Trying To Digest ISP TOS Changes An Impossible TaskContinued use of this service is consent to whatever the hell we want.... ( old news - 06:24PM Tuesday Mar 11 2008) tags: legal · business · privacy · consumers · Verizon Online DSLEd Foster's Gripelog at Infoworld takes aim at Verizon's recent terms of service changes. The company apparently gave users all of one business day to read and digest dozens upon dozens of pages of muddled legalese -- as usual noting that continued usage of the service meant acceptance of the changes. The problem is the e-mail to customers only dusts over what changes were made, and good luck ferreting out the real importance of substantive changes without a very solid understanding of the law and a free weekend: ...by my count (for my zip code, so your results may vary), there are 14 documents, 87 pages, 33,083 words, and 204,869 characters. Not all of the documents are going to pertain to every Verizon Online customer, but the only way you're going to know that for sure is to read them all. And 33,000 words is the length of a short novel - for comparison, the "Old Man and the Sea" is about 26,500 words, "Animal Farm" is 29,000, and "The Call of the Wild" is 37,000 - all of them slightly easier reading than the Verizon lawyers' prose. And as Foster notes, Verizon is acting better on this front than many ISPs by sending out an e-mail alert. Many providers make massive decisions that could severely impact your privacy with simply a TOS change and a wink.
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- The Modern ISP Is A Privacy Nightmare
- Friday Evening Links
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 EPS
join:2008-02-13
Hingham, MA
edit:
March 11th, @06:34PM
| The new TOS My favorite clause has to be this one:
2. Specific Examples of AUP Violations. The following are examples of conduct which may lead to termination of your Service. Without limiting the general policy in Section 1, it is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to: ... (e) post off-topic information on message boards, chat rooms or social networking sites;...
Since when is it the ISP's responsibility to make sure you stay on topic online? | |
|  | Smith6612
Premium
join:2008-02-01
united state | Re: The new TOS Don't ask me, but I run my own forum and I go off topic all the time, and not only that, several forums I go to I go off topic a lot as well and the admins don't care either, so that's a very obserd clause to have in a TOS :P | |
| | 
TK Junk Mail
Go ahead, make my day
Premium
join:2002-03-03
Margate City, NJ
clubs:
 ·Comcast
| said by EPS  :My favorite clause has to be this one: 2. Specific Examples of AUP Violations. The following are examples of conduct which may lead to termination of your Service. Without limiting the general policy in Section 1, it is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to: ... (e) post off-topic information on message boards, chat rooms or social networking sites;... Since when is it the ISP's responsibility to make sure you stay on topic online? I agree that that TOS entry is ridiculous. Who determines what is "off topic" ? And why would they even want to take action on off topic posts anyway?
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My BLOG .. .. Internet News .. .. My Web Page | |
| | lvlorpheus
join:2008-02-17
Eureka Springs, AR
| My question is if they do not enforce this part of the TOS, does it make that part of the TOS weightless? And if that is the case does it not make the whole TOS weightless, or can they just write up as many pages as they want and then just pick and choose whats real and whats not. Would it not be a lot easier to have a TOS that says "We reserve the right to do what ever we want." Or can we expect to hear about half to three quarters of Verizons customers receiving warnings regarding off topic violations. | |
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TK Junk Mail
Go ahead, make my day
Premium
join:2002-03-03
Margate City, NJ
clubs:
·Comcast
| Re: The new TOS said by lvlorpheus :My question is if they do not enforce this part of the TOS, does it make that part of the TOS weightless? And if that is the case does it not make the whole TOS weightless, or can they just write up as many pages as they want and then just pick and choose whats real and whats not. Would it not be a lot easier to have a TOS that says "We reserve the right to do what ever we want." Or can we expect to hear about half to three quarters of Verizons customers receiving warnings regarding off topic violations. I think they put everything they can think of in there so that they can drop anyone they want and then withstand a lawsuit over it.
An example. Say they have a customer that goes to msg board after msg board spamming something they sell over the internet. Complaints start rolling in to Verizon about that person. Now they can just dump them and say they posted "off topic". Hey it was in their TOS, so sue them and they win.
Of course, they could use some generic "we can dump anyone we want" line. But that would be harder to defend in court.
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My BLOG .. .. Internet News .. .. My Web Page | |
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funchords
Robb
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Hillsboro, OR
 ·Verizon Online DSL
 ·Skype
·Comcast
| said by lvlorpheus :My question is if they do not enforce this part of the TOS, does it make that part of the TOS weightless? Enforcement can simply mean investigating a complaint and ruling it unfounded. You (the customer) may never find out about it. If the ISP acts, it may be a mere warning which would become confidential to all except the ISP and that customer. So just because you don't hear a lot about enforcement, doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.
With that in mind, yes. Selectively enforcing certain provisions and not others can weaken the ISP's hand. Doing so set customers' expectations as to what the future will hold. Similarly, consistently enforcing provisions in the same manner likewise sets a pattern. Patterns of the past are predictors of the future. As it is not a criminal case, a judge or arbitrator will weigh the culmination of all the facts. In the end, the case should end with the judges determination of what probably happened versus how these policies would be interpreted by a reasonable person -- all things considered.
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Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
"We don't throttle any traffic," -Charlie Douglas, Comcast spokesman, on this report. | |
| | | | | EPS
join:2008-02-13
Hingham, MA
| Re: The new TOS Hm, that is a good point- I have been involved with the operation of message boards, and it isn't uncommon to report the worst offenders to the ISP (if we can figure out who it is based on IP address, which we usually can for broadband ISPs), I suppose this is just one of those clauses that the ISP can use to justify sanctioning these people.
Though it still sounds silly at first glance. | |
| | 
RadioDoc
Sortofadog
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
Chicago, IL | That's been a part of ISP TOSs since before broadband and the WWW. They used to refer to mailing lists, bulletin boards and Usenet. They've just freshened it up a bit.
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Toolmaster of La Grange. | |
| | SanJoseNerd
Premium
join:2002-07-24
San Jose, CA
| said by EPS :2. Specific Examples of AUP Violations. The following are examples of conduct which may lead to termination of your Service. Without limiting the general policy in Section 1, it is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to: ... (e) post off-topic information on message boards, chat rooms or social networking sites;... I love the flowers that bloom in spring. My neighborhood has many fruit trees -- apple, plum, peach -- that make really spectacular flowers.
Wait. The light on my DSL router is blinking! I think my service is being termi--------  | |
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hayabusa3303
Over 200 mph
Premium
join:2005-06-29
clubs: | im sorry Is it me or is this SH** getting out of hand here? | |
| old_wiz_60
join:2005-06-03
Bedford, MA | How can they tell? How in the world can Verizon tell if you are off-topic on some obscure message board? Get real. | |
| | 
a333
A hot cup of integrals please
join:2007-06-12
Corona, NY | Re: How can they tell? maybe saying "V* SUCKS!!!!!" will get you a letter of termination? (Gasp!! did I just say that?) | |
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hopeflicker
Capitalism breeds greed
Premium
join:2003-04-03
Long Beach, CA
| Re: How can they tell? said by a333 :maybe saying "V* SUCKS!!!!!" will get you a letter of termination? (Gasp!! did I just say that?) go ahead, you can say it, VERIZON SUCKS!
Oh, and what about them Dodgers, too!
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Religion does three things quite effectively: Divides people, Controls people, Deludes people. | |
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Cherokee
@rr.com | re i think they mean on their forums, like tech support | |
| | | | Ulmo
join:2005-09-22
San Jose, CA
·Comcast
·SONIC.NET
| TOS not properly communicated = no TOS. In other words, any good faith effort to know the TOS would result in the TOS being incomplete (since you can never finish them in time to know them all precisely) and therefore meaningless, so the TOS can be safely ignored.
That does not mean, however, that you are allowed to do anything (a common lawyer's mistake). It means instead that you have to be reasonable and responsible. You are still liable for that. However, discerning what that is would probably take a good common law lawyer and the likes of someone with as much knowledge as an excellent post-retirement Internet architect that both know good English and communicate well. | |
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