ISP contracts can leave few rights for subscribers / LJWorld.com

Archive for Saturday, April 5, 2008

Fine print may let Internet providers read your e-mail

By Peter Svensson - Associated Press Writer

April 5, 2008

ISPs can read your e-mail

Practically all ISPs reserve the right to read your e-mails and look at the sites you visit, without a wiretap order. This reflects the open nature of the Internet - for privacy purposes, e-mails are more like postcards than letters. It's also prompted by the ISPs' need to identify and stop subscribers who use their connections to send spam e-mails.

Some ISPs, like AT&T Inc., make clear that they do not read their subscriber's traffic as a matter of course, but also that they need little or no excuse to begin doing so. Cablevision, a cable operator in the Northeast, says one of the reasons it might look at what a customer is doing online would be to help operate its service properly.

ISPs can block you

Or at least they would like to think so. In a clause typical of ISPs, Comcast reserves the right to block or remove traffic it deems "inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful."

The ISP sees itself as the sole judge of whether something is appropriate.

Broad enforcement of this kind of clause for business purposes other than protecting users is likely to draw attention from regulators like the FCC, as is happening in the Comcast file-sharing case.

ISPs can shut you down

For cable ISPs, up to 500 households may be sharing the capacity on a single line, and a few traffic hogs can slow the whole neighborhood down. But rather than saying publicly how much traffic is too much, some cable companies keep their caps secret, and simply warn offenders individually. If that doesn't work, they're kicked off.

New York — What's scary, funny and boring at the same time? It could be a bad horror movie. Or it could be the fine print on your Internet service provider's contract.

Those documents you agree to - usually without reading - ostensibly allow your ISP to watch how you use the Internet, read your e-mail or keep you from visiting sites it deems inappropriate. Some reserve the right to block traffic and, for any reason, cut off a service that many users now find essential.

The Associated Press reviewed the "Acceptable Use Policies" and "Terms of Service" of the nation's 10 largest ISPs - in all, 117 pages of contracts that leave few rights for subscribers.

"The network is asserting almost complete control of the users' ability to use their network as a gateway to the Internet," said Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press, a Washington-based consumer advocacy group. "They become gatekeepers rather than gateways."

But the provisions are rarely enforced, except against obvious miscreants like spammers. Consumer outrage would have been the likely result if AT&T Inc. took advantage of its stated right to block any activity that causes the company "to be viewed unfavorably by others."

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University, said this clause was a "piece of boilerplate that is passed around the corporate lawyers like a Christmas fruitcake.

"The idea that they would ever invoke it and point to it is nuts, especially since their terms of service already say they can cut you off for any reason and give you a refund for the balance of the month," he said.

AT&T removed the "unfavorably by others" wording in February after The Associated Press asked about the reason behind it. Subscribers, however, wouldn't know that it was gone unless they checked the contract word for word: The document still said it was last updated Oct. 8, 2007.

Most companies reserve the right to change the contracts at any time, without any notice except an update on the Web site. Verizon used to say it would notify subscribers of changes by e-mail, but the current contract just leaves that as an option for the company.

This sort of contract, where the subscriber is considered to agree by signing up for service rather than by active negotiation, is given extra scrutiny by courts, Zittrain said. Any wiggle room or ambiguity is usually resolved in favor of the consumer rather than the company.

Yet the main purpose of ISP contracts isn't to circumscribe the service for all subscribers, but rather to provide legal cover for the company if it cuts off a user who's abusing the system.

"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.

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5 April 2008
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foodboy (Anonymous) says…

On Wednesday April 9th at 7pm the Douglas County Chapter of the ACLU will offer another in its series of presentations dealing with civil liberties issues. It will be in the Auditorium of the Lawrence Public Library 707 Vermont. The title is: government & corporate surveillance on the internet- a panel discussion on 21st century free speech and pressThe panel will include: Bill Raney, President of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri (ACLU KsWMo) First amendment attorney Dennis Anderson, Managing Editor, Lawrence Journal World Rick Musser, Professor of Journalism, University of Kansas Joel Mathis, Blue Moderator, redblueamerica.com Dan Winter, Executive Director of the ACLU of KsWMo will serve as Panel moderatorThe discussion will explore a wide variety of issues from blogs, e-mail privacy, data mining by the government and the private sector, and other possible threats to civil liberties in the cyber age. There will be audience questions following the panel