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."
My ISP's terms are very simple... (Score:1, Interesting)
giving up common carrier status (Score:5, Interesting)
What TOS? (Score:1, Interesting)
In Breach (Score:5, Interesting)
Before today, I'd only given the TOS a cursory glance, and I found that I am regularly in breach of a couple of the terms:
I don't really care too much, though, because it's only a dial-up connection, so the connection is inherently throttled...
Kinda OT: NAT/PAT (Score:5, Interesting)
The new DSL is 1.5mbps "best effort". They have not mentioned any download caps, but they will probably be on the way soon. The worst part of the TOS is the restriction on NAT/PAT.
They say that they can detect how many computers are on a network. For each computer, you have to pay an additional $60 for the exact same bandwidth. They don't even give you another modem for the extra $60.
Anyway, how do you think they are detecting NAT/PAT? Is there any way to stop this detection? I had planned on running Gentoo or *BSD as a firewall, but paying more money for the exact same thing seems harsh to me.
The T&C changes (Score:2, Interesting)
Atlanta ISP changes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"clampdown on free speech" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The T&C changes (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Have your read Network Solutions Terms of Servi (Score:4, Interesting)
By clicking you agree, you're voting with your dollars, and that's all that matters to these companies.
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
AOL has a new TOS for you.... (Score:5, Interesting)
This effectively means that no broadband, dialup or other ISP customers who get an IP address when they connect will be able to send mail directly to AOL, you wil instead be forced to use your ISPs or some other willing SMTP relay which AOL considers to be worthy of peering with. No more end-to-end TLS encryption and/or verification; no more routing around overburdoned ISP mail hubs.
There is as yet no indication that I've seen one way or the other on what they're doing about DELIVERING mail to such addresses, but if you run your own mail server, be prepared to find that AOL.com no longer exists (which you may not consider "bad", exactly, and in fact I currenly have no plans to route around this particular damage other than to get my relatives to find new ISPs, even if that means going to MSN... *shudder*).
Many have made the argument that this is reasonable for AOL to do because many ISPs have TOSes that ban servers. So far, the standard retort has been 1) no ISP bans direct-to-MX transmission of mail except where it is spam 2) most ISPs don't enforce said rule (and tacitly encourage users to roll their own) 3) not ALL ISPs have such restrictive TOSes, and of course 4) that's none of AOL's business when receiving an incoming message.
For those who are interested in details, here's the almost useless blurb I get when telneting to port 25 on any random AOL MX host:Good luck!
Re:Kinda OT: NAT/PAT (Score:3, Interesting)
Post each others' sites (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm, this is interesting:So no posting Project Gutenberg texts, then. Taken literally, anything I post has to be trademarked.So, no GPL'd software that I wrote then, but presumably other peoples' GPL'd software is ok.Seems reasonable, they need the right to distribute the data, they might want to keep an archive, and they might want to sell that archive as an asset. Note the limiting nature of the last paragraph.
IMO, there's nothing sinister here, although the first section I quoted is just incompetently written.
Prestel was doing that in 1986 (Score:5, Interesting)
Their AUP also didn't allow any kind of profanity in the message boards, either!
They did have some good things (such as Shades the MUD, which is *still going* - telnet games.world.co.uk, yes, it's on port 23).
That's not to say it's right. The "you must only say good things about us" clause was incredibly dumb, and people often pushed at them, just to see how far they could go.
Re:Prestel was doing that in 1986 (Score:5, Interesting)
enable us to register you, we need to ask five simple questions:
1) Your real name:
2) Your sex:
3) Your age:
4) Where do you live?
5) Your e-mail address:
6) Where did you find out about us:
7) What password do you wish to use (5-10 characters):
count that!
Re:For those that need it spelled out... (Score:3, Interesting)
On a more serious note, Speaker's Corner is really the historic start of free speech as British people have been legally allowed to get up at Speaker's Corner and say what they like for centuries, long before America was was even an idea.
Legal hacking (Score:5, Interesting)
Just read the TOS for my ISP again and was reminded why I chose this ISP [xs4all.nl] (even though it is not the cheapest available). One of the clauses says (roughly translated):
I feel that this should be a standard clause in any ISP's TOS.
Westhost looks okay (Score:3, Interesting)
- Don't hack the servers or gain unauthorized access to accounts
- No originating spam
- No running chats without approval
- Allows background scripts and self-written CGI as long as they don't screw with the system
- If your scripts are resource hogs, they may ask you to upgrade your service
- No IRC or IRC bots
- No illegal stuff
- No porn/obscene, etc.
There is the phrase "or any other material which we deem to be objectionable" to include Satanic materials. However, that's a catch-all that I don't believe has been used. I'll ask.Why reading TOS is important (Score:4, Interesting)
But I really enjoyed my ISP. Fast, reliable, not that expensive, and my IP address didn't change as long as the gateway renewed the lease.
But one day, friends using the same ISP told me that all their incoming connections got firewalled. They couldn't connect to their host any more, even through POP, SMTP or SSH.
I checked it, and they were right. The ISP firewalled everything without any prior notice.
A look at the TOS revealed that indeed, customers don't have the right to host any server. No SSH, no SMTP, nothing.
I moved to another ISP since. The new ISP is a bit more expensive, but that's the price to pay to read in their TOS that servers are allowed, and NAT is allowed as well.
Compuserve customer (Score:2, Interesting)
Until one day I went through all this and the guy said "no i did not", taken aback, I advised him that to get a compuserve account he MUST have clicked "I agree", he said not.
Turned out that when buying the system the helpfull salesman set him up with the account (credit card details and all) and he had clicked "I agree", I advised the customer to take up this issue with the salesman
Never heard from the customer again.
One good point in the TOS (Score:2, Interesting)
In other words, you are responsble for the basic security of your computer. If you have an id10t problem and open up every attachment asking for your advice and get absolutely every virus that comes along - a pretty good definition of negligent, in this context - they can hold your feet to the fire for it.
Anyone who has ever worked for an ISP would feel joy at having such a clause, b/c it would allow you dump a certain group of problem customers, should you choose to do so. Finally, being grossly stupid is a crime, or least a TOS violation. Woohoo! :-)
Re:A *GREAT* ISP (Score:1, Interesting)
They state in their TOS that if you manage to become 'root' on one of their machines, and you do not look at, alter or delete any other cutomers data or disrupt the ISP's services, and you prove this to them they will give you a free subscription for a year.
Nifty huh?
- Bart
Re:dull (Score:2, Interesting)
And how does that affect the logic behind "When you work for someone they have the right to your work.
I was arguing that signing away copyright can't be made illegal, because that would make it impossible for companies (big or small) that create IP (developers, newspapers, research ...) to exist, since any employee could quit and take the copyright to the companys product with him.
That doesn't mean that we should accept giving away copyright to anyone. Your ISP shouldn't take over any copyright. Nor should your job have any stake in IP you create on your spare time, unless it can be proven that it originated from your work
I just read them and... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now that's what I call a provider.
Pacific Bell aka SBC (Score:1, Interesting)
SBC is also trying to get everyone to switch to Yahoo/SBC Broadband. A service where Yahoo provides you with all kinds of extra crap you don't need. Yahoo's terms of service start out by telling you that they are going to monitor everything that you do "so they can provide you with a better service." Can you believe that crap. I wonder how many people are just signing up and how many people are objecting. My guess is that the ones that take the time to read their TOS are objecting and the others are signing!
Re:Legality (Score:3, Interesting)
Now services are a little different. You aren't actually buying anything, you are just paying for the right to use something owned by someone else. This gives them quite a bit more latitude. When they spell out their ToS to you, it's more of a dictation than a contract. They are laying out for you how their service works and what is expected if you want to use it. If you don't like it, you are perfectly free not to use the service, but I don't have to change my rules for you just because you didn't sign a contract.
To try an analogy suppose you need transportation: So I'm a car dealer, you go to me and buy a car. Wehn you purchase it I tell you "Now if you want to buy this, you have to agree not to play rap music with it". You agree, and then later I catch you playing rap on it. Not anything I can do, your verbal agreement means nothing. However suppose instead I run a car service. You contract me to drive you around. I tell you "Ok, you can play anything you like on the stereo except rap". You then proceed to play rap, and I terminate your service. I can do this since it's my car, and I'm just letting you use it.
The first case is like what they try to do with software liscences, the second is like ISP ToSes. Now like I said, the software click-thru liscence is largely untested in court, but I have a feeling it won't really hold up. However the ISP ToS is no different than ToSes on many other kinds of service and there is little you can do about it. If you don't like it, don't use the service.
Express Network TOS (Score:2, Interesting)
Specifically, they prohibit "machine-to-machine" connections, which, as far as I can tell, limits you from connecting your Express Network enabled computer to any other computer.
Oddly, they say you can use it to read email and surf the web, which I have a hard time reconciling with the whole part about how I'm not allowed to actually connect to the mail servers and web servers.
Here's my story of ISP abuse (Score:4, Interesting)
The page in question [bewellweb.com].
Re:heh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Once upon a time (a couple of years ago) I was sysadmin for a smallish ISP up here in Montreal. While out TOS didn't spell it out, it was my policy as well. (I was blessed with intelligent bosses/owners that decided from the onset that given that I was the security, its enforcement should be left to me).
There have been a total of two compromises during the two years I worked there. Both were detected by my diagnostics within minutes. I let both play out to ascertain the intent and method, and one of the crackers was obviously a white hat given that noticing me on the box he talked me to tell me how he got in. The other was a silly warez d00d-- took me about 5 minutes to detect how he got in.
In both cases, I restored offline, plugged the hole, then put the system back up.
Having compromised a system does not give you "forever usage of the system".
Just before I started work there, where was another (major) compromise of the entirety of the DMZ-- the security wasn't set up very well and each box trusted every other box. That took a complete redesign of the infrastructure, but it was also fixed. By the white hat that broke in and went to them with "Look. Obviously you need to hire a sysadmin."
You get to guess who that was.
Not everyone is a script kiddie, you know.
-- MG
Re:Have your read Network Solutions Terms of Servi (Score:3, Interesting)
I did this with a government agency that wanted to have free and unfettered access to my private medical records.
I scored that bit out, and added, that they may only have access upon contacting me first and obtaining my permission, and that I vet the information they can have access to (basically "no you can't have access", but less blunt.)
I signed the re-written contract and heard nothing more about it.