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.

Comments

No one is forced my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe for rural farmers in nowhere Indiana. For the rest of the developed world, internet is a necessity to conduct business and live a modern life.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[jonsmirl]

Has anyone here ever received anything of value from a class action lawsuit? My best win so far is a $10 check. Most of the time I never received anything, and a few times I have received useless coupons.

On the other hand the lawyers doing these suits get paychecks of $10M or more. And where do you think this $10M comes from? It is being added to the price of the product. I think it is probably more cost effective for consumers that these class actions are stopped. I don't really see them as helping consumers, instead they just enrich lawyers.

I think it is far more effective to bombard a company with a thousand individual small claims. That makes them have to show up which costs them a lot of money. And get this -- you can actually win in small claims. My best win in small claims is over $5,000. Several times the judge has just ripped up their thirty page contracts, asked their rep if I have been harmed, and when they say yes, he awards what I am asking for. These small claim judges work more on what is a reasonable outcome, not on what is contained in a lopsided thirty page contract which the consumer is powerless to alter.

In one case the judge even yelled at them for putting such ridiculous clauses in the contract. That was with ADT which has a clause stating that if you moved the contract automatically extended three years. I had moved three times so my original contract had extended to 12 years. Then I moved into a high rise which did not allow alarms and tried to terminate. ADT demanded over $10,000 to terminate my contract. They ended up with nothing.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[ckatko]

Something about forced your ass? ... go on...

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think farmers in nowhere Indiana use an old fashioned plow and hook up old Bessy and walk through the fields? You have no clue about modern farming.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[ringringbeep]

I bought internet in Rural PA last year. Verizon, AT&T, and a regional company were the only options. After the local company did a survey and determined they could not get a line to me, I called AT&T. The AT&T customer service rep looked up my address and said that's in a Verizon area, can I transfer you to Verizon support?" Having worked for AT&T just after deregulation, I was curious. So instead of saying, "ok" I asked some questions. AT&T and Verizon internet have worked out regional monopolies. Choice is a farce in these areas, and so an arbitration agreement is forced upon any customer who "wants" internet service. Take our terms, or have no internet. Cellular data was also abysmal in the area. On some days climbing out onto th me 2nd story roof was the only way to get email. So I "agreed" to Verizon's land line terms of service.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

But since most jobs require you to "go to our website to apply", not having internet drastically reduces your ability to provide for yourself. Yes, it's not a necessity in the same way electricity isn't a necessity, your life can continue on without it, but you will be at a disadvantage compared to everyone else.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[mysidia]

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 unconstitutional.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[CrankyFool]

You're changing the subject. Putting aside the requirements for suits (have you seen what top-earning developers get in Silicon Valley? And what they wear to interviews), the point is that you can get a suit in a number of different places, but if AT&T is the only internet provider you have access to, you sort of have to agree to their terms. If Men's Warehouse decided that they wanted to require forced arbitration, I could go to Jos A Banks, or get something online, or go to Nordstroms, or Target, or whatever. We're not (in this thread) talking about whether or not internet access should be free -- only that it's required, and that means that if there's only one place you can get it from, that is a very limited definition of "freedom"

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

It used to be a luxury good. But, these days there's more and more essential services moving online. Calling it a luxury good is rather ridiculous in this day and age. Cable TV and Satellite are luxury goods. The Internet is used for things like homework assignments and getting access to government services.

What's more, the only reason why it's so expensive is because corporatists have taken the federal government and dismantled all the measures put in place to prevent this sort of bad behavior.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

They do in Texas. You have no clue. Not every farmer buys into IoT tractors.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[jonsmirl]

Much more impact could be created by publicizing packets of info instructing exactly how to file the small claim and what to say. Filing small claims is usually less than $100 and you almost always get more than $100 back. And filing small claims very clearly lets the corporation know that their customers are upset with them. That turns the customers in to real people, not just faceless names. Plus I've only had two companies argue with me, the rest have settled and tried to patch things up. Base on my tiny sample two responses occur - we're sorry, let's try to make things right - or please refer to the fine print on page 31, now read the clause on page 7, next the judge yells at them and tells them to write contracts consumers can comprehend.

These large class actions just get shuffled off to the legal department and ignored as a cost of doing business. I think they are completely ineffective and only serve to enrich the lawyers. Making the settlement bigger will get transferred directly into higher product prices.

Of course filing a small claim means you personally have to take some action which is much more effort that signing the bottom of some form that comes in the mail. In my opinion the cumulative effect of the small claims is much more impactful.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Rick Schumann]

You're a really dumb troll. Have you tried lately to get a job without internet access? Of course in your case it might not matter, I'm sure the Jiffy Lube down the street wants you to come in and fill out a paper job application -- just to make sure you know how to read and write, that is. There's also the small matter of how much telephone service is VoIP these days, and not analog POTS, which companies like AT&T would like nothing better than to do away with completely. Here's a pro-tip for you: If you're going to troll, you have to have a shred of truth in it, or it's just not believable -- and what you said is so verifiably false that it doesn't pass muster at all.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Maxo-Texas]

With regional stores closing down, rural farmers need internet to shop for a lot of stuff too.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Alain Williams]

In the UK the only way of submitting a VAT return (aka quarterly Sales Tax report) is on-line. Access only on-line to other government services is the way that things are going. That makes it a necessity.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Hans Lehmann]

And yet without an Internet connection you would have able to post that drivel.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Solandri]

AT&T and Verizon internet have worked out regional monopolies.

AT&T and Verizon did not "work out" regional monopolies. They were granted monopolies by the local governments, and are prohibited from competing with each other by the terms of the Bell Telephone breakup which split the original AT&T into lots of smaller phone companies who provided service in different regions.

Choice is a farce in these areas, and so an arbitration agreement is forced upon any customer who "wants" internet service.

The correct recourse then is to complain to your local government for giving a monopoly to a provider with an arbitration clause. Your government chose AT&T (or Verizon). If that was not your desire, then your government is not complying to your wishes. And you need to speak up at town meetings or whatnot that arbitration clauses are unacceptable, or vote the bastards out. AT&T basically said "here are our terms", and your government gave it their stamp of approval when it chose them as the local monopoly provider.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[kenh]

Maybe for rural farmers in nowhere Indiana. For the rest of the developed world, internet is a necessity to conduct business and live a modern life.

Maybe try wireless, isn't great cell coverage one of the great things about not living in "nowhere Indiana"?

Re: No one is forced my ass

[kenh]

That you rely on something doesn't make it a right - Define what a 'right' is please (hint, it doesn't involve the requirement that someone provide a good or service to/for you)

Re: No one is forced my ass

[phorm]

Really, in a lot of cases what happens to those who have "served their time" seems to be a fairly gross violation. For repeat offenders, dangerous offenders, or high-risk re-offenders there should be a framework to assess and keep them behind bars if needed (would need a lot of work to ensure it doesn't become a "gulag" treatment though), but once once has served time then the sh*t-stain of a long-term record really just makes re-offence more likely. It's not really useful to be out of jail if you have no connections, no income, no current skills, and a record preventing you from getting a reputable job.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[jedidiah]

The fact that it is or isn't a luxury good is irrelevant. Their market is a small oligopoly. The tolerance of this nonsense effectively strips everyone of their rights. One jackass gets away with it and the other 2 jackasses follow suit. Some contracts are illegal as a matter of public policy. Being forced to sign away your rights to be able to use an entire class of good or service should fall into that category.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[jedidiah]

> Has anyone here ever received anything of value from a class action lawsuit?

Yes. Safe consumer products.

Civil servants don't have the resources or motivation to properly enforce this stuff.

The point of class action suits is to keep corporations in line and prevent them from turning you into green crackers. It's not about a personal pay day for you.

It's not even about a personal windfall if it's just you and it's an injury lawsuit. It's about holding the responsible party responsible.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[alexgieg]

Here's a better analogy. What if ever single company you applied for included a job application form in which in agreed to solve any dispute about discrimination through arbitration? And then, when you got the job, the contract had a clause in which you also agreed to solve any employment dispute through arbitration? Should that be legal? After all, you're not obliged to work for a company that does that, you can chose any other one. No company left not doing it? You can start your own business! Except all the businesses you need to deal with so as to be able to have one of yours have similar clauses in their contracts. Well, you're not obliged to have a business! You can... er, become a beggar, I guess?

