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AT&T Silences Criticism in New Terms of Service
marco13185 writes "AT&T's new Terms of Service give AT&T the right to suspend your account and all service "for conduct that AT&T believes"..."(c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries." After cooperating with the government's violations of privacy and liberties, I guess AT&T wants their fair share. AT&T users may want to think twice about commenting if they value their internet service."
...your ISP does not have the right to censor you or limit your access based on what you have to say so long as it conforms to any applicable laws.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Let them try disconnecting a landline telephone line in mid winter in East Coast to a house which has an infant in it.
Laws exist that prevent disconnecting landline AND electricity which is used to power heat to any house in New England states which has an elder or an infant in it.
Let AT&T just try it.
You would see the full weight of law and the CT Supreme Court falling upon it.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
AT&T blows.
Come and get me yo +++ carrier lost +++
This isn't censorship but a value added service on AT&T's behalf. If someone is complaining about AT&T obviously they're unhappy with their service and so AT&T saves them the customer the hassle of calling and cancelling the service by simply cancelling it themselves. This is a great service on AT&T's part (no more having to wait 1 hour on hold to talk to a person) and I can't see how anyone could complain about it.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
That reminds me of the modem rebate crap that I just had to go through with AT&T last week. Since the special rebate sticker that i'm supposed to affix to a postcard was accidentally left out of the box I have to request one by phone. Unfortunately the tech told me that there was nothing that she could do until my account had been with AT&T for at least 3 months. Something about a grace period to make sure that I'm not just signing up for service to get their crappy dsl modem for free after rebate.
So to get this rebate I have to wait 3 months, call AT&T customer support then wait an additional 3 to 4 months for the rebate to arrive. Thats seven whole months before they have to give the rebate back. And you know what would suck even more? If they canceled my service I wouldn't ever get [error: connection to host lost]
I recall their shitty Worldnet dial-up service being worse than AOL's. Whoops! I just violated their terms of service...good thing I dropped them like a bad habit years ago.
..with fewer ISP entities controlling access to the net, it's much easier to stifle dissent during any "emergency". I wonder if tha(dialtone)
.. why give them your money?I don't live in the states, but aren't they the sole provider in many areas?
Something needs to be done to stop the growing trend of laundry-list TOS agreements that amount to "we can kick you off our network any time we damn well feel like it"; aren't there laws about unfair clauses in these kinds of contracts.
If AT&T starts policing content, then they have proven they have the ability and resources to police their network.
So, now the fun begins, since they have proven they can police their network, they now have to respond to any illegal activities or risk a lawsuit.
AT&T cooperates in wholesale spying on the American public without a warrant, then goes back to Congress and asks for immunity from lawsuits. Now they slip a "no criticize" clause in their user agreement. Reminds me of Microsoft, only worse. When did dickish corporate behavior become the new standard? I must have missed that memo.
The interesting question is whether corporate behavior is just a more visible mirror of the increasing lack of civility in every day relationships? Because when I think back to times when even corporations still behaved with a modicum of civility and tended to err on the side of the customer, I realized that the general level of decency at all levels of interaction was higher.
When it comes to AT&T a whole new generation is learning why we broke them up in the first place.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
why give them your money?
Oh right, we busted up the phone monopoly decades ago, now if you don't like your phone service, YOU CAN MOVE TO ANOTHER FUCKING STATE.
But hey, if they cancel my service over this, I can demand phone service back thanks to their franchise contract and universal access laws. If they charge me to turn it back on, I'll have the city council going over that contract to see what can be done about getting some real competition in here.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
So what, things were good under the monopoly, lawyers got paid lots of money to manage the break up. CEO's are getting huge bonuses for having the business acumen to re-assemble the parts. The way the modern economy works is all derivative. Long ago (think post-depression) companies that were stable in stable markets were seen as fantastic opportunities. In the past 15-20 years people became enamoured with making a quick buck by flipping (houses, stocks, anything) -- it's the derivative that matters not the fundamentals of the investment. Money is made when the derivative flips sign -- so the goal is to create a turbulent market with lots of derivative changes. Ever wonder why big oil companies offer the following logic: 1) when crude goes up, pump prices follow lock step (we have to buy expensive oil to replace the oil you just bought) and 2) when crude goes down, pump prices tail off slowly (the crude that made the product you just bought was expensive). It's all about working churning the market. The loser in the churn is the 401k/403b investor who cotributes on a market agnostic schedule. At&T is just churning on a much slower time scale.
