Have You Really Read Your ISP's TOS? 428
NewtonsLaw writes "XTRA, New Zealand's largest ISP is in the process of losing customers in droves after it announced its new Terms of Service which seek to claim rights over customers intellectual property (see the Slashdot discussion). Now, if that wasn't enough, Aardvark Daily reports that the ISP is also banning its users from saying bad things (anything 'detrimental to our reputation or to our brand') about it. I wonder how many slashdotters have actually read their own ISPs' terms of service in detail? Is this type of IP-grab and clampdown on free speech is unique to Xtra or is it slowly pervading the whole industry, right across the globe?" Read on for Xtra's amendments to the original IP-grab terms, though.
Reader THX1138 points out that "After the very recent story on Xtra (New Zealand's version of AOL) they changed the IP section to include 'Xtra does not claim ownership of any content or material you provide or make available through the Services. However...' at the start and 'in each case for the limited purposes for which you provided or made the Customer Materials available or to enable us and our suppliers to provide the Services.' at the end."
A *GREAT* ISP (Score:5, Informative)
They are geek-friendly. They encourage limited sharing of your DSL bandwidth (I mean, as long as you lock it down with a password so not every yahoo driving buy can use it) and offer a lot toward the wireless community in Oregon.
Not to mention, they have great policies about allowing you to run non-commercial web and email servers (which is important for me since I do a lot of small testing stuff) and are staffed by a lot of good people (some I've worked with before in a former life).
Everything you could want in an ISP, they are. I have never had a problem with them. Period. They are always friendly, helpful, have 24x7 support. Even their second and third tier tech guys will get paged and call you back in the middle of the night if you are experiencing a severe problem.
They also have people familiar in supporting non-windows OSes (mac, linux, etc) and offere their own tutorials for home networking.
Overall they are very cheap (compared to cable at least - especially if you want static IPs. For the cost of one static IP with Comcast, you can get eight here).
I've been with them for three years and since I work from home, I make HEAVY use of the DSL service. Qwest provides the actual line and I've only had two or three issues in all three years, total. One was due to a hardware problem at the PO-LOC (Qwest problem, obviously), one was due to the ISPs backbone getting torched for a few hours and another was up in the air - but eventually fixed itself.
I would say that I have had approximately two days of down time in these three years. Remarkably good for all the benifits you get.
Well... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:giving up common carrier status (Score:4, Informative)
David Hicks [fairgofordavid.org]
Mamdouh Habib [uts.edu.au]
This is in spite of calls by the Australian Senate [aph.gov.au] for their release [altnews.com.au].
I believe that New Zealand still retains some degree of self-respect.
Re:Kinda OT: NAT/PAT (Score:3, Informative)
While I on the subject of crappy ISP's I don't understand what is the point of all these conditions. I have friends that work for a fairly large (state-wide), very profitable, ISP that has none of this. Heck they even allow you to resell the service if you so desire. As they say, as long as they make money why should they care? As they see it these restrictive terms drive people directly to them. For instance they started reselling Time Warner's Cable service. TW prohibits Web Servers and such but they do not. Result - alot of customers switching over to them because of the less restrictive terms of use.
If you are in Nebraska, or western edge of Iowa some areas of south dakot and Kansas, I highly recommend Internet Nebraska [inebraska.com], they provide DSL, dialup, and cable and their terms and conditions [inebraska.com] are extremely reasonable. Not to mention they are nice people. =)
Comcast/ATTBI (Score:5, Informative)
Back when they were ATT Broadband, the user agreement said something like:
-no servers(web, FTP, mail)
-explicitly bans "discussion boards"(!?)
-if you have a wireless node, it must be locked down- no access to anyone other than YOU
-cannot be resold -clauses prohibiting using the connection for offensive/harassing/etc. communications(I guess if I type "shit" here, I just violated that. Oops!)
...among other things. It actually explicitly states that it is provided exclusively "an entertainment service", and that the users are "consumers" of that entertainment service. All this, despite the fact that they constantly market it as "Little Suzy can download her homework, Mommy can upload her work files while she's home from the office to watch Little Suzy", etc. They played the 'research for homework' angle incredibly heavily during the back-to-school period.
