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Forced Arbitration Isn't 'Forced' Because No One Has To Buy Service, Says AT&T (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T is denying that its contracts include "forced arbitration" clauses, even though customers must agree to the clauses in order to obtain Internet or TV service. "At the outset, no AT&T customer is ever 'forced' to agree to arbitration," AT&T Executive VP Tim McKone wrote in a letter to U.S. senators. "Customers accept their contracts with AT&T freely and voluntarily; no one 'forces' them to obtain AT&T wireless service, DirecTV programming, or other products and services." AT&T was responding to concerns raised by Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who previously alleged that AT&T's use of forced arbitration clauses has helped the company charge higher prices than the ones it advertises to customers. While AT&T is correct that no one is forced to sign up for AT&T service, there are numerous areas of the country where AT&T is the only viable option for wired home Internet service. Even in wireless, where there's more competition, AT&T rivals Verizon and Sprint use mandatory arbitration clauses, so signing up with another carrier won't necessarily let customers avoid arbitration. One exception is T-Mobile, which offers a way to opt out of arbitration. The terms of service for AT&T Internet and DirecTV require customers to "agree to arbitrate all disputes and claims" against AT&T. Class actions and trials by jury are prohibited, although individual cases in small claims courts are allowed. AT&T doesn't offer any way to opt out of the arbitration/small claims provision, so the only other option is not buying service from AT&T.
In a lot of markets, AT&T is part of an oligopoly or even may have a monopoly. High speed internet is necessary for a lot of people, especially if they need it for their jobs or classes. When there are very limited options for service, AT&T and their competitors might all include forced arbitration clauses. Get rid of the monopolies and oligopolies, and perhaps AT&T might have a point. Right now, the statement sounds like something I'd say when I'm trolling. No one is forced my ass. Bring in more competition, then we'll talk.
At least the Ferengi have a code of conduct!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
... everywhere you offer those wonderfully forced-arbitration-bound-services, are there viable alternatives available, without any forced arbitration? No? Then you have not even a shred of moral defense for this sham of non-reasoning.
And, of course, the "reasoning" is still not worth the electrons that brought us this bit of monopolistic idiocy. It's so similar to that list of "our spam is not spam because..." spammers-lie-and-fail-reason idiocies that it hurt. Maybe we should have another round of pound ma bell into the ground, tied up Japanese style in red tape.
[...] no AT&T customer is ever 'forced' to agree to arbitration [...]
[...] no one 'forces' them to obtain AT&T wireless service, DirecTV programming, or other products and services.
So basically, you only qualify as a customer if you do use products or services (that require agreement), but no customer is ever forced? I fail to see the logic here.
Why is it that American law permits clauses in contracts that deny people access to the law of the land?
It's quite peculiar. In the UK any contract that attempts to limit a consumer's statutory rights and legal protections is automatically void. It cannot be done. This is why most sales contracts actually state that "This does not affect your statutory rights", because it cannot.
And if you accept that the free market should best sort these things out then this is the way to go. Let the two parties take care of it and if people don't like it they can vote with their wallets. Someone's bound to come along and compete directly with AT&T, right?
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Those trolls will be rich someday and they want the system to be set up to allow them to exploit the rest of America when they get there
Same with massive tax cuts for the ultrarich. Think of how happy they'll be to have those tax cuts when they finally have a seat at the table! The rest of you suckers just need to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps!
Perhaps like Finland back in 2010, this should be passed here in the US, albeit with a lower speed standard
In cases where the company is breaking Canadian law, contract language to force arbitration in California is null and void. A class action about “Sponsored Stories”, which uses the name and picture of a customer "without consent for the purposes of advertising" will go forward.
The legalese is summarized at http://www.slaw.ca/2017/06/28/... and the full case is https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/s...
It's primarily an arguement about choice of forum (country) in a contract.
davecb@spamcop.net
These mandatory voluntary arbitration clauses are spreading to all industries. The financial services industry has been doing it for decades.