Get a mobile then or VoIP etc etc.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
As a practical matter, I would expect to see these terms on business accounts (where free speech is arguable) and less on home accounts (where it is not).
I suspect AT&T knows they'll run afoul of the public utilities commission if they try to do this kind of the thing with a POTS telephone line.
AccountKiller
I mean, the company's logo is the fucking Death Star and even George Lucas is powerless to sue them into not using it. I'm not surprised they're prosecuting thought crime. I'm assuming that they'll be feeding pirates feet-first into industrial shredders and give the pureed results to their slavering army of uruk-lawyers.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
AT&T users may want to think twice about commenting if they value their internet service."
No, they shouldn't. There are worse things in life than loosing your Internet service, and I expect this to stand up neither in Courts of Law, nor in the Court of Public Opinion.
I really don't have a problem with AT&T DSL service since I got it two years ago. Comcast is a different story.
When I tried to explain to the service rep that the problem was on their end, the service rep "accidentally" deleted the cable modem info from the system and I had to wait two weeks for the system to purge itself before the modem info could be added back in. The technician verified that the problem was on their end. On another service call, it took a month to convince them that I couldn't get Internet access because the problem was in the street box. When a technician finally came out, it was a part that another technician installed backwards in the street box. Go figure.
But my choices for high speed internet are pretty much limited to Comcast and AT&T (BellSouth). So it's really a question of which evil empire I'm more "comfortable" with or am locked into by service agreements.
We are the 198 proof..
I'm not from the USA, but don't you have something that allows freedom of speech and expression in your constitution or something? Wouldn't this make AT&Ts clause unenforcable?
This is ammunition that we can take to our congressional representatives as evidence that the telcos cannot be trusted with the Internet. AT&T could not have given us a better weapon in our fight for network neutrality regulation.
Yeah, you and your mum can go act big men on the internet, but will you actually do something about it? Nope, you are just like the rest of the people that post on the internet, big mouths. Why don't you just grow a brain and either 1) get a mobile 2) get VoIP or 3) write a letter/email/send an IM.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Given the quiet lobbying campaign by certain telcos over their cooperation with government we certainly think the public company AT&T really respects our privacy and opinions :)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/22/1655239
with their efforts to try to get immunity. Based on the way the FBI under ex-AG Gonzalez treated everyone else, they probably threatened to expose something else AT&T had done in the past and shut down their business. So some manager decided to "follow orders" and let the FBI have their way.
Then it turns out (oops), that the FBI themselves get busted for the spying activity and AT&T is left holding the civil liabillity bag. I _almost_ have sympathy for them because there were so many other companies that stood up for their customers that show us how it should have been handled. Their handling of the spying is just another symptom of the monopoly mentality: screw the customer if it can make us some money.
We are the 198 proof..
I'm not sure about nationwide, but I live in a fairly small town and there are several competitors to AT&T in every industry they're in.
And IANAL, but I don't think reserving the right to cancel service would constitute an unfair agreement. Those laws (to the extent that a big company thats in good with the surveillance state can't just bribe their way out of them) are really more for things like contracts that allow outright theft or other activity that would be criminal outside of the contract. Like for instance if the TOS had a clause that said "If AT&T happens to overhear your credit card number in one of its many illegal wiretaps, you agree to hold AT&T blameless if they charge a bunch of Thinkgeek merchandise".
I hate all cell phone companies. Including AT&T. They try to rip you off for every penny you have. I can go on all day about horror stories with the phone companies. I hate them all! AT&T has no right to remove my service just because I talk bad about them on Slashdot and other websites. That's ridiculous! (yes, I am an AT&T subscriber)
This sounds kind of bad, but think about it. If you sold John a box of apples and John then goes around telling everybody that they were rotten. Then he comes back and buys another one. Why should you have to do business with him?