The kid's using it for research, Mom's using it for work, in the ads. That's not "entertainment", people. I hope mommy realizes that she's using an "entertainment service" that can go down, and Comcast has zero obligation to take care of it.
Oh, and AOL just started blocking SMTP connections from all of ATT/Comcast's customer IP ranges, to "fight spam". While yes, some systems get hacked and used as relays, that's easy for Comcast to fix(they can disable the connection instantly) if reported..and AOL also blacklists hosts on their own now; why couldn't they just blacklist systems if they send spam? Nevermind that most spam comes from eastern europe and Asia these days.
But hey, it's all good. We get to watch incessant commercials with Lance-whatever-his-name-is(the biker) talking about how "when you're a newcomer(comcast just bought att-bi), people expect you to make a name for yourself"...uh, no shit. Meanwhile, comcast had to back down from YET ANOTHER forced domain name change for everyone's email accounts because of the massive uproar(mediaone.net->attbi.com just a year or two ago, and now attbi.com->comcast.net because ATT wanted to keep attbi.com) and we can't get any other high-speed access, because Bell won't sell DSL in areas with cable internet(and what they're selling is overpriced crap anyway- 1mbit/96KBIT(!!!)
All of this in one of the most technology-rich areas(Eastern MA, 128/495 corridor)...
Re:Kinda OT: NAT/PAT (Score:5, Informative)
It may be due to initial sequence numbers, or possibly the way that a computer responds to IP packets with certain header options set (although I'm not sure if that would be possible when NAT is involved). You could probably get around it by having OpenBSD do the NAT - as it can basically rewrite NATted packets so it looks like it's all coming from the OpenBSD box. The OpenBSD pf firewall is being ported to other BSDs too, apparantly, so you might find you can get it to do the same thing on FreeBSD.
Re:Have your read Network Solutions Terms of Servi (Score:3, Informative)
They changed the agreement quite a while ago, and like you I freaked out when I read it. Unlike you, I have left the "agree" link unclicked for months, while I slowly move my domains to other registrars. There are better (or equal) companies, why not move to them?
Re:Of course it is. (Score:3, Informative)
XTRA isn't claiming any property right on what you put on the Internet, such as Slashdot postings, email or files you upload to third-party web hosts. It's just claiming a right to redistribute content that you put on your XTRA-hosted website. I don't see anything wrong with that... if they don't declare their right to do so, you could sue them for redistributing your copyrighted material after you put it on their servers.
It's careless how they phrased it though. Basically they claim they can use, copy, and redistribute your materials for whatever purposes they want, not just serving to web site visitors. In my opinion, they will probably clean this part up after they realize their mistake.
Re:What TOS? (Score:2, Informative)
As soon as you become aware of the TOS however, you are (in most cases) obliged to read them and take the appropriate course of action if you disagree...
This is what I have been told by a friend studying Law anyway (Australia)...
Disclaimer: any law suits or bad karma related to this post may be directed to Xtra. All donations and good karma will be handled by me.
Re:Kinda OT: NAT/PAT (Score:3, Informative)
At a guess they either employed or retained an overpriced "lawyer" who then has to do something to appear to be useful.
Re:"clampdown on free speech" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Atlanta ISP changes (Score:3, Informative)
Ultimately, unless you are in a monoply situation, retarded TOSes will get snuffed out by capatilistic forces. People will simply be forced to other options and the company will loose money.
Re:giving up common carrier status (Score:5, Informative)
Stephanie Graf (the ex-tennis-pro) sent a C&D letter to MSN to take off all fabricated nude pictures of her from MSN sites, with a penalty of 300000 DM for each violation. MSN refused the letter, but lost due to their Terms Of Service. The judge ruled, that if MSN is claiming IP rights on the material, then they are responsible also for the damage it causes.
So maybe XTRA should look at the case (even though it is a german one), because if someone posts illegal material using XTRA, XTRA itself is liable for the damage done, if they are continuing to claim IP rights. The reasoning should also be valid under New Zealand's law.
Re:Kinda OT: NAT/PAT (Score:4, Informative)
Well then, you need a knowledge infusion.
You can detect multiple machines behind a NAT several ways, including IP header parsing, TCP sequencing, and others.
