'm sorry, but even on the sliding scale of horrible peer-to-peer sharing services, Aimster was quite shitty. You won't see me losing any sleep over this.

  • Precedent (Score:2, Insightful)

    by grent246 ( 600606 )
    What better way to establish precedent than by going up against a bankrupt company that can't mount a defence.....

  • Flawed p2p app. Flawed business model. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cioxx ( 456323 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @08:11AM (#4219802) Homepage
    It was one of those 3,000 other Napster clones hoping to hit big-time.

    Listen to the retarded business model they had:

    Combine AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) with Gnutella client to build upon the existing user base of AOL customers (IM side) who would in turn chat and exchange files.

    I tried to install it a year or so ago when there was this instant hype, but it was just horrible. The only p2p model that has a remote chance to survive in this hostile world of RIAA omnipotence is the Direct Connect (DC)

  • Madster Homepage (Score:5, Funny)

    by T-Kir ( 597145 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @08:13AM (#4219807) Homepage

    Hey Everybody, It's That Same Great Service You've Known And Loved For So Long - Now With A Mad Cool New Name ...

    They ought to add to the website:

    ...not only all that, you can make friends with all those music company bigwigs, and win a free long term holiday in a -4 star jail cell. It's absolutely fun fun fun! An the other funny thing people, we're dead!! Isn't that super!

    Madster - we've got a new namester

    ...nope, another change needed... Deadster will do nicely.

    • not only all that, you can make friends with all those music company bigwigs, and win a free long term holiday in a -4 star jail cell.

      Not realy, they don't care if you broke any law or not, they only want to drive you out of business.

      Me think you need to read this [avault.com]

  • "At issue is a service whose very raison d'etre appears to be the facilitation of and contribution to copyright infringement on a massive scale," Chief Judge Marvin Aspen wrote in his order granting the companies' request for a preliminary injunction.

    Obviously Aimster/Madster did not exactly follow the rules, but isn't it a bit harsh way of putting it to say that the reason for aimster's existence was facilitation of copyright infringement?

    • > but isn't it a bit harsh way of putting it to
      > say that the reason for aimster's existence was
      > facilitation of copyright infringement?

      Well, no. It's true.

    • but isn't it a bit harsh way of putting it to say that the reason for aimster's existence was facilitation of copyright infringement?

      No. We all know that. From a legal standpoint, the judge is declaring Madster guilty before the trial starts, though.

      To be fair, guns' very raison d'etre appears to be the facilitation of and contribution to killing people on a massive scale. Except that big business makes them, too. Only a few crackpots try to claim that those companies are in any way responsible for your or my choice to commit a crime.

      Oh, right- I had forgotten that the world of computers is somehow different. Then why isn't MS in trouble for all the spam that Outlook is used to send? Say it could be proven that the vast majority of spam was sent via Outlook. Then Outlook's very raison d'etre appears to be the facilitation of and contribution to spam on a massive scale, doesn't it? "No," MS would claim. "Our software is intended for peer to peer communication and we have no control over what is sent via it. The individual spammers are breaking the law, not us. Our software has a legitimate purpose." Except that because the big corp's. haven't figured out how to wring out enough profit from P2P to drop their old business models, they bought laws making it illegal. Not the infringement itself (which was already illegal), but the software that has a legitimate purpose but gets perverted buy self serving users. Wait- that sounds kind of like our Constitution, doesn't it?

  • "Founder Johnny Deep said he had not seen the opinion of the judge in yesterday's hearing, but he did not think think there was a lot of copyright material shared on Madster."
    What a brilliant defense! Although with a clever "stagename" like Johnny Deep what exactly did anyone expect? I'm assuming the next step will be some second rate pr0n star suing him for infringing on his name. *sigh* Is this stuff really news?
  • Their web page reads "The ONLY Service With NO SPYWARE!".
    How can they be so sure the others are that crappy ?
    And, BTW, if we consider they use(d) GNUtella code for the p2p service, then GNUtella is spyware free 2... not to mention GNUnet...

  • A judge with an odd sense of humor? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @08:45AM (#4219917) Homepage
    From the Associated Press [findlaw.com] link:
    [Judge] Aspen gave the companies suing Madster until next week to propose language for a "narrowly tailored" injunction that would end copyright infringement "while allowing non-infringing uses of the Aimster system, if any, to continue."

    Somebody hit this judge with a clue-stick please?
    It would be a lot easier to try to end the use of Madster by left handed people while allowing right handed to continue using the system. *

    * Foot note, ambidexterous people can only use the system on tuesdays, thursdays, saturdays, and before noon on sundays.