AT&T isn't restricting your right to say bad things about them, they are simply saying that if you do, they don't want to do business with you anymore.
Now, perhaps if you can argue that they are a near monopoly, they shouldn't be able to do that. But if you have a choice among half a dozen other providers, I don't see a big problem. In particular, if they cancel the contract, you're out of it anyway--better than being stuck with a provider you hate for a couple of years.
(And if you made the mistake of buying a locked phone, well...)
I think AT&T's behaviour is absolutely disgusti*#3&!g@.#*** NO CARRIER ***
"A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it." - Churchill
Is anyone really surprised? This is the same company which is against Network Neutrality. The simple answer is to simply not to buy or patronize any AT&T or Southwest Bell services if at all possible.
]
The bigger picture is that this is yet another one of those corporate slippery slopes.
The technique is straightforward. A huge company with vast legal resources will create terms of contract that are annoying, but just a little bit less annoying than the transaction cost of replacing that company with another one. They've annoyed you, but like a frog being boiled in water, you figure you can live with it. Pretty soon all of the company's competitors are doing the same thing, and now you have no other recourse, even if you wanted to go through the time, expense, and hassle of switching.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
If AOL did this it would finally be possible to end your service over the net.
grow a brain
LOL, thanks, I already have one.
get a mobile
And expensive high-latency low-bandwidth internet access? I'm sure that's a substitute for DSL in whatever world of rainbows and unicorns you live in.
get VoIP
"We're sorry, due to network congestion your call cannot be completed. Please try again later."
email/send an IM
That's just brilliant, why didn't I think of that, after they cut off my service, I can just send an email over the inter.... heyyy wait a minute.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Please, everyone get their facts straight. The constitution limits the government's powers. It says nothing about this sort of conduct between two private parties (a corporation and an individual).
Now, that being said, a corporation only has the authority to exist with limited liability for the shareholders because the people via their elected government, grants them that right.
It is the right of the people, as given in the constitution, to create laws, via their elected representatives, that prohibit a corporation from having this sort of conduct.
The question here is, is there or is there not a law that prevents this behavior by AT&T. If not, work to enact one. If so, sue.
Again, the constitution limits government power. It does this primarily by limiting the government's power to those powers specifically enumerated and no others. As an additional emphasis, the "Bill of Rights" was added to the constitution specifying some particular thing that the government is explicitly prevented from interfering with (e.g. Freedom of Speech).
Many of the founding father's felt that the "Bill of Rights" was a mistake as it left the impression that anything not mentioned in the Bill is a power/right reserved to the government when in fact the opposite is true.
Kind Regards,
Gerry B.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
yes they oversell without having the necessary infrastructure, yes most of their services are shitty, but i can curse and swear about them and TO them wherever i want (even on the phone) and even high courts in turkey order turkish telekom to cut uncompetitive practices. hell, even turkish telekom dns'es update themselves like in 30 minute intervals - change a .com domain name's nameservers in enom, voila - not 30 minutes pass before t.telekom dnses pick it up and show site from new place.
america, land of the free. or was land of the free. why are you people are putting up with this kind of shit there, and not rise up and put an end to that i dont know. you have overthrown the strongest monarchy of the times at 1776. you should be able to topple a bunch of cash greedy bastards.
Read radical news here
This is really just intimidation. If they get away with it, they've won.
Let's get Mikey to try it first...
I was just hoping that this applied to AT&T's wireless service; it sounds like the perfect "get out of your 2 year contract free" scheme.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
AT&T still blows.
Posting from an AT&T connection, shut down my service if you want to guys!
AT&T, taken apart decades ago because of their abuse of monopoly power, has not learned how to compete in a free marketplace and, thus, must go back to their orginal business model: hateful monopolizing. Perhaps some of you remember or have seen reruns of Lily Tomlin's wonderful ATT operator.
The main problem with having a president who lies and suspends constitutional rights is that the public, by example, are led to believe lying and bullying are OK. "Gee, the president makes it work for him...."
