AP Examines Just How Ridiculous ISP Contracts Are

from the just-so-you-know dept

Fri, Apr 4th 2008 3:49pm — Mike Masnick

We recently learned that customers of Verizon's FiOS service don't get to see the full terms of service they're agreeing to until after it's been installed. But, of course, no one actually reads those kinds of things, because if you did, you'd probably never agree to it. To help you out, the Associated Press took some time to read through various ISP end user license agreements (EULAs) and discovered that ISPs put a ton of ridiculous stuff in the fine print, which is basically to give them many different options to kick you off if they suddenly decide you've become a problem. Or, in some cases, it's because lawyers want to protect the ISPs from ridiculous lawsuits, which leads them to put in clauses warning customers that the ISP (in this case, Verizon) doesn't own the internet, so that people know they can't sue Verizon for something that happens online. Verizon recently removed that clause, apparently realizing that it was a bit extraneous.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: contracts, eulas, isps, terms of use
Companies: verizon

9 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Ajax 4Hire, 4 Apr 2008 @ 5:08pm

duh, everyone knows Al Gore owns the internet
because he invented it back in the late 1980s.

He has also invented "how to loose a presidential election by not getting your home state to vote for you" and of course Global Warming.

He is probably most known for his invention of Global Warming.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Verizon User, 4 Apr 2008 @ 5:23pm

Verizon no longer asserts that they "don't own the internet."
The Verizon ISP user contracts previously pointed out that Verizon doesn't own the internet. They've now dropped that clause. Perhaps they dropped the clause "apparently realizing that it was a bit extraneous..." But perhaps they dropped it because they no longer want to concede that they don't own the internet.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Apr 2008 @ 5:24pm

Supposed to be a dumb pipe
from the article:
"Without the safeguards offered in these policies, customers could suffer from degradation of service and be exposed to a broad variety of malware threats," said David Deliman, spokesman at Cox Communications."

Is this in reference to their TOS ?
I don't get it. Is that some sort of threat ?

And - yes, competition would (hopefully) put such practices out of business.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Crazy Coyote, 5 Apr 2008 @ 4:56am

TCP vs. IP
The sole inventor of the World Wide Web (not the internet) is Timothy Berners-Lee. That is the real information super highway. Gore had a hand in the internet but so did Bell Labs, Dec and UNIX developers,and hundreds of others. The internet can exist without the Web but the Web cannot exist without the internet. So what are we really talking about here?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Gene Cavanaugh, 5 Apr 2008 @ 8:04am

fine print
As an attorney, I have to agree with Einstein; the "only thing that is infinite is human stupidity ...". Putting stuff like Verizon not owning the internet PUTS THAT CLAIM IN ISSUE! In fact, much of the stuff in the internet would not be easily assertable in court if the company putting it in fine print had not brought it up! In such a case, "more" may be "less".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
weebit, 5 Apr 2008 @ 8:07pm

No one person invented the Internet as we know it today. Many people contributed major breakthroughs that made the Internet what it is today. The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau in 1990. and early 1991, Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser. But Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau In 1989, while working at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), both men made proposals for hypertext systems. In 1990 they joined forces and wrote a joint proposal in which the term "World Wide Web" is used for the first time (originally without spaces).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Apr 2008 @ 11:21pm

Re:
No one person invented the Internet as we know it today.

The fact that you seemingly think other people think so is hilarious! Thank you Captain Obvious.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Matthyew Jayson Fritch, 11 Apr 2009 @ 3:17pm

I love
The internet.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Matthyew Jayson Fritch, 11 Apr 2009 @ 3:18pm

I love
The internet.
[ link to this | view in thread ]