They argue that it saves time and money for the consumer and the arbitration panels are filled with experts - industry insiders - hardly unbiased.
And in this day and age, internet access has become more important than phone service.
Anyone who wants to defend this practice, please read this.
> Those trolls will be rich someday [...]
At least they *fancy* that they'll be rich. It's what I call the President Syndrome. Every idiot can become President, so the legend goes. Thus every idiot thinks (s)he can get to the top. That induces many losers to vote for things which actually are a disadvantage for them and an advantage to the top .5 percent, because they might get there, some day.
This delusion keeps the current predatory system stable. Of course the top .5 percent do whatever they can to manipulate all those idiots into that mindset. They have a lot of resources to actually achieve that.
AT&T has sued cities to prevent competition. This is part of the broken pattern here in America. Powerful companies openly flout the law, and then find some technicalities to hide behind. Everyone knows it's BS, and the only question is how long it can go on before the public breaks out the guillotines and starts setting things on fire. Those profiting are betting the answer is "long enough to flee and live like kings in Patagonia".
Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
Rule of acquisition 17: A contract is a contract is a contract... but only between Ferengi.
#DeleteFacebook
We are a plutocracy in this land. Shit like this is forced on us without a peep from most people because they are being distracted by other issues. They don't care until the day comes that AT&T screws them over and discover that they have no choice but to pay up and shut up.
While they are being gouged by the ISPs and given third world quality service, they are all being distracted by the latest tweet from the Big Orange small fingered vulgarian in the Whitehouse. While my state legislature (mostly Republicans) are being "lobbied" by these ISPs to keep their un-free markets and not-capitalistic business models, they are arguing over laws about who can use what bathroom depending on the sex on one's birth certificate.
And my fellow citizen's allow themselves to get sucked into a moronic fight.
That's the state of the American people. And we blame immigrants for our declining standard of living.
AT&T doesn't offer any way to opt out of the arbitration/small claims provision, so the only other option is not buying service from AT&T.
When our $50/mo POTS line went down, ATT told us that it was going to be six weeks to get it fixed. And that's when we stopped using ATT. Now it's just cells from T-Mobile. They already didn't bother to offer DSL at this address, in spite of the fact that it's offered at both ends of the loop road I live on, and the fact that We The People actually paid the telcos hundreds of millions of dollars to push DSL to the last mile, which they gave away as executive bonuses.
ATT is a criminal enterprise.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Philosophers call this sort of "choice" a Hobson's choice. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice
Not on someone physically pressing you to do it. You're not forced to cheer on li'l Kim in North Korea. You can always opt for the lengthy stay in one of the reeducation camps where you get taught why you want to cheer on him. You're not forced to take a job in a country where welfare doesn't exist, you can always freely opt to starve to death.
Whether you are forced to do (or not do) something is not dependent on someone pointing a gun at your head but on the alternatives you have. And internet access has become pretty much a necessity these days, certain services are either hard to get or entirely unavailable to you if you do not have internet access.
A century ago, you would have argued that access to power or telephone was, if not a luxury, then at the very least far from something that was to be expected. Try, just TRY, to apply for a job today and not offer a phone number where the prospective employer can reach you. You wouldn't even be considered for a burger flipper job if I can't get a hold of you NOW, not in the 3-4 work days it takes for a letter to reach you and your reply to reach me.
And no later than any office job, you better have some way to get email from your prospective employer. I cannot think of any job I had in the past 2 decades that didn't require me to have an email address and a way to check it frequently.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
By their own logic, AT&T isn't compelled to pay federal taxes, since nobody is forcing AT&T to stay in business or make a profit.
IANAL, but I seem to recall there was a lawsuit over mandatory arbitration clauses in stockholder/security broker contracts.
Where I live for example, there's also carrier pigeon and smoke signals...
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There is no other service available. Someone long ago went to each cable box and cut off the coax right at the top of each incoming pipe. Fox Cox to bring in service, there would need to be some major work done to re-run, or at least fix, all the connections. So, if I want any internet service, I am forced to go through AT&T.