This is the famous Bully Pulpit that the first President Roosevelt talked about.
To give a more specific example of this principle, when former president George Herbert Walker Bush complained publicly that the Japanese government was trading unfairly with the United States (this was before the Tokyo stock crash) several Japanese tourists were attacked and beaten on the streets of US cities.
We need a president who loves truth. Otherwise, the US has more to worry about than Ma Bell.
Of course, Ma Bell is bad enough....
disclaimer: I am an ATT customer in CA. rethinking my subscription to their service.
But wait -- that leaves me with using ComCast....
In Libertopia there will be three cable providers for every municipality, and they'll offer the same policies and fees because competition is just too hard. If you don't like it you can become a billionaire and buy your own cable franchise. Don't like it? Then you must hate Thomas Jefferson, and therefore you hate the United States. Why do you hate America, Statist?
You should probably watch this ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2004785759717366066 ) if you think that Ma Bell is still busted up.
"Do you promise to covet propriety prosperity posterity and never hurt the state say what?"
What?
"Take the stand..."
The judge would look at the contract, laugh, and say:
ATT - get a fucking life you idiots. DISMISSED! NEXT!!!
"Yes your honour. Next is The case of World v. GW Bush..."
And the judge smirks - "Another slam dunk...I might get to play some golf today if this keeps up..."
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
If we fold, there will be no damn phones. AT&T. We're tired of taking your crap!
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
Government pays off telecom with $200bn.(nudge nudge, wink wink. You don't really *have* to roll out the hardware, guys.)
Government gets telecom to install snoop switches everywhere. Not just when they need a tap, but you know, *proactively*. Telecom has to "want" to do it and they do.
Government doesn't say anything about bandwidth, universal access, net neutrality or EULAs that go against the Constitution. Meanwhile other countries (all buying U.S. hardware) roll way ahead in phones, fiber, online privacy laws, online video and film, etc.
Look, it's a pattern. Reminds me of Microsoft and the Government too. Wonder how much they gave the government for the same purpose, huh?
It isn't easy to see the pattern until years go by, or to do much about it. But having this system and leaving important things to such corporations is why the U.S. is, I'm sorry to say, beginning to suck. However I did just rent two cheap servers in the U.S., because there are still cool U.S. geeks. When you complain though you have to realize you get what you pay for. In this case, you paid for the kind of AT&T and Comcast that you have.
Conceivably it would be possible to have good companies that do what the government wants, unless perhaps the government slyly applied massive pressure to turn them into the kind of companies that can get bought off, but it would appear that the financial system prefers jerks. The only way out would seem to get a lot of shareholders mad.
Use a connection conforming to rfc2549. You don't need AT&T for that. ...
OK, the latency may be a little high
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Just in case you didn't know either....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandvine
If it is for internet, get vanilla ADSL or CABLE. If you want free internet, get your work to pay for it, they should :) Mine does :)
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
In light of the ibrick event, what else can you expect from the exclusive service provider of the iphone?
EDGE sucks!!!! :-D
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I quite agree, however there is great emphasis on shooting the messager rather than dealing with the real issue. If no one talks about a problem then it doesn't exist.
This is only to attack spammers and botnet owners. ... And maybe terrorists, definatly not people who critize AT&T. Why does everyone hate AT&T for trying to protect us?
See the parallelism with the usa government?
[NO CARRIER]
...and thanks for taking the time to write that.
It pretty much sums up why we have such incredibly bad prez candidates on both sides (Ron Paul excepted).
Well, damn. Glad I'm switching to RoadRunner. Not exactly voluntarily, but if AT&T is pulling this kind of shit, who knows what they'll try next.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Moderators: you absolutely need to mark this Insightful
.I work on order and billing systems for telcos and have some insight into this... and was just thinking the same damn thing. Colbert makes the point so much better than I could. Glad you posted this.
:) )
Monopoly? We got no steengking monopoly. (apologies to 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre'
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Here's how I ab/use my own power as an IT professional.