No system of laws should allow contractual clauses to overcome legal rules. The hierarchy of authority should *always* be that only what *isn't* determined by a law is free to be contractually determined between parties. Everything else, the law should take precedence. Don't want that law? Vote a legislative body that will clearly and unambiguously revoke it. But don't insert in the system "option" stuff. That's a recipe for all kinds of extremely damaging slippery slopes.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Antique Geekmeister]

I'm afraid that there are too many cases where "just get another job!" has been an excuse for systemic Gender abuse, racism, and homophobia in the workplace are merely examples. It's also included unpaid overtime, nepotism, sexual harassment, and employment fraud. Forced arbitration, which is what this inherently is for all employees, provides much stronger benefit to the larger legal entity, who is typically the entity that selects the arbitrator. These arbitrations are also typically sealed: the evidence submitted to them is not available to any other possible plaintiffs.

From my experience with corporate lawsuits, they're workable for modest cases where the cost of a lawsuit would outweigh the cost of any reasonable settlement. But they have no legally binding force for anyone but the plaintiff and that company's relationship with that particular plaintiff. For widespread workplace abuse, they're not helpful at stopping or preventing the abuse as a matter of policy.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[epine]

And where do you think this $10M comes from? It is being added to the price of the product.

This is getting pretty close to "follow the money" as a certifiable intellectual disability.

Indeed, the American adversarial "free" market regulatory function is implemented more cheaply—as perceived through a conspicuously charismatic megadollar mental metal-detector—by "big" government oversight in many other free-market(ish) democracies.

But isn't it funny how, at the end of the day, one needs to add up the contribution of all the feedback loops* before deciding whether the cost of doing business as merely usual—even mildly** unfettered business-as-usual has no known upper bound—is somehow too penny-painful to countenance (at which point the merit function apparently becomes x!=this, and the land grab is on).
___

[*] Your mission, should you delight is discarding hundreds of unknowable terms that especially rankle your nose hairs, and choose to accept this as a more dignified profession than scouring McRestRooms.

[**] Post Glass–Steagall, where we rushed to embrace TARP because it was the screaming deal of the 21st century compared to what otherwise*** might have been (hint: the A in TARP does not stand for "asset").

[***] Once every decade or so, the truly wealthy gather together for an Iowa Writer's Workshop of collective dystopian ideation. The rest of the decade, they can barely manage a passable crayon sketch of a stick-man fleeing a house on fire. It's their one great artistic outlet (only don't get them started on provenance, which though superficially similar, is definitely not the same thing).

Re:No one is forced my ass

[jonsmirl]

It is not obvious to me that class actions achieve anything other than enriching lawyers. We may have some lofty goals that class actions are supposed to achieve, but in reality they don't seem to achieve those goals.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[AutodidactLabrat]

Says no one in business anywhere
Even job hunting requires access for all but the most menial of jobs
Nope, this is why "An Unregulated monopoly is the only thing worse than a Regulated monopoly".

Re: No one is forced my ass

[BronsCon]

"Get another job" is the best option if you're facing any of those hardships. Also sure their ass off on the way out the door; but have another job first.

And if you know you're going to face those adversities at a prospective employer, don't take the job in the first place. Your talents (the collective "your", not you specifically because this doesn't apply to anyone who can't follow this line of reasoning) are too valuable to offer them to someone who will abuse you.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[BronsCon]

ugh... proofread... "sue" their ass off...

Re: No one is forced my ass

[mysidia]

Demanding that someone subsidize or provide you pen and paper is not.

I just demand fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory, and equitable access to purchase pen and paper (Or Internet access) without
being requested or required to sign over or waive any basic rights in the process, including the right to have disputes between me and a vendor mediated by the courts, and to pursue class action if damage or deception is committed against a large number of customers .

Re: No one is forced my ass

[nnet]

when did the UK get ATT and lose all the other isps?

Re: No one is forced my ass

[chihowa]

The correct recourse then is to complain to your local government for giving a monopoly to a provider with an arbitration clause.

...and acknowledge that in the absence of a competitive choice and the absence of negotiating power, the terms of the contract are indeed "forced" if the customer wants internet service at all.

The local governments can't "give the stamp of approval" to otherwise unenforceable contract terms. That is absolutely beyond the scope of their authority.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[Waccoon]

I think it is far more effective to bombard a company with a thousand individual small claims.

I agree, but if that actually worked, companies wouldn't be so keen on forcing arbitration. They've already run all the numbers.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[slack_justyb]

Has anyone here ever received anything of value from a class action lawsuit?

Yeah, I'm a former VW dieselgate owner. The funds from the settlement paid off the car loan on the VW and the car I replaced the VW with (which was not a VW). Additionally, I had some funds left over from the settlement, so that went to credit cards.

Those cars were engineering train wrecks. Outside the main class action, there was a few more. There was a filter class action for those VWs. Basically the way they designed those custom, just for that car, filters was so overly complicated that they ultimately didn't actually do the job that they were supposed to do. There was also a heater core class action. They engineered the heater core to have this really tiny input for hot water coming from the engine (same for the output but you'll see why that really doesn't matter). Well because there was so little metal there, the pressure of hot water would eventually crack the metal and allow the heater core to leak.

There was a couple of more, but it's been a while. I didn't have tons of debt, I was almost done with student loans, some large medical things, and what not, but after all of those settlements, I had enough to reduce me down to just what I owe on my house now. So other than my house payment, I'm debt free thanks to VWs fuck up.

I'll say though, that I'm one of the rare ones for class actions actually helping. I don't like saying never, but it'll more than likely be longer than the number of years I have left on this Earth before I buy a VW again.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[jonsmirl]

About a year later ADT was hit with a class action over this. I'm not sure how it turned out.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[LVSlushdat]

I retired in 2010 from a 20 year IT career and have NEVER owned a suit. The absolute most I ever wore to any interview was a button-down shirt, a tie, and a pair of khakis. Never had any trouble getting a job.. Don't plan to buy a suit either now that I'm retired.. FUCK SUITS AND TIES... (you KNOW you agree with me...)

Re:No one is forced my ass

[radarskiy]

"And where do you think this $10M comes from? It is being added to the price of the product."

If they market would bear a higher price, they'd already be charging it.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[dryeo]

In Canada, it is simply an essential service, much like the telephone and electricity. This does not mean free, it just means it should be available to most everyone for basically the same price for the same service and ISP's can't arbitrarily cut people off, they need a good reason such as non-payment of bills, perhaps for more then one billing cycle.
My ISP (the only one here) officially discontinued my only internet access (dial-up) last Nov. but it is still working. I expect once they get the cell tower operating that they're building, they'll pull the plug.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Jason Levine]

Have you tried lately to get a job without internet access?

Anecdotal evidence to support you: Today, I was in Jo-Ann buying some yarn for my wife. (She's into crocheting and was making yarn water balloons.) As I paid for the skein of yarn, a man walked up and asked the person at the register how he could apply for a job. They told him that all job applications are online. He needed to go to a website to fill out an application. If he didn't have Internet access, he might not be able to get a job (above a minimum wage one at McDonald's).

Internet access is highly needed for participation in today's society and not having it can negatively impact a person's chances of advancement.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Jason Levine]

This is a great point. If Internet access were a truly competitive market, we might not be so concerned about one ISP doing this. People could vote with their wallets and defect to any of a dozen other ISPs. As it stands, though, most people have access to one or two broadband ISPs. In my case, it's Charter's Spectrum. If Spectrum abused their monopoly position, I'd be able to gripe about it, but I couldn't flee to another ISP. And if me contesting their bad behavior meant having to go to an arbitrator that THEY chose, who ruled in THEIR favor 95% of the time, and whose ruling I was FORCED to accept (with no recourse to go to court), they'd be able to abuse their monopoly with impunity. The only one who could stop them would be the federal government, but I don't see this administration being big on following in Teddy Roosevelt's Trust Buster shoes.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[rtb61]

What the end user gets from major class action law suits is remediation of behaviour and the arse hole corporations being fucked over for millions for being real fucked up arrogant douche bags. The more corporations that get fucked over by class action law suits the better. Of course far better than class action law suits would be criminal penalties with custodial sentences and major personal fines for corrupt psychopathic corporate executes, ahh but we can only dream and of course plan mwa ha ha.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[saloomy]

He is wrong, but not because of why you think. AT&T are asserting their market position, because the market will bear it. They spent the time and money to build out to where they are one of a few if not the only carrier, and so they can corner you into unreasonable agreements. The response should have come from negotiations with he municipalities that gave these ass-hats exclusivity arrangements and tax dollars to build out. The pricing, terms, and arrangements should have been negotiated then, not now with every single customer. Expecting a giant company with millions of customers to independently negotiate every contract with every customer is pretty unreasonable. Call up MS and tell them you don't agree with a provision in their EULA to one of their products, see how far you get.