Doesn't forcing someone to use a legal procedure in disputes rather negate the purpose of the law, that being, the law decides what justice is, not the corporation. It's basically like saying, if you want to work with me, you have to agree not to use any legal remedy I don't like, which negates the rule of law, and therefore should be illegal outright. Basically it says AT&T can, say overbill thousands of customers, and those customers cannot do a class action even though, systematic behavior is clearly demonstrated. The fact this nonsense is illegal in Canada and not the USA gives an indication of how much the corporation pretty much dictate the law in all but the most extreme cases.
Sadly most people's problems are the result of a failure to read agreements, do their homework and read other people's bad reviews. They fall into a too good to be true deal that ends up being a nightmare. Rather then accepting they are mostly to blame, they would rather find the company at fault. If more people just stopped giving bad companies business, maybe they actually would provide better service or go out of business.
More than 50 years ago our Congress passed a statute making it legal for contracts to require use of arbitration when disputes arise.
While it is stupid that the law was never amended to restrict that to contracts between corporations, it is not at all peculiar that American law permits contracts which comply with explicitly written legal statute.
I don't defend Republicans. I may defend something a Republican does. And I may play devil's advocate to twist your panties around your penis.
There'd be nothing to capture, right? Eliminate the government and you eliminate the abuses.
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I don't know if every idiot can become President, but we know it's definitely possible for an idiot to do so.
You didn't have to get shot. You could have stepped out of the way of the bullet...
(s)he
A hypothetical person is always "he", unless the context makes it overwhelmingly more likely to be a female.
Meanwhile, we're all forced to purchase a certain service from a single certain service provider, and if you don't, they'll come and take your stuff and throw you in a cage. And if they make a mistake and wrongly accuse you of putting something in your own body in your own home, they'll send men to kick your door down in the middle of the night, killing your dog and maiming your child in the process, you'll be forced into their arbitration scheme which will almost always rule in their favor. Yet here we are, bitching about a shitty telco using it's shitty terms of service to charge you a few dollars more a month, while the people complaining about it have been responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands and all the dimwits on here try to elevate them to fucking sainthood for standing up to the evil corporation. A corporation who buys protection from competitors from this same certain service provider BTW.
Look over here! Ignore the man behind the curtain! You're all a bunch of sheep being lead right to the slaughter.
It won't happen with the Orange Piece of Shit in the White House, and the Money Grubbers controlling Congress, but we desperately need Internet access to be a public utility in the US. The current state of affairs with ISP's is ridiculous.
I don't respond to AC's.
After all, Asia isn't a free market. They're some hybrid of Communism. People can vote with their wallets. If company pollutes people will stop buying from them until they clean up their act. Or move away from the pollution. Or any one of a number of free market solutions.
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You buy a mobile phone, you pay $50-100/month. If you don't like it, you go somewhere else. What exactly are you planning on suing AT&T for?
Are you saying that ATT supports only Republicans and does their bidding?
We've got plenty of competing products already. There's Google Fibre, 4G, Satelite, Cable and even dial up internet. I can watch Youtube, Netflix and Hulu on my phone just fine. Heck, with T-Mobile I don't even pay extra.
If you're talking about the line poles, well, AT&T paid to put those up, didn't they? Why shouldn't they have the right to say what's done with them?
They broke the Bell's up decades ago. The problem was solved. Again, why can't we just step back and let the free market sort it all out?
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Done, wish has been granted. 14k dial up Internet is now considered a public utility. The minimum standard has been set.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
In the case of last-mile wired Internet, the government-granted monopoly in question is the right of an owner of land against destruction of his property by an intruder. Someone burying cable under a non-subscriber's land to reach a subscriber's land is an intruder. How would you practically do away with that law?
Funny thing is that out of their top 10 political donations, AT&T donated to 2 political candidates directly. They gave over $300,000 to Hillary and almost $80,000 to Bernie.