People look to me for advice on any range of technical issues. While I rarely, if ever, say "don't do this" I will state factual reasons not to do something. For example: iPhone -- you cannot change your own batteries. I don't say "it's 'restrictive'" or limiting or anything people will not understand. I will tell them things they can easily identify with.
So in this case, I would say, "according to AT&T's TOS, you're not allowed to publicly complain about the quality of your service or the size of your bill!" "Not allowed to complain" is something that will register with anyone. So I plan to just tell people... with AT&T, you lose your right to complain. That will strike HARD against the consumer's heart.
If history has taught us anything, it is that companies - regardless of original intent - always construe the meaning of contracts in the manner most advantageous to the company.
This clause may not be intended to be enforced against individual users, but as soon as a customer becomes critical of AT&T and starts costing them money, the company lawyers will find this clause and silence them.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
only to those who own it
(Ben Franklin: Freedom of the press belongs only to those who own one)
The obvious , practical solution is for someone to create some sort of "open" community owned ISP. Until that is done, corporations like ATnT will behave according to thier DNA: profits before all else; complaining about that is like complaining that piranhas are vicious
Is their a group that can put together a community open source isp ?, perhpas using some sort of next gen wimax, you need a super router every mile or so ? (just speculating there)
I'm not sure I like the new and glorious tiered internet world to which AT&T and Verizon are inviting us
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Another trend I've noticed is people for some reason keep criticizing Bush, Cheney, and the various other people who run this country. And yet they *still live here! Hopefully Patriot Act 2.0 will take care of this problem.
(/sarcasm)
How does your line of reasoning deal with the "or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries" language? If you continue using AT&T "service" you obviously shouldn't be allowed to express negative things about any of the other companies they do business with.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I'm not sure that's being interpreted correctly, but I think the wording is broad enough that it could be interpreted that way, which is a problem.
However, the rule says <i>conduct</i>. To me, this means that if your actions (only including, not exclusive to speech) are damaging AT&T's reputation, they can cut you off. What sort of conduct would damage a carrier's reputation? Harassing another person pops into mind immediately. "Why doesn't AT&T do something, are they just scumbags?"... well, now they can. Representing themselves as someone associated with AT&T? They get dropped. There's a bunch of cases that could be at work here other than "AT&T sucks."
Vanilla ADSL... which is offered through... wait for it... the phone company. Wait, that won't work. ;)
Something needs to be done to stop the growing trend of laundry-list TOS agreements that amount to "we can kick you off our network any time we damn well feel like it"
Agreed. These contracts sound like the megalomaniac dreams of a 3-year-old: We can do what we like. You have no power.
Steve Jobs decided to tie the iPhone to AT&T (actually SBC with a new name), and now the company is awash in bad publicity. (See the title of the AT&T web page.)
...I've been wanting out of my contract with them! How far do you think I have to go?? Because apparently going on about the EVERYTHING wrong with the company isn't going to do it...
Well thank At&T Lawyers for this further corrosion of your human rights. Lawyers are the person pushing this stuff. The Country exist for the Lawyers and the corporations they create and not for the citizens anymore. This is really pretty petty.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
I read the new Verizon service agreement. They're allowed to terminate your cell contract if you use harsh language to a CSR. Also, you agree that any dispute will be mediated by their 3rd party. Meanwhile, the first whiff of an exigent circumstances letter from the government will compel them to illegally (read w/o FISA approval) give over all your information. Sounds fair.
Or maybe through the courts to enforce the franchise agreements and there is precendence for utility property transferred to another enitity for failure to live up to the franchise agreement.We need to come up with a model which can replace this whole sector of the economy, and we need to shop it around to presidential candidates. Something's structurally wrong when corporations can get this out of control. It's not just a matter of tweaking a regulation here and there. Telecom is as broken as the US healthcare system - which is to say it works in some places for some people, but the major firms involved will happily do any amount of damage to their customers if it serves short-term, short-sighted profit. Not that there's no virtue in profit; just that it's important that the game be set up so that the vices of profit don't predominate over the virtues. Profit is not the only value. It doesn't even maximally serve the value of profit for profit to be the only value. When sectors of our economy start pursuing profit as if it is, they are broken. When something's that broken, sometimes the efficient thing to do is to tear it apart and refactor that entire part of the system.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I, for one, welcome our new multi-tiered over lords
-- Sig under construction...