    -
    • His opinion [uscourts.gov] goes into a fair amount of detail as to why he is convinced that Deep was playing games with copyright infringement. He is ordering them to try to respect the non-infringing users. He is not saying that if it is not possible, that the service isn't getting shut down.

      He does have a clue as to how to be an effective judge, and he also knows that Judge Patel ended up having problems with the Ninth Circuit for not trying hard enough to sort out the infringing from the non-infringing. He is trying to avoid those problems. It is up to the parties to draft the thing, not the Judge, precisely because he knows he doesn't know the technology. Both parties will come back with drafts, and reasons supporting the drafts. Mind you, Aimster won't be able to argue that shutting down infringements without non-infringements is impossible. If Aimster does that, he shuts it all down.

      Even if that is the final result, he needed to put the drafting step in so that the Court of Appeals could see that Aimster failed to provide a sound technical basis for shutting one down but not the other when ordered to. That is done to keep Aimster from gratuitously changing positions on appeal. (Before Aspen saying: "Impossible", and then at the Court of Appeals saying: "Very easy.")
    • Somebody hit this judge with a clue-stick please? It would be a lot easier to try to end the use of Madster by left handed people while allowing right handed to continue using the system.

      I think you're not giving the judge enough credit. It's likely that he knows that. He's requiring the companies suing Madster to come up with a way to avoid harming innocent users before he takes any action. If they can't, he might make them demonstrate thoroughly that virtually no one uses the system in a legitimate way. If they can't do either, sucks for them.

  • So what we need now is a company that makes money from the establishment, rise and fall of P2P companies. Perhaps a group of law firms, broadband providers and CD-R media companies could band together to keep the flow of disposable P2P companies going?

  • Aimster Info (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Evro ( 18923 ) <evandhoffman.gmail@com> on Monday September 09, 2002 @08:47AM (#4219926) Homepage Journal
    I used to work at Aimster; for some more info about how they shafted their employees (similar to Loki I guess), read some of my old Journal entries: Also worthy of note is this site that John Deep has set up, ostensibly for his daughter to write about all her "knowledge" of the music industry; I'd put 10 to 1 odds that it's John himself writing that garbage, and 100 to 1 that it's not his daughter. The site is www.musicpundit.com [musicpundit.com].

    • Re:Aimster Info (Score:3, Insightful)

      by duffbeer703 ( 177751 )
      I can identify with your plight -- it sucks to work for a scumbag thief.

      On the other hand, when you decide to join a company that does not and cannot make money, a company which very obviously is stealing/riding the tradmark of one of the largest corporations in the US and then choose to stay with a company that regularly misses payrolls, you have to accept some of the fault.

      I work with some folks whose offices are in the same building on State St. as AIMster was located. They all saw the writing on the wall.

      • Re:Aimster Info (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Evro ( 18923 )
        Well, I definitely realized I was taking a risk, however it never occurred to me that Aimster would do what they did, i.e. totally shaft the employees. I figured even if the company tanked, they'd give us some warning. With even 2 weeks notice I could have made arrangements, but they chose to be cowards and allow us to all continue working for 4 weeks even though they didn't have the money to pay us.

        As for the AIM trademark thing, I don't think anybody realized AOL had a trademark on AIM. After the initial ruling was handed down that ordered us to give over aimster.com to AOL, I suggested we change the name of the application. I thought something more generic, like imster, filetrader, or anything would be better than Aimster. John ignored this and decided to just fight the ruling, only to be shot down later on. He even suggested moving the Aimster service to www.aimeedeep.com/aimster/, yet another bit of evidence that his main goal with Aimster was to propel his daughter to stardom.

        Regarding the previous missed payrolls, the most recent one before the Aug 10th one had been about 6 or 7 months before, so it wasn't like they were constant and I would have been expecting it.

        While I was definitely partly to blame, it would never, in a million years, have occurred to me that anyone would do what Aimster did to me. Looking back now, I see that Aimster wasn't the only company to treat its employees as mere chattel, however I was naive enough to think that they would act honorably. As others have said, it was a hard, expensive lesson learned.

        And to whomever said it: yes, my mother was right, and believe me, she lets me know it every time I see her. :-/
        • "While I was definitely partly to blame, it would never, in a million years, have occurred to me that anyone would do what Aimster did to me"

          I can understand that. Fortunately ( or unfortunately) I worked for ascumbag employer when I was a teenager, which left me cynical enough not to blindly trust in a employer's ethics.

          Life will go on I guess. Enjoy.

    • Re:Aimster Info (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by gmhowell ( 26755 )
      Damn! If that's really her picture, you should arrange to give her a spanking. That could make up for some loss of pay.

    • Since you evidently worked at the company and have some knowledge of Deep himself, can you PLEASE answer the question I know many of us who have been following the Aimster saga really need answering : Does his daughter REALLY look like that ?
      • His daughter looks like an average teenage girl. Most of the publicity photos were taken by a professional photographer, with a professional makeup artist on hand. As far as I know the images haven't been photoshopped much, if at all. She visited the Aimster offices maybe 10 times in the 10 months I was there, so I didn't really see her too frequently. Incidentally, this is why I found the stuff John fed the press about his daughter writing the program so infuriating; she had nothing whatsoever to do with the program and he gave her all the credit. Sigh.
    • I do feel for you, but after I read your woes one thing sticks out. I went thru the same things, just with smaller crooked companies. You were several thousand dollars in debt when the end happened. You had no savings whatsoever. Your salary was 67,500 a year, you should have saved some of it. After I elected to quit rather than get a salary cut in august 2001, I had some money put away. I lived in Manhatten and made about the same money as you did, so my rent and lifestyle were a least as much as yours.

      I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but me and many of my friends left school for dot-coms and went through the same crash. I personally saved a little over $7,000, which was enough to move and start up school again. Everyone who thought that the boom would never end and was out buying $40,000 dollar cars is in deep shit.

      Sorry Evro, but you made your own bed. You took a big risk and lost, you should have been prepared for that eventuality.
      • net pay: $1400 every 2 weeks (they were deducting for a loan I had taken from the company to pay for my security deposit for the apartment)
        rent: $1150
        electric/gas: $150
        car payment: $310
        car insurance: $180
        cable/internet: $80
        Credit cards: $100
        Student loans: $150
        Telephone: $40
        G/F smoking 2 packs/day: $300

        Monthly expenses: $2460
        Net income: $2800

        That leaves $340 for the entire month, and on top of that, there's gas, incidentals, and... oh yeah... food. Sure, if my gf had stopped smoking that would have made a sizable dent, but that's a long story in and of itself. She has since quit. In any case, while it's true that I should have been saving, it was simply not possible.

        Ok, so you lived in Manhattan. Were you living alone? Or were you supporting another person and 2 dogs? If not then the only similarity I can draw between your story and mine is that we both left school for jobs and we were both in New York state.
    • That sucks. Although when you work for a company who's expressed goal is to facilitate breaking the law, its hard to be suprised that they are ripping you off.
      • That wasn't the goal when I joined them. It was supposed to be napster-like sharing but only with the people on your AIM buddy list, with the end result being basically groupware. Then at some point they made it basically another Napster clone, with a buddy list slapped onto the side. Incidentally, I believe the groupware idea has been commandeered by MS.
        • Yeh, but you knew or reasonably should have from the napster fallout that file sharing programs aren't really legal so its hard to be suprised that they got sued out of business..but it really is shady how they treated their employees..
    • Evro,

      Sorry to hear all that shit went down with you. I'm even more sorry to hear that you left Dartmouth - I'm going into my sophomore year there, and it's pretty much my favorite place in the world. I'm not the biggest fan of theoretical computing stuff, but I can't imagine ever wanting to leave Dartmouth early for any kind of pie-in-the-sky job offer.

      Well, perhaps you'll be in my Theory of Computation class in the winter if you come back this year - it's being taught by Jayanti, who is supposed to be one of the best profs in the school, so maybe he will get you interested in the subject.
      • Yes, Jayanti was probably my favorite CS professor (I think I had him for CS37), along with Cormen; perhaps he could make the topic interesting. When I was taking the course it was being taught by a visiting professor from SUNY Albany -- that was one of my major gripes with Dartmouth, about half the classes I took in CS were taught by visiting professors. I chose dartmouth for the supposed quality of its teachers; if I had wanted to be taught by teachers from SUNY Albany or UMD, I would have attended those schools and saved quite a bit.

        Dartmouth is not at all accommodating when it comes to options for completing your education there. Basically the only option is to move to Hanover and attend class there. I think all of the other Ivies have some sort of distance learning program to accommodate people in situations such as mine, but not Dartmouth, and when I spoke with the dean she indicated that there were no plans for any such program, as Dartmouth likes being a residential college. I'll admit that it was part of the charm that drew me to the school in the first place, but at this point in my life it seems ridiculous.

        I'll probably finish up at Columbia, which is much closer, offers distance learning, and has an entire school just for returning students. Despite the pressure from my mother, it would be completely irresponsible of me to quit my job (which I love) to go and finish school only to be sitting on my ass after graduation. Also, I've found that I hate computer science -- I'm currently working as a sysadmin, something for which a computer science curriculum really doesn't prepare you.

        Anyhow, I'm glad you like Dartmouth, but in retrospect it was probably the worst choice I've ever made (worse than the Aimster fiasco). I was quite unhappy with most of my classes, and I found that the school seemed to put students last on the priority list -- anyone who's made the mile-long trek from the Choates to A-lot in 36 inches of snow when it's -20 degrees F because the college allows everyone except students to park near the dorms can probably see where I'm coming from in that regard.

        Again, best of luck, but you probably won't be seeing me there anytime soon.
    • You know, I have never worked for a company that disbursed my salary two weeks after the end of the pay cycle! Always right at the end of the cycle, or even a couple days before.

      It seems very likely that Deep always intended to cheat you out of your last month's salary. That's why he hired a bunch of kids on their first salaried job, so they wouldn't know that his business practices weren't normal.

      Is that legal? IANAL, but it wouldn't suprise me if it weren't. Boggles my mind how often shady employers do stupid, illegal stuff to shave a few pennies off their bottom line. If you have the cash for a retainer, you should talk to a lawyer who specializes in labor law.

      And if you can verify any of the bookkeeping BS Deep is obviously pulling, you should contact the IRS. They pay commissions for that kind of info!

      • You know, I have never worked for a company that disbursed my salary two weeks after the end of the pay cycle! Always right at the end of the cycle, or even a couple days before. Is that legal?

        My girlfriend works for a government agency now and has a similar latency between pay period and payroll issuance, so I don't think it's illegal -- I find it highly inconvenient, however. I think the theory is that when you're laid off, you'll still get 2 paychecks, assuming of course that the company's not run by a crook.

        Thanks for the tips, I'll look into them.
    • I'm getting dangerously close to offering legal advice, but you've infected me with your pissed-offness, and I just thought of a way you might get back part of your unpaid salary.

      In New York state, the maximum you can sue for in Small Claims Court [tenant.net] is $3K. That's less than half of what you're owed. But in Small Claims, everybody represents themselves -- so there are no legal fees. You pay a fee to file and that's it.

      Now, it's gonna do you no good to sue Madster or any of Deep's other shell entities. He'll just pull the "There's no money!" trick one more time. Instead, you should sue Deep himself. Claim that Deep acted deceitfully and never meant to give you your money. Document as much weirdness as you can -- the weird payroll cycle, the nonsense of one part of the business having hardware money when another didn't even have payroll money... There's probably more if you look for it.

      At worst, the judge will just shoot down your legal theory, and you'll be out a filing fee and some time. But you'll still have the satisfaction of confronting Deep in person and documenting his dishonesty in a public forum.

      Unless, of course, Deep chooses to ignore the proceedings. In which case you win by default!

  • Crooked-Corporate-Lawyer: "But Judge, You'll see here in the 2002 Case, Aimseter vs. AOL-Time-Warner, they admitted they %did-whatever-AOLTW-accused-them-of". This matter has already been settled, you just have to apply the same solution"

    And that freinds is how America has lost its ability to defend reason from Corporate America

  • Slashdot 1 Horses 0 (Score:4, Funny)

    by ArthurDent ( 11309 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .ytinavsselgninaem.> on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:57AM (#4220717) Homepage Journal
    Total dead horses fragged: 5793

    Ben
  • Did anyone follow the link "Click here to download", located right under Deep's hot-looking supposed daughter's crotch, and NOT get what they were expecting ? If I can download her, Madster is going to be a huge success.
  • Anyone know what happened to XTCRadio??

    They appear to no longer have a DNS entry.

    This makes me sad.
  • So they got an injunction. This is worse than closing the barn door after the horse is gone. What will the RIAA do next? I can hardly wait to see some confession they extract with torture ;-)

  • Thank god. (Score:1, Funny)

    by dvChaos666 ( 318252 )
    I just wish people would Stop putting 'Ster' on the end of everything in the vague hope that it will make them famous or something. Now that Aimster/Madster is deadster can we finally have SilenceSter from all those napster copies of P2Pster SoftSter pleaseSter ? FreeSter is NOTSter a bussiness model. Ster.

    Thank you.

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