After that, it looks like they donated to every campaign in the country.
https://www.opensecrets.org/or...
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Try, just TRY, to apply for a job today and not offer a phone number where the prospective employer can reach you. You wouldn't even be considered for a burger flipper job if I can't get a hold of you NOW
Then where is someone supposed to get the money to buy his first phone service subscription to get his first job?
That has been proven at least several times over, I believe.
If a particular data rate becomes a standard, then site operators are going to have to either make their sites practical to use at the standard rate or be shamed for not complying with standards. This means no reliance on a megabyte of jQuery. It also means transcripts of videos.
The only reason ATT is the only choice or one of a limited choice is because jackasses at the Fed, and in particularly at the State and Local level mandate it to be. STOP giving communication companies monopolies and holy shit you might have some more choice.
Didn't happen when a similar rule was implemented in Poland, Czech Republic or Hungary. Can't imagine it working in the US either, where companies really seem to do a lot of bad jobs considering government legislation. It's not like most US government sites would struggle to comply though... A lot of them feel like they were built in the 90s, even the new ones like ETSA's revamp.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Yes, even in the US this is absolutely true, also unilateral contracts (one where all terms are set by a single party like an eula or a conditions of sale contract) are seen very different from a bilateral contracts and do not have anywhere near the same enforcement value.
The courts frequently strike down such arbitration clauses as such clauses are direct unilateral violation of rights in a given jurisdiction.
IANAL
No.
Contracts of adhesion may be interpreted against the drafter, but the drafter still gets to write them. They are still binding better than nine times out of ten. In very rare cases you may have a successful argument voiding some portion of them, but this is uncommon, especially if they are decently drafted.
Arbitration clauses and class action waivers are also binding. There are some ways to get around them sometimes to an extremely limited degree (for example, maybe you can litigate whether or not an arbitration agreement actually applies to a given dispute) but that's pretty rare.
Real lawyers write in C++
AT&T, Comcast/Xfinity, and others need to be broken up into smaller companies. Not the first time this has been necessary and likely won't be the last, either. They're all getting too big for their britches and need to be taken down several notches. Of course that's going to be damned hard to make happen with the Trump administration around. They don't give a flying fuck about citizens, only making the rich richer, and monopolies that demand their 'customers' serve them rather than the other way around is what rich people like.
They'd be right if not for the pesky little fact that they have an effective monopoly when they've conspired with other telecom, cable, and internet providers to ensure they are (like they are where I live,) the ONLY WAY you can get internet.
It's like a bus driver pulling over in the middle of the desert, a hundred parched, barren miles from the nearest ANYTHING that isn't SAND, and demanding everyone on the bus take turns blowing him, and that he's not forcing anyone, after all... they can always get off the bus and WALK!
Fuck AT&T. Fuck them right in their goddamned eye-sockets.
Signed,
~ Anyone who has ever dealt with the Assholes, Thieves, and Twats corporation.
having an internet connection is not a right. its a luxury good that you choose to buy or not.
No, it is a utility just like gas, water and electricity. In theory, you can survive without all of these but you would be camping in your house and while an internet connection might be regarded as a luxury while camping it isn't really a luxury anymore for everyday life. In addition, the cost of duplicating the infrastructure to each house means that at a local level there is no real competition which is how capitalism keeps companies focused on providing the best service. Hence the utility market has to be heavily regulated otherwise companies can abuse their monopolistic power by putting unreasonable terms into their contracts leaving consumers with a choice between accepting them or house-camping.
Surprised it took so long. I actually just wanted to see some real discussion. We nerds are pretty attached to our Internet and other Telecom services. So anything that threatens those gets shot down pretty fast. /. is the home of a lot of libertarians who just want the government to get out of the way. But it does bug me that as soon as one of their personal issues crops up they're looking for some help. That's not a uniquely /. thing either. It's all over the country. We see it with disaster relief where Congress Critters fight against aid to other districts, sometimes even in the same state and then fight _for_ aid for their district.