So AT&T reserves the right to suspend your account and all service "for conduct that AT&T believes"..."(c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries." Obviously AT&T should suspend ITSELF, since there is no such "right" as that, and trying to reserve such a "right" obviously damages the name or reputation of AT&T!
You don't need to become a billionaire.
Manufacture your own wire/fiber, hire & train men to run the lines.
Sure, it'd take time. But it wouldn't take nearly a billion dollars.
Packet loss is a bitch too.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
and Cable?
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Political speech? You're sorely, sorely mistaken. Next time try actually reading the words of the first amendment and not taking what some loony tells you at face value.
FC Closer
Well, if you read the ToS, they already have that covered a thousand times over.
> They ought to have developed less-inflammatory wording.
Not to mention terms that haven't been ruled unconscionable before!
Just to prove my point, per the ToS, you agree to their Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) (it's item 13 or something, it's pretty far down the list and the AUP has all the good stuff), which states, among other things:
(Emphasis added.) Not to mention this:
When the two are stuck together like dogs, what then? Where's the constitutional bucket of water?
/which/ dog has his teeth in my ass. When most of my life is dictated by contractual agreement and administrative law, most of it to my detriment, i'm not making distinctions. The situation is a corruption of both constitutional ideals and capitalism; this mongrel resembles neither so the distinction is lost anyway.
Then the media shows you a cute fuzzy puppy but soon enough you've got a pit bull with its teeth in your ass.
Me, i don't give a shit
When all of the fuss began about AT&T and their privacy policies, I dropped them as my phone carrier even though they are the local monopoly on land lines (I now use a VoIP line who charges about 40% less with no limitations on long distance). This re-affirms that decision. Although this is certainly a bad thing for the net, I think it may be too little too late. We are guaranteed freedom of speech and the right to assemble by the first amendment. That doesn't carry over into the business world. Sure, you can stand out in front of a business on the sidewalk waving a sign, etc but set foot anywhere on their premises (including a parking lot) and you can be arrested. People generally don't gather at government buildings/ property (where the 1st Amendment is applicable) but in the marketplace, which is traditionally a public arena (think Socrates). In other words, to reach the public at large is much harder, if not impossible. Sure, you can wave that sign on the sidewalk, but people just drive by you and don't have to hear what you are saying. This also acts as another way in which corporations are set up as a tyranny (see: Noam Chomsky) rather than any sort of free or democratic enterprise. Hopefully, the net can stay free and set an example for the real world and roll back some of the limitations we actually encounter in our lives outside of a glowing screen.
I wish they weren't such dicks when it came to, well, being dicks. Their service in my area is quite good and is cheaper than the alternatives. It'd probably be more effective to push congresspeople to pass some neutrality legislation than to try and organize a boycott; nearly everyone can understand the benefits of neutrality laws, but only the people with poor service would really be interested in a boycott.
But thanks for playing.
...I'm glad I switched to Sprint several years ago.
You gotta hand it to the AT&T lawyers for knowing what the government and the people will put up with. Personally, I have Charter running the cables here and Verizon, always ranked #1 in customer service, as a cell provider. Maybe people should use that as a measure of what phone they get, instead of what Paris Hilton or Steve (hand)Jobs is peddling.
What do you call 3500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.
-Unknown-
Hang all the lawyers!
-William Shakespeare-
Don't worry, though. According to Marx, Hyper-Capitalism is followed by Socialism, then Communism. Look at Europe. They are mostly in the socialist phase. The US just tends to be a bit slower than everyone else. C'mon, we look at Forrest Gump as a hero!I never thought that Ma bell was busted up. I don't think it ever will be.The parts were only busted up on paper, at best.