The response now is to invite in competition, and rip up the exclusivity agreements by enacting legislation that stops such agreements so that the courts can't side with the carriers when they inevitably sue the municipality for backing out on its word.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[jellomizer]

Arbitration and sueing a company has nothing to do about the need for the product or availability of competitors.
If they take your money and you don't get what you thought you paid for, or the product had harmed you in some way then you have the right to sue. Then the courts will decide if your issue was indeed a legitimate problem or not.
Giving legal resources to people who buy and trade goods and services is the foundation of society.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[coinreturn]

Yes, I have. A class action against the owner of a gas line that bordered my property in WV netted me several thousand dollars.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[RabidReindeer]

On the other hand the lawyers doing these suits get paychecks of $10M or more. And where do you think this $10M comes from? It is being added to the price of the product.

If you paid a Low Price [TM] for a product, and that product was so defective that the producer was held liable for $10M, then your Low Price [TM] wasn't the real price to begin with. Unless, of course, you like buying damaged goods.

Of course, many class-action lawsuits are about people being made to pay artificially inflated prices in some form or another (either at the register or for things like inequitable service termination fees). Ideally, the award would be sufficient to at least rebate the extra money you paid, plus the legal costs. In reality, it seems like the process of actually claiming award money is difficult to impossible, unless you are in the habit of keeping 10-year-old financial records in detail.

That's annoying, but not as annoying as knowing that a company the size of AT&T probably spends that much coffee service alone and can readily write such penalties off as part of the cost of doing crooked business.

The popularity of class-action lawsuits is that while small claims might be individually more satisfying, companies the size of AT&T retain major legal resources whose full-time job is to make such nuisances go away. Most small claimants cannot muster counter-resources of comparable magnitude. When giants and ants negotiate, rarely does the ant win.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[ausekilis]

You've got a point... but I don't think it quite works that way. At least, not when profit X is still greater than penalty Y.

If we really want corporations to be liable, any punishment - thousands of individual claims or one class action - needs to have some teeth. Rip apart the profits they made. Make new legislation that, when broken, demands a huge payout and cost to fix.

The only good example of class action and solid corporation punishment is what VW is going through worldwide. You can bet your ass that regulators are going to be looking closer at them and their competition. A handful of other car makers have admitted to gaming the system too, but none are suffering buybacks and billions in costs/penalties.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[BradleyUffner]

If class action lawsuits were not effective at punishing companies, then they would not be trying to hard to get out of them.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[jonsmirl]

The goal should be to make things better for consumers. I am not convinced that class actions are doing that. For sure class actions cost companies hundreds of millions in aggregate and of course businesses don't want to pay that. I just don't see any correlation between sticking companies with these huge bills and improving things for the consumers. It is just another form of taxing a business.

I just believe that other mechanisms (like mass small claims filings) would result in more consumer benefits being put into place. Mass small claims filing forces the corporation to send a representative to every one of these actions and actually talk to them. Much more effective that some multi-millionaire class action attorney negotiating with the corporate legal department. Do you really think either one of those groups really cares about the consumer? If the class action attorney cared about consumers, why does he always end up with $10M while we get coupons?

Re: No one is forced my ass

[EndlessNameless]

While encouraging competition is ideal, in the meantime it makes sense to prohibit abusive terms of service.

How long will it take the authorities to get their acts together? Good luck predicting that.

It takes somewhere in the range of months to years to build out a network, so even the best case scenario leaves people in a bad position for a long time.

Curtail the abusive practices now. Right now, binding arbitration is exclusively a tool of corporations which limits or prevents citizens from obtaining proper legal relief. I doubt it should be permitted at all, but it is particularly awful in this context.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[EndlessNameless]

Your talents (the collective "your", not you specifically because this doesn't apply to anyone who can't follow this line of reasoning) are too valuable to offer them to someone who will abuse you.

My garbage collector and bank teller don't deserve to be screwed out of overtime pay, forced to work in hazardous conditions, etc. The skill requirements for their jobs are such that quitting puts no pressure on their employer. Millions of adults are qualified for these jobs.

So your "get another job" advice essentially ignores a huge part of the workforce. There is no reason these people should be treated poorly.

If an employer can't compete when held to such minimal standards, then it doesn't need to be in business at all. Someone else can step in with acceptable policies and take over that piece of the market if the original firm can't figure it out. We've done it before in other industries---housing, meat packing, electrical.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[BronsCon]

My garbage collector and bank teller don't deserve to be screwed out of overtime pay, forced to work in hazardous conditions, etc. The skill requirements for their jobs are such that quitting puts no pressure on their employer. Millions of adults are qualified for these jobs.

And if they all quit? If nobody is willing to take those jobs because they realize they deserve better treatment?

And those who don't know better, or maybe even enjoy that work environment (yes, there are people who do) can take those jobs and everyone will be better off for it.

Of course, back to my original point, if people who disagree with the policies and actions of their employers would simply stop associating with those policies and actions, talent would dry up quickly enough.

So your "get another job" advice essentially ignores a huge part of the workforce. There is no reason these people should be treated poorly.

Except that it, really, does not. See above.

If an employer can't compete when held to such minimal standards, then it doesn't need to be in business at all.

On this point, we fully agree. And if they can't find people willing to work with them (because people quit when they encounter the bullshit) they won't be in business for long. That is why you should quit a job that exposes you to such bullshit.

Someone else can step in with acceptable policies and take over that piece of the market if the original firm can't figure it out.

Right. The original firm can figure it out when their existing employees quit to go work for the better company and they can't find any good talent to replace them because that talent has gone to work for the better company, too. In other words, you're making the same argument I am, you just haven't followed it to its logical conclusion far enough to realize it yet.

We've done it before in other industries---housing, meat packing, electrical.

Right, and every single time it has involved people quitting their jobs at the shitty companies to go work for better ones. That's what I'm suggesting they do because, as you so astutely just pointed out, it's what has worked in the past.

Follow the white rabbit you just spotted. He'll lead you to me. We're on the same page, you just haven't read far enough to see it yet.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[saloomy]

Yes, it does take years to build out networks, that's the shitty side. Our incompetitant leaders at the local and state levels have left us with shit options for internet access.

For my own business, we use binding arbitration clauses in practically every contract we have with our customers (however, they are B2B contracts). Binding arbitration is cheaper than a a court case in most cases, and the arbiters are typically retired judges, or lawyers with a ton of experience. In California, you can still request relief from a court and sue the other party anyway, if you can explain why the other party is behaving unfairly. Courts have the power to strike those provisions out.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[Thelasko]

Mod parent up. A modern farm is very dependent on internet access. Just like most businesses.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[strikethree]

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.

He knows that. We know that. The facts do not matter though as this is about power - meaning - as long as he walked away without having any penalties or changes of behavior forced upon ATT, he won. And he did. Case closed. You will have to start another fight if you want to continue, but be aware that logic and truth are only tools.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[strikethree]

Civil servants don't have the resources or motivation to properly enforce this stuff.

WTF? All the civil servant has to do is some paperwork. It is the citizens who discover problems and want something done about it. The civil servant just usually says no because they do not want to do the paperwork. Sometimes the no comes from being bribed, but it is usually the desire to avoid work that makes things as crappy as they are.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[strikethree]

It took me a minute to get what you were talking about... and it blows me away that clauses in contracts can take away legal recourse. That does not even make sense. Theft through fraudulent means is still theft and should be allowed to be heard in a normal courtroom regardless of what any contract says. I am getting the feeling that the concept of the EULA was merely Microsoft refining contract clauses.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[apoc.famine]

Has anyone here ever received anything of value from a class action lawsuit?

I might have gotten $150 from one. Still unsure about that. At one point in my life I was keeping my eyes open for class action lawsuits, in part because I was following the DRAM legal saga. I think there was price fixing for monitors as well, and maybe something else.
 
Regardless, I filled out a handful of claims, and got on with life. Moved to another state. At some point the lawsuit was finally settled, and it was a per-person award, money/people who signed up. Apparently not a lot of people did. I had moved on and they didn't have an address for me, so it went into my old state's unclaimed property bin. A relative was looking through the list, saw my name, and let me know. I filled out the paperwork, got it notarized, with no idea what I was claiming. There was no amount, no indication who it was from. Two months later I had a check for $150 and change. Strange as all hell. To this day I don't know what the money was for, but my best guess is from one of those lawsuits.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[david_thornley]

Regrettably, the US Supreme Court has held that binding arbitration clauses in contracts of adhesion are legal.