I was hoping to kick the hornet's nest and see what came out. Maybe get a good, honest discussion about government's role in services. I guess my posts didn't do a good enough job kicking since I'm pretty disappointed with the comments so far.
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private bans are still OK. It's a grey area since there's speech involved on both sides. But then again if an ex-con was told they couldn't shop at Walmart there wouldn't even be a case.
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and lots of free wifi out there. There's also cheap cell phones with limited data plans. Buddy of mine's got burner phones he buys for $20/pop and gives to his kids on road trips to watch low res youtube videos over 3G. 1 gig of data a month and pays about $9 to top them off with data every 3 months.
There are alternatives. The question is do we as a society want to subsidize folks with less money to have more access than is strictly necessary? I'd personally say yes, since I want their kids to have easy access to the vast stores of information online growing up. But a lot of folks not only don't want to pay for it but don't want kids to have all that info. Some for religious reasons. Some for social.
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...which I'm all in favor of.
That no one chooses to offer a competing service doesn't force AT&T to change it's TOS.
Ken
That does not make it a public utility. The lines and frequencies are both still privately owned.
They do not say "potential customer", they say "customer". And a customer, as pointed out, is someone signed to AT&T. Where they have no choice: arbitration or arbitration.
You can choose arbitration though.
Kind of like how people are "forced" to give their money to AT&T in the form of payments for services? Or "forced" to use phones compatible with AT&T's networks?
Give me a break.
Arbitration is just another form of using neutral third parties to settle disputes, one that can be less expensive and more practical than resorting to US courts, so these contracts specify that means of settling any disagreements that come up.
It's just a feature of the service AT&T is offering here, and customers can take it or leave it.
Slashdot blurbs are awfully biased these days.
Those tax cuts you are whining about are what allow business to function and your personal retirement account to flourish. You can't punish the "rich" without punishing yourself because part of your future is dependent on those same loopholes.
Also, the definition of "rich" is too low. You probably qualify yourself. This isn't theoretical. This is based on what's passed in states like New York in terms of "free tuition".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's deluded to think that Democrat politicians and their own 1% patrons give two shits about this stuff. It's just another set of fat cats with a different financial agenda pulling the strings.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The US Constitution guarantees the right to "trial by jury, for all matters criminal and civil."
Scotus has held that you can sign a contract that forfeits your constitutional rights.
Scotus has further held that states cannot make such a contract illegal.
So, face it, you're screwed. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
That people finally unite and tell those company to shove it.
Can you imagine if every customer was calling them to cancel today...
Can you imagine if AT&T tomorrow had 0 customer...
Im pretty sure a lot of company would change those things from their contract if people joined instead of rolling over and letting those bastard dictate what is supposed to be a customer market...
Straight Talk sells Verizon service with reduced cost, more data, same service, no contract & no contact with VZW customer service lies.
No one is forced.
And you can do it all by internet and Fedex.
to believe that corporations are people. Wait, what??
Even worse, not only was the law not amended to restrict to corporate contracts, apparently there is a Supreme Court ruling that says it doesn't apply to them.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
but the way to correct a past mistake isn't to double down and keep making it. Yes, we should probably get the money back, but it's a little late for that. Cut the loses and move on.
As for the buy backs, it hasn't stopped VOIP carriers, Cable companies and cell companies from competing. As the saying goes: Nothing's stopping you from forming your own telecom and competing. Sure, you'd have to innovate like crazy but that's exactly the kinds of innovation we want to see. That's where we get 5G, fibre and other services. Sure, they'll be a lot more expensive, but that'll eventually trickle down like cell phones did in the 80s and 90s.
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If, at the time you register for service, say at an AT&T shop, they'll give you a contract to sign. Take the time to read it over. Scratch out paragraphs you don't like. Write in your own clauses. Then sign it. If the employee then accepts it and activates your service, then whatever clauses you've changed are legally binding. That contract you sign is a *negotiation* and if they accept it without reading it over, much like they expect of their clients, they're on the hook for it.
though not always. It's the only remedy the working class has left. Voting doesn't work. We're more or less an oligarchy and even if we weren't single issue voters plus our winner take all system means we're boned. What do you do with gun fans that will vote away every economic issue on the off chance that somebody is going to outlaw assault rifles? Or the Cuban voters still punishing the left for Castro? Or the Religious Right? As for the American left wing, they're a lose confederacy at best that lacks the cohesion of the right wing. So unless the pro-corp right wing agenda's your bag you're pretty much SOL.
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it only matters on /. because we're nerds and the Internet is tech and we like tech. Most folks don't care. They're wondering if they're job's going away or if they can fix their car or what happens when their kid's 18 and they've got nothing to pay for college with.
If you want people to care about your issues you have to care about theirs. The word for it is "solidarity".
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But Congress recently passed a law making arbitration clauses binding and the Supreme Court upheld it. So no, you can sue under State law. It's preempted by Federal.
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That no one chooses to offer a competing service doesn't force AT&T to change it's TOS.
Yes it does, and so does the fact that it violates the US constitution.
If you want to look clean ...tarnish your opponents
Giving Bernie 80K is cheap if it makes them look good, or Bernie bad
How much money they gave to the candidates that support their shenanigans?
Government instituted the monopolies upon lobbying by private interests. Private arbitration is fine in a truly free market economy- but the reality is we don't actually have that. In the case of cellular service we clearly do have some level of competition in many places even if it's very poor because of government instituted monopolies and the way spectrum is dolled out. I had t-mobile for years for a reason. I didn't want to be locked into a contract and I didn't want to be overcharged for service. I had a plan with t-mobile, but it was not paid for on credit. I was simply charged x for service y. I ensured service y was adequate to my needs and never ran out of service. Now I have Pure Talk and am on AT&T's network. I won't go with AT&T direct- but Pure Talk works just fine for me. It's not perfect competition in that Pure Talk doesn't control its own towers or service levels and I do pay a price for it, but it's not zero competition. Pure Talk is able at least right now to provide a level of competition for AT&T despite being reliant on its towers. In an ideal world they would separate service providers from towers and service providers would pay access fees to tower owners. That's probably how things should be setup so we have more of a free market and competition can sprout.
So I guess they'll have to accept whatever terms our democratic society imposes on how they operate their business. We as a nation usually prefer a light touch to regulation, but there are always exceptions. But let me be clear, we have the ability and legal right to regulate any business in this nation including one as big as AT&T.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
having an internet connection is not a right.
It is enough of a right that the supreme court ruled Social networking website bans for past sexual offenders [arstechnica.com] unconstitutional.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission also considers Internet access a right. And I DID capitalize Internet.
It's true, US allows private arbitration when many countries don't. It's a by-product of our legal system.
Litigation in the US is both more expensive and more common than in most other countries. It has been designed to be more forgiving, permit broader latitude in developing a case. The idea is to allow greater access to the courts for poor and disadvantaged groups.
US courts allow more discovery (forcing opposing party to turn over documents) than most countries. Some cases are very hard to prove, particularly discrimination cases. So we give plaintiffs ample time and opportunity to compel discovery and uncover documents to prove their case.
Discovery is very expensive. All documents have to be reviewed by attorneys before being handed over, and reviewed by attorneys after they're received. This adds up to many many billable hours.
Further, each party typically pays their own legal costs in the US. In other countries, the loser of the litigation pays all the legal costs. This discourages frivolous litigation. The US system permits and in some ways encourages such behavior.
All this means that litigation is both more costly and more frequent in the US than elsewhere. US companies are tired of dealing with frivolous litigation and "nuisance suits", designed to get a quick payout settlement. Companies use the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) to alleviate these problems by "opting out" of federal courts.
