"Why Aimster sucks" and other ponderables

This page was written mostly around 2001-2002 and is currently in low maintenance mode (i.e. rarely updated).

Also, I should note that everything here is factually correct to the best of my knowledge. That said, I was but a lowly programmer, and kept far out of the loop at Aimster, and was not privy to any information about who owned or was an officer of what corporation, and which corporation owned what assets and stuff like that. All of my info is based on "common knowledge" around the office and what I was able to deduce. If anything is in error, please contact me at evandhoffman@gmail.com.

Corporations that appear to have been related (however tangentially) to the Aimster debacle include BuddyUSA Inc., AbovePeer LLC, Pi2 Products LLC, Amici LLC, and iDeal Ventures LLC. At this point I'd be suspect of anything from 80 State Street, Albany, NY, 12207.

• 10 October 2005 - Amici/Duker/Boies/Adelphia scandal! Cable company severs ties with firm after learning of connection between Amici and Boies' children. - Apparently Amici, one of the corporations started by Bill Duker in the wake of Aimster, is embroiled in the Adelphia accounting mess, with all sorts of conflicts of interest since David Boies was working for them and recommended Amici which is now partly owned by his children. And it looks like Aimster's Bill Duker is in fact the very same one who was convicted and sentenced to prison for overbilling the FDIC, as I guessed a few years ago. Some links:
  • Adelphia, Boies firm part ways CNN.com, 8/30/2005
  • Adelphia Asked Boies Schiller to Resign Over Family Connection to Vendor Law.com, 9/13/2005
  • Cravath Protests Tactics of Firm Partly Owned by Boies Family NYS Society of CPAs, 9/12/2005
  • David Boies, Well-known Lawyer in Several Landmark Cases, Cited For Ethics Violations and Conflict of Interest New York Times (via parentadvocates.org), 9/22/2005
  • Google Search - amici boies duker - A bunch more crap

  My favorite lines from the law.com article (emphasis added):

  But a recent exchange of letters between a lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Korologos may complicate that view of Amici. In a Sept. 6 letter to Southern District Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber, Cravath partner Max Shulman said his firm, which is representing accounting firm Deloitte & Touche in litigation adverse to Adelphia, found Amici "substandard" and said his client, which, like other Amici users, is paying a monthly $.06 per page storage charge, had been "vastly overcharged."

  Shulman said the database was filled with extraneous, irrelevant materials. In a Sept. 9 follow-up letter to the judge, he described Amici as a "miserable system" and said users had been charged "for millions of pages of garbage -- and the fee for each of those garbage pages enriches the family of David Boies." He said the disclosure of the family interests "would have caused us to reject Amici in a heartbeat."

  I wonder if the Amici software is really just the Aimster codebase modified to look prettier... If that's the case then I'd guess Amici is the one who now owes me thousands of dollars in salary that Pi2/BuddyUSA/AbovePeer never paid me, since they'd have the only "assets" from that company. I guess that's a matter for the court to decide now, I filed my claims against the Aimster corporations in bankruptcy court but they played around with shifting the assets between corporations and withdrawing the bankruptcy petition, all of which had the net result of screwing me out of the money they owe me for my work on Aimster.

  On an unrelated note, why do people still hire David Boies? Aside from the Microsoft antitrust case (a great victory that was neutered by the Bush administration), does he ever win? I can't remember many high profile cases he's won lately (and I don't really feel like looking it up).

• 13 January 2004 - High court turns deaf ear to Aimster C|NET News.com. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5139938.html

  The U.S. Supreme Court won't hear an appeal of a lower court's order that pulled the plug on Aimster, a file-swapping service similar to Napster in design.

  The justices on Monday declined without explanation to hear the case, which would have been the first Internet music piracy dispute to reach the high court. In general, the Supreme Court accepts only a small percentage of appeals each year.

  Same story from the Boston Globe: Court refuses Aimster case

• 11 November 2003 - Albany, NY Times Union: Madster creator seeks hearing John Deep petitions Supreme Court to hear case on file-sharing

  The founder of the defunct file-swapping service Madster wants the U.S. Supreme Court to allow him to restart the service.

• 06 March 2003 - Well, I haven't added anything recently because basically it seems like a waste of time. John Deep is still apparently trying to turn his daughter into a porn star and steal many people's money. But the reason I was finally prompted to update this page was this discovery: MANHATTAN LAWYER SENTENCED TO PRISON FOR OVERBILLING FDIC, RTC $1.4 MILLION. The guilty party in the linked story is one William F. Duker, who it would appear (though I am not sure) is the very same Bill Duker one who ended up as the "lead investor" at Aimster/Madster/Buddyusa/Abovepeer/Pi2/iDeal Ventures/name-your-crooked-firm. So I guess it really shouldn't come as a surprise that he helped steal millions of dollars from Aimster's 'investors' and employees - he stole from the FDIC for god's sake. Anyway, here's some more fun info on everybody's favorite felon: Google Search: "william F. duker".

  On a related note, it looks like John Deep, thief-in-chief of Aimster et. al., has withdrawn his bankruptcy petition. Because he wants to re-release the Aimster code as a new product called "FairPlay." I find it sickly amusing that he'd have the nerve to call anything he does "fair" since he's made a career out of stealing.

• 16 April 2002 - It appears that Bill Duker has chosen to totally forget that he owes me $7,500, and blow off the revised contract I sent him. So, since I'm bored, I'll now provide you with the original release (PGP signature) I was sent in February, as well as the revised release (PGP signature) I sent back to him 2 days later (On March 1st 2002). It has been more than 6 weeks and still I have heard nothing from the lying conman snakeoil salesman. C'est la vie, I guess. The next thing I put up for download will probably be the Aimster source code, for both Windows and Macintosh.
• 12 April 2002 - Well, I finally got my W-2s from Buddy USA thanks to Ed. He went out of his way to make sure I got them, and I thank him for that. Out of everybody in charge at Aimster, Ed seems to be the only one who had a heart. I finally got my taxes sent in yesterday. With the tax refund I will hopefully be able to finally pay off my Albany debts, which are still ~$1,000.

  As for my revised contract, I have still heard nothing back, and expect that I won't. I guess I'll contact the attorney general at some point.

• 22 March 2002 - I was sent a proposed release which offered me 37% of what they owe me. I sent it back, modified, and never heard from them again. Now I know why: "Madster corporations seek Chapter 11 shield ". Can't say I'm surprised. What about Pi 2? Is that who now owns the Aimster code?

  Also, I still have not received my BuddyUSA W-2s, nor have 4 or 5 other former employees. It's March 22; taxes must be filed by April 15th. What's the deal? Oh well.

• 20 February 2002 - Still nobody from aimster has contacted me. Here's a bit of law regarding payroll which clearly states that wages must be paid to all employees: http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?cl=54&a=8. See section 198-a.
• 11 February 2002 - I guess there was a meeting between Bill Duker (whose wife is the official contact for Pi2) and all of the people that BuddyUSA/Pi2/Abovepeer owes payroll to. To the best of my understanding they are willing to pay 50 cents on the dollar of the amount owed. I don't know if it is really worth it, since if they have 50% they probably have 100%, and they apparently want us to agree to not sue them ever. But also, some money is better than none. But then again, I do not trust any of them at all. Money would have to be either in cashier's check or good old cash. Anyhow, we'll see how things go. It's hard for me to keep abreast since I do not live in Albany anymore.
• Corporate information for Pi 2, LLC - this was the corporation my paycheck came from starting around mid-2001. Before that, my paychecks came from Buddy USA, Inc. There was also AbovePeer, LLC, the corporation that John created to serve as the "Aimster ISP" in an attempt to use the ISP defense against the RIAA. Later he claimed that all of the assets of "Aimster" were owned by AbovePeer, but I was employed by Pi 2, and so the assets of AbovePeer could not be sold to pay me. He liked to do things like that, i.e. setting up fake corporations as fronts for his real operations.