Re:No one is forced my ass

[david_thornley]

And where do you think this $10M comes from? It is being added to the price of the product.

No it isn't. It doesn't change the marginal cost of selling additional whatevers one bit. That means it doesn't change the optimum price to generate the most profit. Realistically, the price that maximizes profit also maximizes profit - $10M. To put this another way, if the company could get more money out of the customers by raising prices, they already would have.

Therefore, it comes out of something internal to the business, and ultimately from the stockholders. The stockholders are at least theoretically the ones making the overall decisions, so it puts pressure more or less where it should.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[AutodidactLabrat]

Did you EVEN FOLLOW the several shutdown lawsuits by ATT, Comcast and every other provider when cities tried to run their own networks?
The point of Capitalism is control over the market.

Re: No one is forced my ass

[kenh]

My right to own a gun doesn't obligate anyone to provide me one at a price I can afford.

My right to free speech doesn't obligate the local TV station to give me air time.

I really would have hoped that came up in your high school civics class.

Re:Notice that the only Senators are Democrats

[Big Hairy Ian]

At least the Ferengi have a code of conduct!

Tell me, AT&T...

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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.

Re: Tell me, AT&T...

[guruevi]

The true option is to go to court anyway, most small claims courts will not allow those clauses to stand, you can't sign away your state's right to control commerce, you don't have that sort of authority.

Re:Tell me, AT&T...

[ewanm89]

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.

Re:Tell me, AT&T...

[ooloorie]

... everywhere you offer those wonderfully forced-arbitration-bound-services, are there viable alternatives available, that include a free pony? No? Then you have not even a shred of moral defense for this sham of non-reasoning.

There, FTFY.

Re: Tell me, AT&T...

[Antique Geekmeister]

Few civil court judges are willing to overrule federal law and the US Supreme Court ruling that the federal law overruled more local, plaintiff friendly policies. Examine the Federal Arbitration Act. It may not apply in many cases, but deciding when it does and does not prevent a company from forcing arbitration is one of those legal questions that costs hours of expensive lawyer time to decide before even proceeding to court.

No *customer*

[kav2k]

[...] 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.

Re:No *customer*

[msauve]

Yep. "...no AT&T customer is ever 'forced' to agree to arbitration"

They're not a customer unless there's a contract, so it's the opposite of what AT&T claims - all customers are forced to accept arbitration.

Of course, if they want that claim to be true, they simply have to stop enforcing (or remove) that clause.

Re:No *customer*

[freeze128]

AT&T also offer prepaid phone services which are considered "NO CONTRACT". Now, are you still an AT&T customer?

Re:No *customer*

[mrbester]

This is about internet and TV services, not any other offerings from AT&T. Do they offer a prepaid option for internet and TV services?

Re:No *customer*

[Solandri]

The logic is sound. You are not required to obtain AT&T service - you can choose a different service. So anyone who chooses to accept their service and become a customer is not forced to either become a customer, nor forced to agree to arbitration. They choose to do so willingly (i.e. opposite of forced).

If there are two restaurants, one which servers only hamburgers, and one which serves only cheeseburgers, and you choose to go to the cheeseburger shop, you are not being forced to get cheese on your burger. Anyone who doesn't want cheese goes to the hamburger shop instead instead. Thus your logical syllogism that customers of the cheeseburger shop are "forced" to get cheese doesn't work. Anyone who doesn't want cheese simply chooses to go to a different shop - they aren't forced to get cheese. You chose of your own free will to go to the cheeseburger shop, so you have no grounds for complaining that they only sell cheeseburgers.

Where this runs into a brick wall is the areas where AT&T has been given a government-granted monopoly. In those cases, AT&T is the only choice, and the customer has no alternative if they don't like AT&T's terms. They are forced to agree to AT&T's terms if they want any service. But even then I'm not sure there's grounds for complaint. The monopoly is granted by the government - usually a city or county government. If the people don't like AT&T's terms, it isn't AT&T[s fault. It was/is their government's job to obey the will of the people and avoid giving monopolies to companies that have an arbitration clause. i.e. the fault lies with the government, not with AT&T. The state or federal government could pass laws requiring local governments to only grant monopolies to providers without an arbitration clause. But that's a local versus state or federal government issue, nothing to do with AT&T (or ISPs for that matter).

Re:No *customer*

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there really no contract associated with them or are they really "no annual contract" services?
I don't see AT&T offering a completely "no contract" service on their website, only "no annual contract".

You cannot get these services without entering into a legally binding contract with this company or any other.
No company would dream of offering anything that didn't give them a legal framework for everything.

They're not selling watermelons off of the back of a truck, they're offering a contract that you keep signing
up for every time you pay for the next month.

Re:No *customer*

[Jason Levine]

Also, if AT&T gets away with requiring arbitration, other companies will follow suit. Pretty soon, the only way to pursue a company wronging you will be to enter into arbitration with an arbiter that the company chooses and pays and who rules for the company 90+% of the time.

\Continuing with your cheeseburger analogy, if the other hamburger shop decides to only offer cheeseburgers now, you will be forced to choose between two cheeseburger shops. Want a hamburger with no cheese? Maybe you should move three towns over where there's still a small, hamburger shop that gives you the choice... Wait, never mind. Cheesecast - the big cheeseburger conglomerate - just bought them out and they only offer cheeseburgers now also.

Re:No *customer*

[dryeo]

Is it really a government granted monopoly now? I understood that municipalities granting monopolies was made illegal in the USA. Where I live, in Canada but similar, I have one choice for internet, not due to a government granted monopoly, but due to only one company bothering to run wires out here. It's not worth it for another company to run wires here and so far it hasn't been worth it for a company to build a cell tower either. With mountains blocking satellite, I have exactly one choice for internet. It's a natural monopoly.
Luckily here, internet is considered an essential service, so the ISP can't be unreasonable in pricing and contracts, though our prices are still high. At that when they discontinued my Internet last Nov, they had to leave it switched on until I have an alternative, namely the cell tower they're building so they can finish shutting off my dial-up internet.

quite peculiar

[gsslay]

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.

Re:quite peculiar

[ewanm89]

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

Re:quite peculiar

[DRJlaw]

The courts frequently strike down such arbitration clauses as such clauses are direct unilateral violation of rights in a given jurisdiction.

IANAL

That's obvious, because you're wrong.

The Federal government passed the Federal Arbitration Act, which authorizes such arbitration clauses, and there's a pesky thing in the Constitution called the Supremacy Clause. AT&T itself won a U.S. Supreme court case that said that the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 preempts state laws that prohibit contracts from disallowing class-wide arbitration, on the basis of statutory interpretation, since nobody seriously questioned that wireless contracts were within the scope of the Interstate Commerce Clause.

Specifically,

Relying on the California Supreme Court's Discover Bank decision, [the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals] found the arbitration provision unconscionable because it disallowed classwide proceedings. The Ninth Circuit agreed that the provision was unconscionable under California law and held that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), which makes arbitration agreements "valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract," 9 U. S. C. sec. 2, did not preempt its ruling.

Held: Because it "stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress," Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 67, California's Discover Bank rule is preempted by the FAA. Pp. 4-18.

IAAL.

Re:quite peculiar

[Dragonslicer]

Companies can put anything they want in a contract. If the company forces you to arbitration, you can challenge it in court.

There are three major problems with how the American legal system works with stuff like this:

1. You can't challenge it in court until you're actually harmed, i.e. get in a situation where you're forced into arbitration.
2. Court cases are expensive, and large companies have far more money than you do. A lot of litigation in the US is simply a competition to see which side is first to make the other side not want to pay any more.
3. Even if you win and the clause is determined to be unenforceable, the only penalty to the company is not being able to enforce the clause against you. They'll still include the clause in their contracts and hope that most other people don't fight it.

Re:quite peculiar

[ooloorie]

Binding arbitration exists in the UK, just like it does in the US.

Re:quite peculiar

[Wrath0fb0b]

Why is it that American law permits clauses in contracts that deny people access to the law of the land?

That's incendiary phrasing. You could ask why does British law forbid people the right to designate an arbitrator to resolve disputes. Both would be formulations of the question that do not shed light on the tension between two goals: giving people the power to determine their own arrangements versus ensuring that those arrangements are not contrary to public policy. Those two goals are non-orthogonal.

To make it more concrete (and over-simplified), let's say that Alice hires Bob to write and deploy some software. They have a good description of the project and agree on a price of $25,000. Both parties foresee a dispute over whether Alice delivered: Bob fears the software won't be delivered as promised, Alice fears that she'll deliver but Bob will refuse to pay. But both understand that going to court ridiculous because the 'cost' of dispute resolution in the courts will destroy their margin. So they both trust Charles and designate him as an arbitrator and write a clause that says "Charles will be the arbiter of any disputes we have and we are agree not to sue each other over it".

Now, here's the rub, let's suppose both Alice and Bob believe that Charles is not as accurate of a dispute resolver than the courts. This is true even if Bob believes that Charles is partial to Alice instead of being neutral. It might still be rational to him because the expected additional loss (e.g. the conditional probability that there is a dispute and that Charles rules in a biased way against him multiplied by the expected judgement) is actually less than the expected additional loss if it was litigated in court (e.g. the conditional probability that there is a dispute and Bob has to pay a lawyer hourly fees).

So in England, this arrangement is (apparently) not allowed -- Alice and Bob are not free to designate Charles as the binding arbitrator and instead have to resolve any disputes through the expensive court system even when a worse system might be better for them. This has certain perversities: the courts can take a long time, which for a freelancer waiting to get paid can be near fatal. If Bob has in-house counsel, he suffers little from dragging this out and raising every possible legal/factual dispute since he's not paying hourly for the lawyers but Alice is. No matter what happens, both sides will pay more than is reasonable to resolve disputes under a $25,000 contact.

At the same time, the US system has perversities. Maybe the arbitrator is biased and Bob ends up having to pay $25,000 for an unstable software deliverable that doesn't meet any of the requirements. Maybe all the freelancers (or all the purchasers) require a particular set of arbitrators such that you can't buy (or sell) services without being bound by some biased arbitrator.

In the end, the point I'm trying to (at length) get to here is that dispute resolution is a non-trivial thing to deliver, especially for contracts where a lay person would have difficulty assessing the performance of the contract (after all, it's pretty easy to understand whether a fence was installed, not so easy to understand why a custom POS system freezes once a day). And the more you 'over engineer' the dispute resolution to make it more reliable, the more it costs and the more inaccessible you make it to Alice and Bob that have a piddly $25,000 contract.

Re:quite peculiar

[sjames]

The problem in your American scenario is that Bob and Alice came to a mutual agreement (a meeting of minds) to have Cherles arbitrate.

To match the situation in TFA, Alice has killed literally every other developer out there. She writes in the arbitration clause naming her cousin Charles as the arbitrator and tells Bob "sign it or pound sand meathead!".

Re: quite peculiar

[Entrope]

You can challenge a contractual clause that requires binding arbitration, but the defendant will immediately file a motion to dismiss on that basis, and you'll have a hard time winning that fight.

Re: quite peculiar

[Dragonslicer]

You're right, you can file a complaint for anything, it just might get thrown the first time it gets in front of a judge. Thank you for clarifying for me.

Re:quite peculiar

[Carewolf]

Why is it that American law permits clauses in contracts that deny people access to the law of the land?

That's incendiary phrasing. You could ask why does British law forbid people the right to designate an arbitrator to resolve disputes.

It is not incendiary, it was entirely fair phrasing.

The reason is a little thing called contract law, that also applies in the US, but has been weakened several times, including an ill thought out law that enabled this, though it contradicts the basis of all contract law.

The reason contract law exist is because it used to be possible to sell yourself into slavery, and with the powers of banks and land owners they used to make sure you had to sell yourself into slavery to have home, job or any life. This was called serfdom and was rolled back gradually over a couple of hundred years. The US is currently in the process of reintroducing it.

Re:quite peculiar

[Jason Levine]

American law is written by politicians. Politicians get big campaign donations from big companies. Big companies want arbitration because they can use someone who will rule in their favor most of the time - as opposed to courts which are pesky in their insistence on listening to facts.

Once the big company makes the big donation to the politician, the politician proposes a bill that benefits the big company. Then other politicians (who also get big donations from the big company) vote on it and make it a law. (It's like a twisted 2017 version of Schoolhouse Rock's "I'm Just A Bill.")

Re:quite peculiar

[gsslay]

I understand what you're saying, but the point of most laws is that they are above all other arrangements. You shouldn't be able to reach an agreement with someone that effectively says "the law does not apply to our arrangement". And this is because laws can be complex, not everyone understands or knows them until they need them. It shouldn't be possible for one party to prey on another's ignorance to trick them into releasing the protections the laws supply.

Re:quite peculiar

[david_thornley]

You can challenge the clause in court, true. The court will rule against you, and all you will have accomplished is to make your lawyer slightly richer. Unfortunately, in the US, Congress has made binding arbitration legal, and the Supreme Court has not only agreed, but extended how the Congressional act applies to state law.

Re:quite peculiar

[Wrath0fb0b]

Indeed. But as I understand, in the UK, even the former arrangement would be unenforceable.

They're not wrong

[rsilvergun]

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?

Right to the internet access

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps like Finland back in 2010, this should be passed here in the US, albeit with a lower speed standard

Re: Right to the internet access

[Miamicanes]

The main problem now is that line-leasing only works for slow (~3mbps or less) ADSL. VDSL2 only gets 10+mbps speeds under a half mile or so, and 50mbps+ maxes out around 500-1200 feet. So with VDSL2, meaningful competition in single-family areas would require having the LEC provide local loop to its remote DSLAM, then VPN the traffic of other companies to some more-distant exchange point for hand-off to the other ISP. Which I believe is how it's done in Britain & many other parts of the world.

The Canadian Supreme Court disagrees

[davecb]

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.

Re:The Canadian Supreme Court disagrees

[ckatko]

I'm voting with my wallet! Hang on, I'm just gonna unplug my only internet option... wai

Re:The Canadian Supreme Court disagrees

[davecb]

Hey, move to Canada, you have the choice of Bell Helliphone or Rogers (;-)) But you can sue them.

Re:The Canadian Supreme Court disagrees

[PPH]

I was thinking that we (US customers) could sue AT&T in Canadian courts. After all, it's possible to sue foreign entities for committing alleged bad deeds overseas in US courts. And US courts can serve warrants overseas. In Ireland, for example.

Turnabout is fair play.

Re:The Canadian Supreme Court disagrees

[davecb]

If you're serious, physically visit a lawyer in Canada and demonstrate the unlawfull action in the presence of witnesses the lawyer may nominate. They'll tell you if you can sue the pants off ATT (;-))

Re:The Canadian Supreme Court disagrees

[phorm]

There was a recent case where the Canadian court dismissed the arbitration and jurisdiction portions of an agreement between a Canadian user and Facebook. This means that not only will it not be going through an "arbitrator", but it will be heard in Canadian courts under Canadian law (which is as it should be if you're offering the service to Canadian customers).

On the other hand, we also had a case where the courts decided they had jurisdiction over content shown/posted in other countries. That's less cool to me for fairly obvious reasons. :-(

Re:The Canadian Supreme Court disagrees

[davecb]

That's the one! And yes, there is great risk of a conflict with the content judgemnents

Re:The norm for American consumers.

[ledow]

And in any decent legal system, such clauses are meaningless.

You cannot waive your statutory legal or consumer rights, and claiming that just because people could have "not bought from us" means they can never take you to court is ludicrous on the face of it.

Unfortunately, some countries just haven't yet caught on.

Everyone knows this is bunk.

[Cyberpunk Reality]

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".

Re:Everyone knows this is bunk.

[Opportunist]

Time For Guillotines.

I can't really tell whether he's joking, but the people in the comments kinda seem to mean it...

Re:Everyone knows this is bunk.

[drinkypoo]

I can't really tell whether he's joking, but the people in the comments kinda seem to mean it...

Nothing else is working. They don't react to polite requests, they don't react to threats, they don't react to ecological crisis...

Re:Everyone knows this is bunk.

[Opportunist]

Well, we've gone through 3 of the 4 boxes of liberty by now.

Re:Everyone knows this is bunk.

[slothman32]

First, I don't disagree.
The problem is that no one is going to be the first person to use the "fourth option".
Their, which includes mine, life is just good enough.
If "Breads and Circuses" worked for Rome then it's good enough for me. :D
Unfortunately people have families to take care of to put their John Hancocks, in the original sense, anywhere.