When Telkom SA were owned by SBC (Now AT&T, surprise surprise) they slapped one of their online critics (www.hellkom.co.za) with a 'hate speech' lawsuit worth (then) almost 1 million US dollars http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/internet/2004/0408111546.asp?S=Legal%20View&A=LEG&O=FRGN
Telkom eventually dropped the case (a year later and after SBC had sold its shares in Telkom), but the action goes a long way to show where AT&T's attitude to freedom of expression really lies.
anything at&t gets its foot in it, becomes a mess.
Read radical news here
... don't buy AT&T? That sounds like a good solution for those who disagree with their TOS.
Given that they are not a monopoly, I think it's within their right to set up contracts the way they want. Before you think this is a Trolling comment. The other side of the coin is why would anyone in the world with other companies to choice from, be willing to sign that contract?
I certainly wouldn't. Let's hope this gets' some real main stream press.
http://www.hawknest.com/
So does this mean that restaurants also now have the right to sue someone when they post a negative review on Citysearch? I didn't like my hamburger at McDonalds...whoops, I better not say anything online for the fear of getting sued for defamation! Yikes!
You, like a regrettably large number of people, are managing to ignore minorities when you discuss the supposed "civility" of bygone eras.
Ask a black man, even in New York or other northern areas, how "civil" the past was.
Further, if you go back to the late 1800's, you enter the Robber Barron era, which was hardly a high water mark for corporate good behavior.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Isn't it time we moved to mesh networking, bypassing the telcos and ISPs that want to control content and communication?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
That's a lousy troll - you started by calling whoever it is you dislike a liberal (classic blunder #43), then spewed something about a cartel forming, which is what you get when nobody regulates business. You finished with a page from the neocons where if you don't like the way things are rigged, then you hate america.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I disagree with how the parent (and OP) read the provision. The use of "conduct" says to me that the provision is so that they can cut off users who are taking actions that make AT&T look bad by association. For example, if a user were to host the NAMBLA website via an AT&T line. If somebody came along and alleged "AT&T is hosting NAMBLA, therefore AT&T supports NAMBLA" then AT&T would get to cut off the account. Of course you and I know as /. readers that hosting a website doesn't imply endorsement of it, but to the 80% of the country that doesn't read /. they might think that AT&T was somehow directly involved.
There are reasons to be concerned about AT&T retaining a veto over actions of that type, but it's very different from AT&T silencing criticism about its own service. Being paranoid about guilt-by-association in a contract that we've never even seen used to actually cut somebody off is a far cry from silencing those who would fairly disagree.
Couldn't happen at a better time, since I fired AT&T a couple of weeks ago and went with Earthlink for phone and internet service.
Yeah, no company is perfect, but I'm convinced AT&T is Evil.
Hyperic Community Manager
as in att has their heads up theirs - and i'm posting this from an att account.
- js.
Too much egg & chips.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Why is this tagged as censorship? If you don't like the terms of the service, don't use their service.
Say a corporation e.g., Exxon-Mobil comes along and pays AT&T a few million bucks a year. Can AT&T add them to their contract and cut their customers' service if they piss off Exxon-Mobil?
Just where do you get "political speech" from in :
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
They also have verbage in section 12 about "not publicly sharing site, or 'hotspots'", and its pretty confusing to me, does it mean I can't share the ATT 'site' VIA a open wi-fi? Or I cannot BE a open wi-fi???
But to drive the issue home as another poster stated, to WHICH competitor do I turn, as there are NONE? AT&T BOUGHT UP Bellsouth.
Now the net is so deeply entrenched in school and work, it would be difficult to work without it. Schools have started putting all my kids stuff on their sites. If work didn't block every single dam website and email I could just us the net from work, but thats not possible.
Hijacking the net will soon become big business...
They Live, We Sleep
Well, that cute little ditty does leave out the part about Verizon, formerly Bell Atlantic (or Hell Atlantic). And of course Qwest... so yes, in place of one bad monopoly, we now have three... and in the process, destroying the one good part of Ma Bell that really did contribute a lot to the US of A, Bell Labs...
Your right to freedom of speech is NOT unlimited, it can't by. Why? Because if it was, it'd infringe on other rights. I mean lets say you are over at my house, chattering about something. I decide I want to go to bed. However you want to keep exercising your right to free speech and just keep talking to me, refusing to leave, refusing to let me sleep. See why that doesn't work?
