COMMENTARY: Trillian is a program that lets you use one client across multiple instant-messaging services. So why has AOL been blocking access by Trillian's throngs of users? Simple: Because it has every right to.

What a bunch of crybabies! I am talking about the whiners who feel America Online is doing something terrible by locking out the users of Trillian, a multi-service instant-messaging client.

It's not the first time AOL has done this and probably won't be the last. But it's in the right. Trillian's developers should relent, immediately, and stop hacking into the AOL network.

If you're not familiar with Trillian, it's a software program that allows you to access multiple instant-messaging services, including MSN, Yahoo, and AOL. Created by a four-year-old startup called Cerulean Studios, Trillian relieves you of the necessity of opening and operating separate IM clients and maintaining separate "buddy lists" on each one of them.

This is a true inconvenience--tantamount to forcing you to maintain separate e-mail programs just to send a message to someone who happens to eschew your particular preference for another.

Trillian works by "spoofing" the services into believing their own software is logging in when it's actually Trillian calling.

Because of this, AOL considers Trillian to be an attempt to hack its network. So this week, according to the news reports, AOL took steps to terminate any access by Trillian's million-plus users. For its part, Trillian has responded with changes in its own software that circumvent the block.

During an appearance on my Thursday radio show, Trillian co-developer Scott Werndorfer told me he's had no contact with AOL. Since AOL has not claimed "foul"--directly and officially to him, anyway--Werndorfer refuses to acknowledge there's been one.

If Trillian has had any problems connecting to AOL recently, it's simply because of bugs, Werndorfer said. That's all. And any changes Cerulean has made to the software has been for no other reason but to fix them. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

So I called AOL, where a spokeswoman told me the company considers Trillian to be a security breach. AOL claims it's doing nothing more than protecting its network.

These are the same steps--changing its code in a way to thwart access to impersonating software--that AOL took when Microsoft tried to connect its MSN instant-messaging client to AOL's network several months ago.

The two companies played a cat-and-mouse game with Microsoft, releasing several new versions of its client--each finding a new way to get into AOL Instant Messenger--before Redmond gave up.

AOL said it's concerned that programs such as Trillian and the security gaps they exploit could lead to unwanted instant messages--spam--being sent to AOL members. But there's another issue: money. AOL sells advertising on its instant-messaging client, and Trillian blocks those ads.

For his part, Werndorfer describes himself as half of a two-person company that built Trillian to address problems faced by users who were tired of having to keep multiple IM clients open on their desktops in order to chat with their friends across multiple services.

Trillian is a free program, currently supported by donations, although Werndorfer said a commercial "pro" version might be offered in the future. He does not consider himself and Trillian users to be hackers and thieves, though I have to side with AOL on this one.

Certainly, by now Trillian must understand that AOL doesn't want its network violated. And it should have realised it long ago. Right now, Trillian should stop accessing AOL.

Why? Because it's hacking AOL's network, and AOL doesn't like it. There is also the matter of blocking advertising, which I think is more of a concern than AOL admits.

Does Trillian meet a need? Certainly. I am on three instant-messaging services almost all the time. I'd love to have a single client that would allow me to maintain only a single contact list and enable me to send the same message to people on different services at the same time.

But it's not up to parasites like Trillian to make this possible.

Like everyone I've spoken to, I wish AOL and the other services would allow users of one service to send messages to users of the others. AOL says it supports a common standard, being developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force, which would allow IM servers to talk to one another and move messages from one service to another.

It's true that progress toward such interoperability--if that's really what it is--moves at a pace somewhere between glacial and tectonic. And I can think of business reasons--no one wants to share customers once they've captured them--for services like AOL to shun working relationships with MSN, Yahoo, and others.

But that doesn't take away from the real issue: AOL's control of its own network. At the end of all this, if AOL doesn't want Trillian on its network, then Trillian should take the hint and just go away.

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