A loophole in our favor still exists here, though. They can tell that you run multiple OSs, but not multiple distinct machines. So when you get the letter of death, just patiently explain your rather convoluted use of Win2k and Linux under VM, with Basilisk for Win2k allowing you to run Macintosh apps (mention other emulators as needed to account for all machines they may think they know you have). Then wait for the silence at the other end, and make sure they agree to remove whatever absurd charges they apply to your account before they hang up in shame and confusion.
More information regarding XTRA / TELECOM (Score:1, Informative)
telecom has the monopoly on telecommunications (land based, and just miss out by a few million for cell phones).
Telecom have total power.
For starters as the company that owns all the exchanges, anyone wanting DSL must pay them to connect it and then a monthly fee ($NZ30 a month)
They also OWN the netgate. The majority of NZs international traffic goes out through this (which connects to the southern cross cable)
they can do practicaly what ever they want with it.
They also have the power to do silly things like at peak phone usage times, DISCONNECT dialup users to give more phonelines. they fob off the customer who pays 30$ a month, so someone else can pay 10$ for a 15min call to there relative to say 'merry xmas'
THD
oh no, ive just bad mouthed XTRA "Look I cant change the way I think And I cant change the way I am. But if I offended you? Good 'cause I dont give a fuck"
It's what lawyers do.... (Score:5, Informative)
At any rate, I have found that when you ask your attorney to write up an agreement for such-and-such, they will invariably write a very one-sided agreement, they will want the other party to sign their life away. After we have verbally come to terms with a new customer, our attorney writes up a license agreement, and more often than not he has put in major restrictions and terms which were not part of our verbal terms with the new customer - we then have to "send it back" to have our attorney remove restrictions which really are excessive.
Before you say that our attorney is just trying to take more time and bill us more: he really isn't - he is just attempting to watch our back in every way he can.
The flip side is also true, when a customer's attorney writes up the agreement, it invariably claims that the customer has exclusive, unlimited, rights to our software. It says that if they [the customer] stubs their toe after installing the software we are liable for millions of dollars. It says we cannot license our software to anyone else [as the customer "owns" it now], etc., etc.
Needless to say, we won't sign such an agreement.
In a nutshell, when attorneys write up any sort of legal document, they really do try to protect their customer in every way they can, and more often than not they go overboard. It really (imho) isn't their job to "see it from the other side", and hence the one-sided agreements.
When you are negotiating an agreement and both sides are represented by council, usually a fair agreement comes out in the end - but when only one side is represented, you can get "terms of service" as that ISP has published.
I suspect that the "fair" terms of service we do frequently see and agree to have been either not written by an attorney, and/or have had someone (but probably not the attorney) playing the role of the customer and looking at the agreement from their point of view.
Evidently, that didn't happen in this case.
An interesting, off-topic, side note that an attorney once told me: If there is a grey area in a contract, usually a court will side with the party that DIDN'T author the contract.
Cox High Speed Internet (Score:2, Informative)
Original here. [cox.com]
Be careful what you post with them.
Thankfully, no restrictions on how you talk about thier service. Just the usual "no bad stuff".
I'd be worried about what Comcast can do... (Score:3, Informative)
When I contacted them to ask them to politely explain what the heck they'd done (being a little irate as it had taken me two hours to determine just what was going on, not including all the downtime), they first told me they hadn't done anything, then admitted they had done something but it couldn't do what I said it had done and I was making it up, and finally told me "yes, we did it, gosh that's unfortunate, bad luck, goodbye".
Comcast is appalling, and has no technical ability at all. (If I had the same amount of outage as they do, I'd be fired so fast my feet wouldn't touch the ground.) By the way, did you have a service level agreement with your old ISP? You don't with Comcast -- at least in Pennsylvania, you don't. That's right -- NO SLA at all.
I could go on and on about Comcast. Unfortunately, they happen to fit in that last caveat of the parent poster -- they are indeed in a monopoly situation. Scum.
If only ISP's kept their word... (Score:3, Informative)
When ATTBI was ATT@home, I had a written contract with them that stated, in writing, "static address due to home network." When ATTBI took over, they took away my static address, and basically told me to fuck off.
So getting it in writing only works if you're willing to pony up the legal fees to file a breach of contract suit. Otherwise, written agreements are no better than a roll of blank toilet paper.