The way I like to put it is "The right to freedom of speech does not imply the right to be heard." In other words you are free to scream all you want about whatever you want, but you aren't free to do it in my living room, I can kick you out if I want. You are free to write whatever you want, but you aren't free to do so on my web forums, I can kick you off. You are free to express your self as you want, but you aren't free to do so at work, they are free to fire you.
That's what people mean. Your free expression can have consequences with other private citizens, and the first amendment does not protect you from that. It can't as to do so would be to infringe on those other citizen's rights. What it protects you from is the government. The constitution is a document relating to the government. It lays out what powers the government gets to have, and places limitations on those powers. So it does say that the government can't come and arrest you for saying something they don't like.
Your rights are not unlimited, you are not king. Your rights end where mine (and everyone else's) begin. You'd do well to learn that concept, or you are in for some real nasty surprises later in life.
Well I guess AT&T is taking note of how the USSR was ran, and the Mafia is ran. Does anyone know if the Board of directors, Chairman or CEO are communist or work for the Mafia? Will...
If these terms are not challenged (and they make Microsoft's EULAs seem tame by comparison), then you Americans will finally have sold yourselves into corporate slavery. I imagine that the ToS was written by some lawyer who believes that the law is not worth more than using as toiletpaper to wipe his ass with. He must know that the ToS would not stand up in court, but they wouldn't have written them unless they were pretty sure that they could buy the courts or at least extort them.
My guess is that AT&T is using their cooperation with Bush's wiretapping by the NSA to be able to write their own laws, as long as they don't challenge anything the Cheney machine says. Anytime there's a legal problem, they simply point the courts and lawyers to their agreement with the NSA.
So who, exactly, is in charge in the USA?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
It also applies to freedom of the press. If you are posting something on the internet then you are publishing it. Technically you could be considered a member of the press because you are now actively engaged in the reporting of events, this is the power of the Internet, anyone and everyone can be considered a publisher and member of the press without a huge outlay of millions of dollars of cash for presses and paper and ink and such. And if those events are negative to AT&T they're saying that they can cut your account because of it.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
AT&T: Celebrating their victorious overturning of the Sherman Antitrust Act. On another note, it would seem that they're following Microsoft's dubious example. Isn't there some weird clause in their various product EULAs about not criticizing their products? I thought I saw some piece of news about that on here a while back.
I'm sorry, but that's not how the American legal system works; it relies upon Case Law when determining how laws are interpreted. Note this is Law 101 stuff—something one would learn the first week of the first year of law school.
There is enough case law regarding the 1st amendment to put to rest the right to yell fire in a crowded theater: you dont have that right—it doesn't matter what words are written on the dusty parchment.
Now go yonder and gather knowledge (google is your friend):
Yeah, right.
If you're an ATT customer, be careful about telling the truth. The truth damages their reputation. :)
When it comes to pastry theft, I take the cake.
Speaking of which, where can one get a complete list of AT&T affiliates or partners?
Is there an easier way to get these other than a piecemeal, and time consuming, paper crawl assembly from an assortment of sources like divisional reports and Google searches?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
not happiening any time soon.
For starters, it's not exactly obvious. The existence of multiple companies looks like beneficial competition.
Plus, all the dollars they funnel into lobbying (and perhaps even bribes) is pretty much going to guarantee that the laws WONT change.
Americans are consumers first and foremost. So lnog as they'd rather suffer under an unfair service agreement rather than stand on their feet and be willing to suffer the risk of not having service at all.
It's the prisoner's dilemma. If only one person fights back, he gets screwed over, and everyone else gets rewarded. If there's going to be any fighting back, there needs to be cooperation.
You know, I keep hearing about stuff like this, but ultimately everyone is responsible for it.
The people who are allowing these monopolies are your representatives.
You elected them.
If you want to get rid of the monopolies, you elect someone who will get rid of them.
Otherwise, you really don't have a right to complain when your representatives don't listen to you.
(Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood and the system is broken. Dah well.)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs