Qwest Surrenders After Broadbanders Revolt

from the shining-a-light-on-terms-of-service dept

zanek writes "Broadband users large and small have been threatening to leave Qwest over the company's new rules. The fresh edicts seemed to bar using Qwest lines by many servers that had already signed up. In addition, those whose accounts were connected with spam in any way risked charges with no upper limits. After a weak verbal defense, Qwest capitulated. Email Battles compares the "before" with the "after."" As we mentioned, ridiculous terms of service are nothing new (and rarely enforced), but it's good to shine some light on them before they cause real problems. Update: Email Battles admits they made a mistake in their original analysis. Qwest only made minor modifications, but left the $5 per spam part in -- which was the main problem we originally noted.
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  • identicon
    Greg, 13 Jan 2006 @ 12:21pm

    Not so much

    In the article referenced in this post it states taht qwest removed the $5.00 charge from their revised agreement. I just took a look at it on the Qwest web site http://www.qwest.com/legal/highspeedinternetsubscriberagreement/ which links to an agreement dated 1-12-06 and it DOES contain the $5.00 language. So battle not won as far as I can tell.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      BJ Gillette, 13 Jan 2006 @ 1:12pm

      Re: Not so much

      @Greg. You are correct. I took the AUP copy from the sidebar instead of item 9 in the High Speed Internet Subscriber Agreement PDF. Qwest got more credit than deserved. We have changed our copy to:
      Panicky Qwest execs responded, apparently bringing the legal hounds to heel. Correction: As of this writing, Qwest has not dropped the blue sky $5.00/message spam liability. But Qwest has changed the server limitations.
      Thanks for the correction. Sorry for the inconvenience to all.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Adam, 13 Jan 2006 @ 11:12pm

        Re: Not so much

        When I read the policy out of pure interest, the issue of five dollars only arose in the context of transmitting spam. Transmission of spam is against the law from what I understand, or at least, there are steps being taken to make it so. As far as I'm concerned people should be fined well more than five dollars. Like I said, it's just my opinion and before you think it, I'm also against spamming snail mail too. Unsolicited (e) mail is annoying and it makes you feel as though because you have an address, electronic or otherwise, people can send you things that account for 80 percent of what some receive and it's junk. Not a tirade, just my opinion...

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • icon
          Mike (profile), 14 Jan 2006 @ 10:44am

          Re: Not so much

          Transmission of spam is against the law from what I understand,

          Yes, it's illegal (sort of) under the CAN SPAM law. However, the point is that Qwest's ToS is a little different. They're not saying if you're the spammer, just if your connection is used for spam. And, since so many spammers have been able to use zombie machines infected by trojans, that means that many innocent people may suddenly owe millions of dollars because their computers -- completely unbeknownst to them -- have been sending spam. That's the complaint.

          link to this | view in chronology ]


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