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        Kent's Story

        It all started on January 22nd; a friend told me that he had
        found some information about AOL 6.0. The information included
        documents, screenshots and other information regarding the
        software. He sent them to me and I released them on
        www.Kenton.org, a website I have owned and operated since March
        of 1999. Earlier this week, my friend decided to stop doing his
        AOL 6.0 information on his domain, www.Openaol.com. I, however,
        decided to keep my information up, as I was critiquing AOL's
        software and wanted to keep the public as informed as possible
        about potential problems with their latest product.

        As it has been documented in the press of late, AOL's last
        software release, AOL 5.0, has created havoc for many who have
        used it. AOL's rushed release of software has created problems
        such as members having to completely reformat their hard
        drive(s) and reinstall Windows, all due to the software halting
        Windows from loading. Many users would find their registries and
        File Allocation Tables completely corrupted. Other times, the
        software would ask if you wanted it to be the default
        browser/viewer. Even if you selected NO, the software would
        still set itself up as the default, thus rendering your other
        dialup software inoperable. Additional problems also occured if
        you did not have MSIE 5.0 installed on your PC prior to
        installing AOL 5.0. If you chose to download both MSIE 5.0 and
        AOL 5.0 from AOL at the same time, the software often times
        conflicted and made it completely impossible for you to access
        the web at all.

        Being armed with the knowledge of the last fiasco with a rushed
        release of software, I went into the AOL K2 File Library, a
        library which was public at the time, to look for documentation,
        of which I found AND downloaded, including the documents and
        related information. The files I downloaded from the library had
        some good screen shots among them, so I took those out and put
        them up on my site as well. Due to AOL's carelessness in
        security, the file library was accessible by anyone with a
        normal AOL account, thereby making it accessible to the public
        at large. AOL has since rostered the area to limit any further
        public access. Additionally America Online has decided to attack
        me, a minor, with legally intimidating notices rather than admit
        their error.

        I have been very ill as of late, and I finally struggled out of
        bed around 5:00PM, on January 27th. I Signed on to check my
        e-mail and I immediately noticed a fax from the America Online
        Legal Department. This letter, sent to intimidate me, stated
        that the information I received and accessed legally off of
        their service could possibly land me in legal difficulties with
        America's largest online service. I also received a voice mail
        message from Patricia Jacobus who works for CNET, a news agency
        not under America Online's Control. I returned her call and
        answered her questions concerning what AOL had sent me, as well
        as questions about the information up on my site. At first, I
        was frightened, more by my father's screaming from when he saw
        the news, so I decided to take down my files. Shortly after a
        discussion with my parents, I put the files back up, where they
        remained until this morning.

        Since the initial hoopla concerning AOL's legal threats, I
        contacted the staff at Observers.net. It was then, I was
        informed that they would upload the content of my site onto
        their ftp, continuing their stand against AOL's censorship and
        that as I had no legal counsel at present, O0O would answer AOLs
        letter publicly. AOL's practices revealed in my story above
        shows why a company that practices censorship and intimidation
        against the "little guy", in this case a 15 year old, prove why
        we should all oppose the merger of the online service with Time
        Warner. All I have tried to do is keep the public informed of
        potential problems with even more sloppily written software,
        which could cause AOL members to lose their data on their Home
        PCs. This was public information due to AOL's inability to
        correctly viewrule it and now they are after me.

        Observers Staff has taken the time to review the information
        Kenton.org has presented to the public and prepare for you, our
        own critique of the information presented.

        http://www.observers.net/aol60bsa.htm


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