Did any of the signers of the Doi have children who disowned their fathers because of that but the parents/signers said liberty is better than family?

Re:Notice that the only Senators are Democrats

[DontBeAMoran]

Rule of acquisition 17: A contract is a contract is a contract... but only between Ferengi.

American law?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Well, that's certainly the option I've taken

[drinkypoo]

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.

Hobson's Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Philosophers call this sort of "choice" a Hobson's choice. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice

Re:Hobson's Choice

[Dagger2]

This is last mile internet access, which is a natural monopoly. Natural monopolies aren't created by governments; in fact the government's role here is to step in and prevent abuse of the monopoly (or even better, to run the last mile themselves so that many ISPs can compete in offering service over it).

You should be criticising your legislators for failing to do that.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

This is last mile internet access, which is a natural monopoly.

No, it's not.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[Dagger2]

"A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors. This frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale that are large in relation to the size of the market; examples include public utilities such as water services and electricity."

Last mile internet access absolutely counts. It's true that US governments are doing their best to put additional artificial barriers to entry in place, but there are significant natural barriers to entry involved that have nothing to do with your government and everything to do with needing to run a cable to every single building.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

and everything to do with needing to run a cable to every single building

That's like saying that selling soap is a natural monopoly because every soap manufacturer needs to invest in their own soap selling store in every neighborhood. Of course, in the real world, companies don't operate like that and instead create efficient mechanisms for sharing distribution channels if government doesn't prohibit it.

There are many engineering and business solutions to the problem of making it possible for hundreds of providers to provide competitive service to residential customers. The only reason these solutions aren't being implemented is because of the way public roads and public infrastructure are managed in the US and the way telecoms are regulated.

Historically, utilities weren't private companies that became natural monopolies and then needed to be regulated. Rather, government deliberately created monopolies for the usual reasons that socialists and central planners do: they erroneously believed that it's more efficient, they believed that they could "save" the money that people otherwise have to pay in "profits", and they wanted to avoid "excessive duplication". It's the same stupid, ignorant impulse as Bernie Sanders' complaint that we have too many underarm deodorants. And the whole mess was then retroactively justified with a bullshit theory of "natural monopolies".

Re:Hobson's Choice

[Dagger2]

If the government doesn't prohibit it and it is profitable to do so, which in the case of last-mile, it isn't. It's a lot more profitable to refuse to share with other ISPs so that you don't have to compete with them.

We don't use enough soap to need dedicated soap selling stores next to every house, and the cost to produce and transport soap is relatively high compared to the cost of producing and transporting a packet. In other words, capital costs don't dominate the soap industry, making it different from last-mile internet access in a way that is very key to whether it's a natural monopoly or not.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

If the government doesn't prohibit it and it is profitable to do so, which in the case of last-mile, it isn't. It's a lot more profitable to refuse to share with other ISPs so that you don't have to compete with them.

Again, your economic reasoning is bullshit. I'm not going to take you through it step by step, I'm simply telling you that "natural monopoly" doesn't cut it, and claiming that there is a natural monopoly when there isn't just makes you sound stupid.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[david_thornley]

There are engineering and business solutions, all right. They involve having a last-mile provider, probably a regulated monopoly, who offers connectivity for hire to anyone who wants it.

Exactly what do you envision? Permission for anyone to put whatever they like on public rights-of-way? Should Joe's Bait Shop And Internet Connectivity be allowed to dig a trench across my driveway whenever they feel like it? Burden utility poles until they fall over in a stiff wind? Drop the "market will solve it" noise and suggest specifics.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

Permission for anyone to put whatever they like on public rights-of-way?

No, private markets in which rights-of-way are traded.

Should Joe's Bait Shop And Internet Connectivity be allowed to dig a trench across my driveway whenever they feel like it?

If and only if they have purchased the right of way.

Burden utility poles until they fall over in a stiff wind?

That's up to the utility pole owner. They will presumably auction off the slots on the poles. Even government could do that. Ditto with in-the-ground conduits. Right there, you have the potential for dozens of separate last mile providers even if they share no cables at all.

Drop the "market will solve it" noise and suggest specifics.

The "solution" to having an unwanted government-maintained monopoly is for the government to stop maintaining the monopoly, isn't it? What other problem do you want a solution for?

Re:Hobson's Choice

[Dagger2]

I don't think we're talking about the same thing. The fundamental economics of doing last mile connectivity for internet access have nothing to do with whatever the US did or didn't do to Ma Bell. They're driven by the physics involved in digging cables and in transmitting data over those cables.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[Dagger2]

The "solution" to having an unwanted government-maintained monopoly is for the government to stop maintaining the monopoly, isn't it? What other problem do you want a solution for?

You're completely correct. But in some industries, when there's no government involvement at all you are likely to end up with monopolies due to the economics of the industry in question. That's the other problem that we need a solution for (and that solution is for the government to step in and prevent that monopoly from happening).

Re:Hobson's Choice

[Dagger2]

Lucky for me that this particular industry is a natural monopoly then, isn't it?

I don't think there's much bullshit involved in arguing that natural monopolies will naturally lead to monopolies.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

But in some industries, when there's no government involvement at all you are likely to end up with monopolies due to the economics of the industry in question. That's the other problem that we need a solution for

Well, since that's never been seen for ISPs, that "problem" seems about as likely as getting abducted by space aliens.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

I don't think there's much bullshit involved in arguing that natural monopolies will naturally lead to monopolies.

Well, except for the fact that there is no evidence that natural monopolies even exist, or that even if they did, ISPs would be one.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[david_thornley]

It's expensive to run last-mile connectivity. It's a natural monopoly, and the only reason many people have two broadband choices is because traditionally cable TV and phone service were two separate services. You might want to keep your eyes on the sky and have your DeLameter on you at all times.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[david_thornley]

No, private markets in which rights-of-way are traded.

Private markets? Who sets the rules? If it's every piece of land is owned by somebody and all rights-of-way must be negotiated, nothing will get done. That's why we have public property.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

It's expensive to run last-mile connectivity. It's a natural monopoly,

Ah, I see, proof by vigorous assertion!

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

Private markets?

I was talking about private markets in rights-of-way.

But since you bring it up...

If it's every piece of land is owned by somebody and all rights-of-way must be negotiated, nothing will get done. That's why we have public property.

I've lived most of my life on private roads; things actually generally happen a lot faster and more efficiently with private ownership of infrastructure. Nor have they ever created any monopolies.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[david_thornley]

Depends. There's likely to be a road monopoly, and the owner has the right to bar whoever he or she wants from driving on the roads. If there's multiple stretches owned by different people, someone's likely to not care about maintenance, and there's nothing you can do. If not, someone went through and bought up all the rights of way, and had to pay what the land owners demanded or reroute. The system may well work in many places, but the failure cases can be very serious.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[david_thornley]

Natural monopolies are created by high barriers to entry. The need to buy expensive infrastructure to enter the market is a barrier to entry.

How many power lines, internet connectivity lines, phone lines, water pipes, sewer pipes, cable TV lines, and gas pipes do you think I should have going into my property?

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

You're just utterly stuck in the misconception that "private ownership" means "individual ownership by Scrooge McDuck".

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

Natural monopolies are created by high barriers to entry. The need to buy expensive infrastructure to enter the market is a barrier to entry.

There's zero evidence for that.

How many power lines, internet connectivity lines, phone lines, water pipes, sewer pipes, cable TV lines, and gas pipes do you think I should have going into my property?

As many or as few as you want to.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[david_thornley]

Let me know when you come up with an efficient way of doing that that won't be out-competed by societies that regulate natural monopolies.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[david_thornley]

So what does it mean? There's lots of people who are generally cooperative, but in any large group of people there will be one or more Scrooge McDucks. If you've got a situation that will require everybody's buy-in, you have to account for them.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

I'll let you know right now: small government and privatization are strongly associated with economic growth and competitiveness.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

I have no idea what you're even trying to say. You still don't seem to understand that "private ownership" isn't the same as "individual ownership".

Re:Hobson's Choice

[david_thornley]

You still don't seem to understand that "private ownership" isn't the same as "individual ownership".