That's not how it was supposed to be. The FAA was originally intended as a way for businesses to resolve disputes among themselves more quickly and cheaply with arbitration, since the federal courts are clogged as a result of permissive litigation rules. It was never meant to be a weapon for companies to immunize themselves against suits from their customers.
But that's why we have arbitration in the US when many other countries wouldn't stand for it. Frankly they never needed it, because litigation is less frequent, less expensive, and the loser usually pays the entire cost. Hooray for freedom. :/
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
As I said, they gave Hillary $300,000.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I keep a checking account for just this sort of thing.
When I open a new service, I pay the first bill by check.
On the back of the check, in very small print, faint, like a watermark, I lay out my terms of payment.
By processing this check as payment for your service, you agree to the following:
Any and all EULAs are null and void.
Any and all arbitration clauses are moot, and you will be forced to go to court, where a lawyer of my choice will represent you, you do not get to pick your lawyer.
Any and all future attempts at changing this service agreement must be delivered, in person, by the chairman of your board, in writing and agreed to via my signature or any and all future changes are null and void. If I decline to sign, you cannot implement those changes to any of your customers globally.
Your product's failure to meet my expectations can and will open you to severe financial penalties of 10,000 x the price I pay per month for it, per day that the service doesn't meet my expectations, in gold. Up to a maximum of 1.21 cubic feet of solid, 99.9999999% pure gold per day.
At any time, my service will be given top priority right behind 911 and other emergency services - even above the chairman of the board of your company.
Forced Arbitration Isn't 'Forced' Because No One Has To Buy Service, Says AT&T
Someone should tell these assholes at AT&T about these two terms. Sure no one forces anyone to sign up with AT&T... just like no one is forced to buy a car in a metro area with shitty public infrastructure.
The only choices of internet access for some customers is a single provider, so right there that eliminates the option. And even when there are multiple providers, they all require an adhesion contract.
In this time and age, you simply do not want to be without internet access. And this is not just to stream movies or look at pictures of LOLcats.
Want to order something? Internet.
Price comparison? Internet.
Sign electronic documents? Internet.
Your kid is required to use a lectures portal provided by the school? Internet.
Job searches and resumes? Internet.
Sure we can live without it. But that pretty much requires an individual to separate himself from society so much, such an option is no longer reasonable for the common person (specially one with children, and who wants his children not to live under a rock.)
So, no, we consumers do not have options, and we are force to take these adhesion contracts by necessity. No one forces us my ass.
Typically that's because government sites must already be accessible to blind readers, and need to be configured for a TTS bot to read them, per section 508. If a blind person is unable to read a gov't site, they can sue that department, and will likely win.
In a couple of counties that I work in, the PUDs have delivered GPON to nearly every residential address in the county, and will do other gigabit fiber connections for businesses. The residents pay the PUD something like $10/mo for access to the infrastructure, then have their choice of 6 to 8 different ISPs and 4 or 5 internet/phone providers, if they decide to do that rather than stick with Frontier and their copper infrastructure.
For larger installations, both Cogent and Zayo offer peering through the county fiber network.
It works really quite well.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
It's still very much a convenience. "I want it" does not make it a necessity.
The same is true of the internet: you can order things online and have them delivered, book your holiday, fill in tax returns and other government forms etc. All of these you can do without internet access but life is so much more convenient with it....just like every other utility. That's why they are called "utilities" and not "luxuries" nor "essentials": they make everyday life so much easier that they are somewhere between 'luxury' and 'essential'.
The fact that the Internet is a recent phenomenon does nothing to alter this - electricity had a similarly rapid roll out slowed slightly by the need to actually build the distribution infrastructure and two World Wars.
with eliminating their personal/work cell phones from their life. I'd love to see a judge order this to happen.
according to the AP style book (that's probably on Donnie's list of "Fake News" organizations)
Really? T's unconstitutional to require contract disputes to be handled via arbitration?
Which constitution are we talking about? Care to point that out to me?
Ken