  Update 11/7/2005: The above links don't seem to work. Here are some new ones: Buddy USA, Pi 2 Products, LLC, AbovePeer, AbovePeer (#2?), NYS Dept. of State Corporation search page, in case those links die.

• Ideal Ventures, LLC - I'm not sure what Ideal Ventures's role is in the Aimster scandal, but I know that Pi2's chairman is also Ideal Ventures's chairman, John Cavalier. I think Ideal Ventures is owned or run by Bill Duker, one of John Deep's buddies and an investor in Aimster. I think he was BuddyUSA 's COO or CFO or something. This page has some info about John Cavalier, as well as Sharon Duker, who I guess is Bill Duker's wife. She is also listed on the aforementioned page with Pi2's corporate info, so I guess she is somehow involved in this mess.
• I should just list the names of everone I know associated with Aimster:
  • John Deep - Original founder of Aimster and general "Boss" of everything. He was CEO and president of BuddyUSA and probably Pi2 and AbovePeer also. johnd@madster.com and JADigital and johnnyaimster on AIM.
  • Ed Kear - Project manager, I guess. I think he was CTO of BuddyUSA and Pi2 and AbovePeer. Now I guess he works at Ideal Ventures along with 2 or 3 other former Aimster employees. I'd love to know where they're getting paid from. To be fair, Ed's wife recently had a baby so I can see why he needs to keep his job, but the fact remains that everybody else got shafted, and our bills and debts are just as real as anyone else's.
  • Bill Duker - I never spoke two words to this guy. I think he was an investor and one of John Deep's friends. He has something to do with Ideal Ventures, as does Sharon Duker, who I guess is his wife. In the post-Aimster wake, he appears to be leading the damage control effort. WFDUKER@aol.com - IM him
  • Paul Goetz - This guy was the CFO of I think Pi2. He worked for some bank, I'm not sure which though. I think it is UKW, but I'm not sure.
  • John Cavalier - This guy was the chairman of the board for Pi2 and probably Abovepeer also. Everybody seemed to think that when he came on board the company would be so much better because we would have someone to counter John D's stupid ideas but I guess that wasn't the case, since everything pretty much stayed the same after he came aboard, or got worse, though I doubt this had anything to do with Mr. Cavalier.
  • Steve Talbot - Steve worked in the Aimster office for a few months. He apparently had worked for MapInfo, which I guess Ideal Ventures owns, and he was supposed to magically figure out how Aimster would make money. Judging by the current state of affairs, I don't think he succeeded.
• February 14, 2001 - Video (Real Player only, apparently) of John Deep at the O'Reilly P2P conference, where he babbled on for a very long time (about 12 minutes) about how his daughter is the software and other stupid garbage. You can see that he sounds really crazy here, especially compared to people like Ray Ozzie who actually have legitimate business experience. (this is not hosted on my site, of course)
• September 2, 2001 - My Slashdot journal entry that pretty much describes my involvement at Aimster from start to finish, of course leaving out lots of stuff for brevity's sake. If you want to know why I hate Aimster and John Deep especially, read this first. This was written shortly after everything exploded at Aimster and I was still quite emotional about the whole ordeal. Keep that in mind as you read this narrative.
• October 12, 2001 - My AIM chat with John Deep, Aimster CEO & President in which I tried to find out what was going on and if I was ever going to get all the money they owed (and still owe) me.
• January 19, 2002 - Aimster has apparently surrendered the aimster.com domain to AOL and renamed the app "Madster" and moved it all to www.madster.com. As of Jan 21st, here's what the madster.com page is showing:

  Big companies are lamester
  No, you can't call us amester
  But if it still works the samester
  What's in a namester

  Hey everybody, we're still the same great service you've known and loved for so long ...

  We've just got a mad cool new name. It's ...

  (formerly called "Amester")

  I think the stupidity of the site says more than I could ever hope to say...