Obviously a corporation can own things, and that's private ownership, but no one individual owns the things. How does the corporation get these things? I suspect we're both against eminent domain for private enrichment. This means that the corporation had to acquire all necessary ownership and/or rights from other people. In the case of a development, this could be a company that develops the land, but lots of people live in areas where there is no one developer. In any other case, or in any case where the developer didn't foresee when signing contracts, it's necessary to negotiate with individual property owners, some of whom would be very uncooperative.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[david_thornley]

And how would that apply? Are you trying to say that no government and complete privatization would be good for economic growth? The areas where government has broken down do not seem to be economic powerhouses. If not, then there's a level of public service that is better than either anarchy or 1984, and that's what we're arguing about, and you're just using a slogan to avoid having to think about specifics.

It's like idiots who use the Laffer curve to argue that tax rates are too high. The idea behind the curve shows that tax rates can be too high, but in itself says nothing about whether a particular tax rate is counterproductive.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

And how would that apply? Are you trying to say that no government and complete privatization would be good for economic growth? ... then there's a level of public service that is better than either anarchy or 1984

Of course there is. Hence I said small government, not "no government". Do you have trouble with the difference between "small" and "no", or do you just like to randomly put up strawmen and put words in people's mouths?

What is the right level? Well, we have both international data and US historical data. Total government spending should probably be less than 20% of GDP, although based on international data, it seems like 10% os even better. At the federal level, we should certainly be spending less than 10% of GDP, and most government spending should be local. Local spending is on the things that matter most: roads, school, police, fire, etc., and federal spending is crowding out local spending. A good start would be to cut our per capita government spending on entitlements, healthcare, and social services to average EU levels in absolute terms (since it's absolute spending that matters).

More importantly, though, our budgets should first and foremost be balanced, at all levels of government. That's, you know, what most "advanced nations" do; it's the law in Europe. That means cutting spending, cutting benefits, and raising taxes on the middle class. The reason the US government is on such a spending spree compared to Europe is because we can keep borrowing.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[ooloorie]

in any case where the developer didn't foresee when signing contracts, it's necessary to negotiate with individual property owners, some of whom would be very uncooperative

The only "property owner" that matters when it comes to ISPs is the city government, because it's their public roads that go to every home. And they are indeed very uncooperative and monopolistic, not to mention intrinsically corrupt.

Residential roads should primarily be owned by private associations of the people owning the adjacent properties, and those associations should then decide which private utilities, ISPs, and other services to use.

Re:Hobson's Choice

[david_thornley]

The city government is not a private concern, and it shouldn't operate like one. How are those residential associations supposed to form in the first place?

Force depends on the alternatives

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Force depends on the alternatives

[Opportunist]

Wow, where do you get that from?

Re:Force depends on the alternatives

[Opportunist]

Physical money will never disappear. Even if you outlaw it. Actually, if you do, you're going to have a HUGE problem at your hands that dwarfs everything you have today. Because the mob will take that part over and become more powerful than even Capone dreamed it would be.

wasn't this addressed in the securities industry?

[david.emery]

IANAL, but I seem to recall there was a lawsuit over mandatory arbitration clauses in stockholder/security broker contracts.

There's always other options

[slazzy]

Where I live for example, there's also carrier pigeon and smoke signals...

Re:There's always other options

[iwaybandit]

We're cut off out here. There's an outdoor burn ban and hawks see the pigeons as fortune cookies.

Re:There's always other options

[colinwb]

Where I live for example, there's also carrier pigeon and smoke signals...

Luxury - where we live we have to use runners with cleft sticks, who only work every other Tuesday. And that's if we're lucky!

At my apartments

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

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.

Contradition with rule of law

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Read your contracts folks

[JohnScott1514]

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.

Re:Read your contracts folks

[tepples]

How does one go about reading bad reviews of Internet access without Internet access? And if all providers of Internet access in a particular city have bad reviews, under what conditions is that worth moving to a different city?

Re:Notice that the only Senators are Democrats

[Dog-Cow]

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.

Re:The norm for American consumers.

[Anonymous Coward]

This keeps happening right up until it gets tested in court. There are few judges anywhere in the world that like being told that they can't deal with an issue brought to them just because one party would rather it not happen that way.

The towering ego of your typical judge has caused plenty of problems in the past but this is one situation when it benefits the common man.

True, but if there weren't any regulators

[rsilvergun]

There'd be nothing to capture, right? Eliminate the government and you eliminate the abuses.

Re:True, but if there weren't any regulators

[silas_moeckel]

Correct, so from there it's a question of how to effectively maintain the commons without looking like Asia. In that you have 3 main things last mile, long distance, and wireless. The last mile needs to become town-owned, bury a fiber per endpoint and mux light onto them. The old Phone company CO's seems like a good spot for this to terminate at let players rent space or simply backhaul.

Long-haul the market works companys lease space from railroads etc bury fiber and resell access to it.

Logic.

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't have to get shot. You could have stepped out of the way of the bullet...

Internet access needs to be utility

[DogDude]

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.

Again, can't we leave it to the free market?

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:Again, can't we leave it to the free market?

[silas_moeckel]

Last mile aesthetic so many wires on the poles via multiple providers.

Re: Again, can't we leave it to the free market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction, it doesn't work for you, apparently. It certainly works for some. But you seem to be assuming that some sort of common good exists. The point behind libertarianism is that it doesn't.

Re:Again, can't we leave it to the free market?

[Opyros]

Are you a Poe? That comment sounds like a deliberate parody of free-market fundamentalism.

FFS, it's a phone contract

[ooloorie]

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?

Re:FFS, it's a phone contract

[tepples]

If AT&T is the local DSL provider in your area, and no DOCSIS (cable Internet) provider serves your address, then who provides Internet access suitable for an entire household? Or would you recommend moving in such a situation?

Re:FFS, it's a phone contract

[Carewolf]

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?

What are they planning to get away with? If they aren't planning to do something illegal why are they forcing probably illegal contract terms onto their customers to hide themselves from the law?

Re:FFS, it's a phone contract

[ooloorie]

How is that relevant? Obviously, if your only provider is AT&T and you don't like them, you're SOL, whether you have arbitration or get tied up in a lawsuit.

Did they really?

[rsilvergun]

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?

Re:Did they really?

[msauve]

"If you're talking about the line poles, well, AT&T paid to put those up, didn't they?"

They put them on (mostly) public rights-of-way, at a time when they were given the status of a regulated monopoly because of the perceived efficiencies of only building a single wired telephone infrastructure.

It's not a free market unless at a minimum they're forced to negotiate with local municipalities and landowner's for continued use of those rights-of-way.

Re:Did they really?

[mrbester]

Weren't they given pots of taxpayer cash to put those poles up in the first place? And weren't they given more pots of taxpayer cash to upgrade systems to cope with the increase in bandwidth requirements but didn't?

As for breaking up into mini-Bells, through a combination of selling, rebranding and merging there's little difference to before, except the executives have more yachts.

Re:Did they really?

[ooloorie]

If you're talking about the line poles, well, AT&T paid to put those up, didn't they?

There are many last mile solutions and many forms of ownership. Most utility poles are owned by the electric company; underground conduits tend to be owned by the city. And technically, poles and conduits can support many providers.

Again, why can't we just step back and let the free market sort it all out?

We should, but we don't. Communities own the land that is needed to reach subscribers, and they are usually managing it poorly, namely in a way that encourages monopolies.

Re:Same with taxes

[ooloorie]

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.

And, whaddayaknow, that's pretty much the argument progressives make for business taxes.

But I'm sure AT&T is happy to make their arbitration clauses optional if the government makes their taxes optional. How about it?

Re:Internet access needs to be utility

[Ash-Fox]

we desperately need Internet access to be a public utility in the US.

Done, wish has been granted. 14k dial up Internet is now considered a public utility. The minimum standard has been set.

Right to real property

[tepples]

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?

Re:Right to real property

[ooloorie]

Reaching a property with cable or DSL is no different from reaching it by road: you're either on public roads, in which case it's up to the city and doesn't cross private land, or you need to negotiate with another private property owner.

The reason cable and DSL monopolies exist is not because of difficulties crossing private lands, but because governments control who can put stuff in/on public roads, and they are doing a poor job.

Re:Notice that the only Senators are Democrats

[I'm New Around Here]

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...

Catch-22

[tepples]

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?

Re:Catch-22

[Opportunist]

His parents.

Re:Catch-22

[tepples]

Same place he gets pants from.

Namely?

Re:Notice that the only Senators are Democrats

[anegg]

That has been proven at least several times over, I believe.

Benefit of requiring sites to be usable over 14.4

[tepples]

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.

Re:Pot calls Kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this really how you think of the government? What an impoverished view of the world you have. Perhaps you should move to a country that has no functioning government instead. Lots of Afghanistan; or Syria; or Sudan.

