AOL Sued For Putting Ads In Email
from the you've-got-lawsuits! dept
We Americans sure do love filing lawsuits for just about any reason. The latest is a guy who has sued AOL for putting text ads in his email messages, claiming that because he pays for his AOL account (that might be his first mistake), these ads are "fraud, unjust enrichment" and a violation of California business codes. He's trying to turn it into a class action lawsuit as well. Here's another suggestion: switch your email account. Hopefully this gets thrown out quickly.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: advertisements, email, lawsuits
Companies: aol
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
To be fair ...
Granted the lawsuit is silly, but as with some other ridiculus law suits out there he might just win.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: To be fair ...
I guess it's more fashionable to sue somebody for not giving you what you want, though...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: To be fair ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Please Mike dont tell me you fight for the rights of Spammers to!
Try Viagra.. Huh dont need that.. (Delete)
Losing Your Hair?... Dont need that either (Delete)
Wait these are crap spam EMAILS GRRRRRR..
Oh wait heres one from my friend who has an AOL account.
Try VIAGRA!!! GRRRRRRRRR
Yes I know you can block spam, Switch your email account etc..!!! But in this case I hope he wins!!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Please Mike dont tell me you fight for the rights of Spammers to!
The story isn't about someone getting spam emails. The story is about AOL putting a signature line at the bottom of emails that contain an ad (I believe just when he sends an email, it's a long time since I've seen an AOL account in action).
They've done this for years, and I can guarantee they're part of the terms and service for the AOL account. So, if he doesn't like it, he can switch to an email service that doesn't do that. Simple.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Please Mike dont tell me you fight for the rights of Spammers to!
Hmmm, Perhaps I could pose the same question to you:
Oh wait heres one from my friend who has an AOL account.
Try VIAGRA!!! GRRRRRRRRR
Nice try troll
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Please Mike dont tell me you fight for the rights of Spammers to!
Trolls do respond with inflammatory nonsense, often anonymously.
One of us fits this criteria, Anonymous Coward, I'm sorry if you can't accept honest criticism when you're wrong (albeit a little tongue-in-cheek in the wording. Sue me, I'm at work on a Friday night and slightly bored...).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Please Mike dont tell me you fight for the rights of Spammers to!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Please Mike dont tell me you fight for the rights of Spammers to!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Please Mike dont tell me you fight for the rights of Spammers to!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Please Mike dont tell me you fight for the rights of Spammers to!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Stick it to them!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
No longer do you have to sit through ads on cable.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
ADS are a social disease!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The cable networks are the one that are broadcasting advertisements, not the cable providers. Sure, the cable company fits some of their own ads for services in there, but all of the advertising money goes to the networks.
One notable exception is Armstrong cable they have banner ads in place in the guide menu of their set top boxes. I don't even think Comcast stoops that low (at least, I don't remember them doing that...it's been a while since I've been with them, though).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
None of these things are free, but the consumer wants to pay a bare minimum for the service (or in the case of emails, etc., nothing.). So, the services are subsidised by advertising, which takes care of a large portion of the cost of providing the service. If advertising did not exist on TV, you would pay significantly more for your service. If advertising did not exist on email services, AOL's service, GMail, Hotmail, etc. would either not exist or have a monthly charge.
If you weren't advertised to, you would probably not have a cable service since most people would not be able to afford the unsubsidised fee. If you hate the ads so much, do as many others do: ignore / DVR over the ads, or buy/rent the DVDs of the shows you watch.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AOL????
Really? I mean, really?? They're still here? Wow....
Not if they were the last plan on Earth.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AOL should eat it and die
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: AOL should eat it and die
You must be dropping services left and right, huh?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: AOL should eat it and die
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: AOL should eat it and die
Oh right, high speed. Um, well you can tack on our software and decreased internet functionality to your current provider for an extra $30/month.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: AOL should eat it and die
You can't use a DVR or TIVO to skip over pop-up ads. There is a difference between pop-up ads and insert ads. If you skip over a pop-up ad you skip over that portion of the program or movie.
The pop-up ads on cable play across the screen WHILE the program or movie is showing. They whoosh, gush, buzz, clomp and generally have a sound track that is often louder than the sound track of the programming. (... the murder is WHEEE... CLOMP CLOMP CLOMP... WHHHHOOOOSSHHHHHHHH WATCH THIS OTHER SHOW!!!!.. oh my god.. I would never have guess that. The end. An now.. the regular insert commercials. Yay!
Movies DVD's etc use ads at the beginning of the program. In case you've ever been to one, you'll notice that they don't play over the top of the movie. If you're playing a DVD, skip the commercials at the beginning of the DVD.
For the guy who says I must drop a lot of services. I have. If I don't like the service I do just what the others say to do. I vote with my feet. If I want to see a program I can stream it. There I expect ads because I'm not paying for the service. When I didn't like other people's messages and ads being attached to my email messages with no control over those messages, I got my own paid email service. Cost? $8 a YEAR.
For the guy who thinks that the use of ads lowers the price of the service... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I use a similar service that I (and you as well) pay for. The cost is lower than what I pay for my Internet connection. It is based on a global network about the same size as the Internet. It uses an all digital infrastructure. It is profitable. It does not use ads in the content. It's called the telephone. You may have noticed that the phone company does not need to interrupt your phone call with ads that play over your conversation. Why? You PAID for the service. In short, ads added to your email messages. Pop-up ads over programming etc., don't lower the cost of your service. Competition does that. They only serve to increase revenue based on the business model that you can shove an increasingly large load of crap down people's throat's over time. People accept it because "it's been that way a long time". A poor reason to accept anything from anyone.
Companies treat us like a bunch of Jim Jones converts because we're so easily brain washed. When the time comes they know that we will all step up and drink the Flavor-Aide. Why not? It's always been that way?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: AOL should eat it and die
Also, name one pop up ad that your cable company put on your television. And don't include the ones that the networks include... unless your completely confused and think the cable company and the networks are the same thing. Hate to break it to you, they're different companies.
And to be honest, your argument for why ads don't make something cheaper is just faulty logic. Using an anecdote about how you have a service that has no commercials and isn't expensive does not imply that all services are not expensive without commercials.
Competition lowers prices and they use ads to make up the money they lost in lowering prices.
And learn punctuation. I don't think your last statement is a question? (i did that on purpose)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
But as "Jim" and a few others happened to mention...you pay for a lot of things that come with ads on them.
Still, I sorta hope he wins too...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
"AOL has been offering free e-mail for the past two years but still sells dial-up subscriptions that include e-mail and other services."
I don't know how AOL operate right now other what's stated here, but he's paying for one of two things by the sounds of this. First, a package service that includes something other than email that cannot be provided for free. Secondly, the right to use an email address that ends @aol.com.
Either way, he's free to move away from one private company providing a service to another if he feels the charges are unjustified. If he's only staying for the latter reason, I can understand why he'd be annoyed, but why jump to a lawsuit unless he's running a business that depends on an AOL address (in which case, I could have told him 10 years ago that he was a fool)? Unless he truly depends on the specific address he's using, there's nothing to stop him moving to a better provider.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
he wants 5 million for this!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: he wants 5 million for this!
I use a free service from AOL (I don't want to - I had a Netscape account and they bought them over; I have hundreds of archived emails with no way to back them up and the netscape.net address has been given to many companies that I *want* to keep in touch with, so I'm kind of locked in...) and it was only when a friend didn't bother to delete the crap from a reply I discovered they were sending these ads out and making it sound like something *I* was recommending.
I hope he wins and screws them royally.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: he wants 5 million for this!
"the netscape.net address has been given to many companies that I *want* to keep in touch with"
What, exactly, is stopping them from sending them a new address and asking that they use that? Do you also keep hold of old properties in case people you have a vague connection to try knocking on the door?
Seriously though, by keeping the old address in spite of your objections to the way AOL run things, you're implicitly supporting them. A lawsuit - especially one this frivolous (AOL have been doing this for years and it's part of their T&Cs, so a lawsuit will not succeed) - will not change things. The only way to end it is to take business elsewhere. Millions of other have done so, why not you?
OK, it's a slightly different situation for you in that AOL bought Netscape (though that was many years ago, and they would almost certainly have asked for agreement to new T&Cs), so you didn't explicitly join them. But still, why continue to give them support instead of changing your email address?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: he wants 5 million for this!
Three reasons.
1) Sentimental. It was my first "proper" email address (back in 1999) and I'm quite attached to it. (It's no longer my "primary" address, though...)
2) Archival. From the outset I have maintained a "Kept for reference" folder, that now has several hundred emails with software unlock codes, forum passwords, warranty details etc., and there's no obvious way to archive those off easily without doing it one email at a time. I can't be @rsed.
3) Practical. For a number of years this was the address I had printed on business cards. I still (very occasionally) get contacted by people who didn't have their own email address when I gave them the card, and so I would have no way of contacting them to tell them that my address had changed.
As far as I can remember, they tried to "tempt" me with new T&Cs, offering "much more space". I refused to sign up as there was a clause that under the new T&Cs any email not accessed within 60 days would be automatically deleted and thus after two months my "archive" would have evaporated. I continue to use the account under the old Netscape T&Cs.
AOL Suck.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: he wants 5 million for this!
Anyway, at least you seem to be going about it in the right way - reading the T&Cs before agreeing to them, not using it as the primary account for a business, etc. I certainly wouldn't trust them as the only source for my archived data though, and I'd recommend spending the long boring evening sorting through for anything you might need. One day, AOL will probably decide these free services from people who don't want new T&Cs aren't worth keeping online...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: he wants 5 million for this!
I'm particularly thinking about the part of the business model that relies on them not being transparent about this; it's hidden in the T&Cs, and there's no way short of CCing every mail to yourself that you can monitor what they're adding to your messages, and certainly no way you can stop an "inappropriate" contextual ad before it is sent.
For example, someone sending an email giving condolences on the death of a loved one could easily have an ad for a dating service included, or someone advising a friend to move to Linux could have a Windows ad tacked on the end.
I'm all for the business model remaining, if they gave you an option to preview (and veto) the ad they intend to attach, perhaps even to pay, say, 2p (4c) to omit the ad from a particular message. Until then, screw 'em.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: he wants 5 million for this!
I hope they get him and his lousy brothers too, Ad Nauseum and Ad Hoc. Those guys make me sick of pawn shops.
What was the question?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I know what the Services will Say...
Take, for example, Comcast, who not only charges for their service but then imposes caps and throttling on its customers... all of its pages include advertising (i.e. their home page, their webmail page, etc.) which, whioe it does not transmit to an email recipient, is always "in your face" as a user.
If this guy wins, I can envision all kinds of lawsuits being filed against other ISPs!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I hate paid for ads
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AOL
Hope this guy wins BIG
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The guy may not win...
It's the typical lawsuit in America: it's not about suing the company to make them "pay" for a "wrong", but to see how much money you can get.
Should the guy really be using AOL for a business e-mail address? Probably not.
Should he have read the T&C to see what the terms of use were? Probably.
Should he have checked to see if AOL was putting any ads at the bottom of his e-mail? Probably.
But why do this when he can file a lawsuit (and a lawyer will take it) and get some money from AOL?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: The guy may not win...
Depends who you ask. Any rational human being would say "No", but morons and, crucially AOL's marketing department would say "Yes". AOL market these services to businesses.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ads are a way of life
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I use mail
I did not agree to ads in my ISP mail and would fight it.
I pay my ISP for connective service to the internet not for ads.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not Silly at all. Maybe you enjoy being exploited?
Sorry if you paid subscription you should not be subject to ads.
I guess cable TV has desensitized your common sense.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Not Silly at all. Maybe you enjoy being exploited?
Also, magazines have had a free ride for too long. How many magazines have paid subscriptions with no ads in them? Ads appear in paid services all the time. They're not evil. Its used so they don't charge as much for the service itself. Its called subsidized cost.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ads and AOL?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What is he paying for?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Email ads better than...
If you think your stuff is that great, DON'T INTERRUPT YOUR CUSTOMERS AT THEIR WORK/PLAY!
Rather, send a snail-mail to us. We'll accept that a lot quicker than we will, being interrupted at what we're doing!
Regards...Val jvaljon1@aol.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Email ads better than...
If you think your stuff is that great, DON'T INTERRUPT YOUR CUSTOMERS AT THEIR WORK/PLAY!
Rather, send a snail-mail to us. We'll accept that a lot quicker than we will, being interrupted at what we're doing!
Regards...Val jvaljon1@aol.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
$5 million
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AOL Sued for advertising on customer email
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
AOL Sued for advertising on customer email
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ads attached to emails
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
ads in email
LOL
[ link to this | view in chronology ]