You are to blame

[Charcharodon]

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.

Re:Benefit of requiring sites to be usable over 14

[Ash-Fox]

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.

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.

Wrong

[SeattleLawGuy]

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.

Re:Same with taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not. The argument we make is that they benefit from all sorts of government services, so they should be taxed accordingly. Nobody is forcing them to hoard ungodly sums of money rather than ensuring that their employees are receiving some sort of living wage.

What's more, they'd be better off if they did, it's just hat they're greedy and myopic.

Time to break up some companies

[Rick Schumann]

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.

It IS forced.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Utility, not a luxury

[Roger W Moore]

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.

Re:Utility, not a luxury

[SlaveToTheGrind]

No, it is a utility just like gas, water and electricity.

We're less than 20 years from AOL CDs, brother. The Internet has not suddenly transformed into a basic utility in that timeframe. It's still very much a convenience. "I want it" does not make it a necessity.

and while an internet connection might be regarded as a luxury while camping it isn't really a luxury anymore for everyday life.

See above. People lose perspective so quickly.

Re:Utility, not a luxury

[Cro Magnon]

Nah, my 83 y/o mother gets along fine without this new-fangled internet. Except for all the stuff I order for her online, or the discounts she gets for providing the email I set up for her, or, hmm.

Re:Utility, not a luxury

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Anonymous coward is right.

The topic, if you'd like to try to catch up, is whether having an Internet connection in your house is a convenience or a necessity. The fact that certain employers will only take job applications through the Internet does not make an Internet connection in your house a necessity. There are plenty of places people can get free Internet to engage in infrequent transactions like job applications. None of your ad-hominem-laden invective changes that.

Try to have a better day than you're currently allowing yourself to have.

Yep :)

[rsilvergun]

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.

All they did was block gov't bans

[rsilvergun]

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.

There's the internet

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:There's the internet

[Rick Schumann]

Aside from religions theres another group that historically restricts free access to information: Dictators, authoritarian regimes, and the like. Can you guess form this how I feel about people and their religions wanting to restrict what knowledge their kids are allowed to learn?

That no one chooses to offer a competing service

[kenh]

That no one chooses to offer a competing service doesn't force AT&T to change it's TOS.

Re:Internet access needs to be utility

[Tempest451]

That does not make it a public utility. The lines and frequencies are both still privately owned.

Forced? No.

[volkris]

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.

Re:Forced? No.

[toadlife]

There exist localities where the only affordable internet service is from AT&T. My hometown is one of them. Comcast pulled out a little more than a decade ago because they didn't want to spend the money upgrading their inadequate infrastructure.

There are many other small towns around the area that I live in that have similar situations in regards to Internet access.

Internet access has become necessary to function in our modern world, so I can see an argument being made that forced arbitration is an abuse of monopoly power in these situations.

Of course, to be fair, I'm sure Comcast has an arbitration clause too.

Re:Forced? No.

[volkris]

That internet access has become necessary to function in our modern world would be quite the surprise to people I know who function in our modern world without bothering with internet access.

We really need to avoid accepting that claim as true, both because it's simply not, and because it's a bit self-fulfilling: if we accept it as true that internet access is necessary, then it pushes toward people and companies assuming that there is internet access, leading to it becoming harder to function without.

Re:Forced? No.

[nnet]

Coming next month, living in cities instead of rural areas is necessary to function in our modern world. Cities must be made a utility, and rural areas turned into cities.

Re:Forced? No.

[toadlife]

What you said is to a large degree true and doesn't negate my point.

Re:Forced? No.

[toadlife]

You knowing some people who live far outside the mainstream doesn't negate my point. I'm sure I could find some people that function without a phone too.

Re:Forced? No.

[david_thornley]

If I want to live in a city, I've got numerous choices. I have a choice of many, many cities. I can buy a house or a condo or rent an apartment, to name only three options, and I can deal with a large variety of landlords and realtors. If I want broadband internet, I have three choices, two of them possibly good, and that's better than a lot of the country has.

Re: Notice that the only Senators are Democrats

[jedidiah]

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.

Re:Mandatory use of arbitration is a statutory rig

[BronsCon]

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.

The subsidies never should have been given

[rsilvergun]

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.

Change the contract when you sign up...

[Timothy2.0]

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.

Re:Change the contract when you sign up...

[nnet]

Please provide your real name, home address, and home phone number, and the lawyer representing you to whom we can send all legal bills and all other expenses incurred by trying this. Oh, and all documents you have showing that this worked for everyone that tried it.

It generally makes the companies stop the behavior

[rsilvergun]

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.

Most don't really care

[rsilvergun]

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".

Not sure if this has already been pointed out

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:Not sure if this has already been pointed out

[guruevi]

Constitutionally the Federal government can only regulate inter-state commerce, not local commerce.

Re:Not sure if this has already been pointed out

[david_thornley]

Practically, that's been false since the 1940s.

Re:That no one chooses to offer a competing servic

[Carewolf]

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.

No one forces AT&T to operate a business

[OrangeTide]

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.

Re:Constitution says...

[OrangeTide]

Technically I did not sign anything. It was a shrink wrap agreement at most, but typically a verbal agreement with a constant stream of amendments in writing sent every quarter.

Why US does this

[eddeye]

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. :/

Re:Why US does this

[Thelasko]

I remember reading once that the British Colonies in America were very litigious. The King of England was annoyed by this, and granted the governors of the colonies more latitude to deal with these suits. The Colonies became accustomed to less influence from the throne. When King George III tried to regain some of that control, things started to go down hill.

Re:Why US does this

[david_thornley]

In other countries, the loser of the litigation pays all the legal costs. This discourages frivolous litigation.

It discourages litigation, not just frivolous litigation. If I have a legitimate complaint against a company, and figure I've got an 80% chance of winning (so it isn't frivolous), I would be taking a 20% chance of paying the company's legal fees, likely considerably greater than mine, and possibly going bankrupt. If the judge awards costs and fees to someone with a legitimately frivolous case, that's fine.

Re:Why US does this

[sl3xd]

I remember reading once that the British Colonies in America were very litigious.

Some colonies were worse than others. The Salem Witch Trials are definitely part of that tradition.

Historians often point out that many of the accusers & accused in the witch trials had a history of litigation and disagreement - property lines, grazing rights, etc. The witch trials were a great opportunity to fabricate evidence and settle scores against a rivals.

Among the many legacies and lessons from the witch trials are among the most badass last words ever uttered: "More weight" (Giles Corey)

The guy was innocent; he knew it, and refused to take part in that corrupt little charade, and effectively have them the finger with his dying breath.

Re:Notice that the only Senators are Democrats

[I'm New Around Here]

As I said, they gave Hillary $300,000.

Adhesion Contracts/Inequality of bargaining powe

[luis_a_espinal]

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.

Re:Internet access needs to be utility

[Strider-]

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.

Utility, not a Necessity!

[Roger W Moore]

It's still very much a convenience. "I want it" does not make it a necessity.

...and as I pointed out the exact same thing can be said of every other utility. You can heat and cook on a coal or wood fire - in fact, my grandparents used to have a cottage up in the Yorkshire Dales which had a Victorian fireplace with oven and hob built-in. Lighting can be provided by oil lamps and water you can fetch from a nearby river and boil or purchase bottled water in the store etc.

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.

Re:Utility, not a Necessity!

[SlaveToTheGrind]

All of these you can do without internet access but life is so much more convenient with it....just like every other utility.

I suppose at bottom we're debating a matter of degree. That said, I think it's a bit melodramatic to compare a household without Internet access to one lit by oil lamps and warmed by a wood-burning stove. The former is on a far higher Maslowian tier than the latter.

Re:Utility, not a Necessity!

[Roger W Moore]

That's where your time argument comes in. You can probably remember living in a house without high speed internet but you almost certainly never lived in a house without electricity so a house without electricity seems far more primitive. It would also be far harder to live in since everyone now has electricity so oil lamps are a lot harder to find.

Give it a few decades though and the internet will almost certainly get there too. It is getting harder to get and pay bills by post, travel agents have almost disappeared because most people book online, speciality shops are disappearing due to amazon et al, people are rapidly ditching cable TV for Netflix etc.

Re:The norm for American consumers.

[david_thornley]

Mandatory arbitration clauses are legal in the US. Judges below the Supreme Court have no flexibility here.

Re: That no one chooses to offer a competing servi

[kenh]

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?