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Comments: 560 +-   Verizon Changes FiOS AUP, -1, Offtopic on Tuesday December 01, @01:26PM

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 01, @01:26PM
from the get-ready-for-municipal-broadband dept.
internet
censorship
RasputinAXP writes "Verizon has changed their FiOS AUP effective yesterday, and added an interesting new clause to their specific examples that we're all familiar with: 'it is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to ... post off-topic information on message boards, chat rooms or social networking sites.' At this point, every FiOS-based Slashdot user is breaking the new AUP."
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  • by sopssa (1498795) * on Tuesday December 01, @01:26PM (#30286220)

    I think it was a cool game. Clever plot, movie-like experience that took your breath away and huge explosions. It was sad that there wasn't more of those sneaky sniper missions however.

    Multiplayer is cool with it's leveling and perks, which actually matter quite a lot. Your characters abilities are totally different based on your perks. Co-op play is also great fun.

    What do you think?

    funny picture [wordpress.com]

  • Windows ME (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neil Hodges (960909) on Tuesday December 01, @01:28PM (#30286264)

    My experience with Windows ME wasn't exactly a good one. As soon as I installed a second hard drive, it would bluescreen at boot. XP was better back then (when it was first released).

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Yvan256 (722131)

          To open the secret cow level, all you need to do is put Wirt's leg and a tome of book portal in the cube.

          • by Arthur Grumbine (1086397) on Tuesday December 01, @01:59PM (#30286830) Homepage Journal
            I'm pretty sure that that is not the original intended use of nmap!
            • It's precisely statements like these that will set back the sexual revolution at least 100 years. Please try to be less judgemental in the future.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Verdatum (1257828)
            The trick is to teleport into your own brain, and tear out your common sense. Then you will be able to pick up the "tea" and the "no tea" at the same time. The ship's computer will be so impressed by this feat that it will finally open the door for you and you can begin to explore Magrathea.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        AC, I'm really happy for ya and imma let you finish but Kayne is the best troll of all time. The best of all time.
  • by Average_Joe_Sixpack (534373) on Tuesday December 01, @01:32PM (#30286326)

    Go Fu*NO CARRIER

  • by MillionthMonkey (240664) on Tuesday December 01, @01:35PM (#30286388)

    (b) transmit uninvited communications, data or information, or engage in other similar activities, including without limitation, "spamming", "flaming" or denial of service attacks;

    You people at Verizon are a bunch of asswipes.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      You missed section (b)(ii):

      Trolling, on the other hand, is perfectly fine by us.

      And the footnote:

      1. In fact, this is a troll. Bite me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      (b) transmit uninvited communications, data or information, or engage in other similar activities,

      This reminds me how silly and broad these ToSes are. That appears to even making pinging against the ToS. What is an "uninvited communication" when it comes to the internet?

      • by oenone.ablaze (1133385) on Tuesday December 01, @02:10PM (#30287026)
        Actually, I suspect that it's because Verizon just cares about what's going on in _their_ forums, and they included that clause so they could terminate the internet service of complainers / trolls in their forums without saying so explicitly. That's what I would do, if I were a myopic, profit-maximizing natural monopoly.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Well, the spellchecker does underline "asswipes" when I type it, but it doesn't underline "assholes", and it doesn't underline "Verizon" either, so make your own assumptions.
  • by ClayJar (126217) on Tuesday December 01, @01:41PM (#30286506) Homepage

    "[I]t is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to[...] (b) transmit uninvited communications, data or information"

    They don't even say "unwanted" or some such term. According to the letter of their AUP, discovering an old friend's email address (or Facebook page... whatever people use these days) and sending the friend a message "may lead to termination of your Service". They could replace their entire AUP with an at-will statement and it would be no less unconscionable.

    Of course, cutting off anyone who sends yet another "e-card" might actually be justified, and according to AUP 2.b, they could do it. :)

    Obviously, it's not likely they will enforce the AUP in an egregiously Draconian manner, but I for one would prefer having the outlandish bits *implied* rather than expressly stated. It just looks cleaner. On the other hand, they didn't quite go completely Pythonesque on us:

    Prohibited:
    1. Users named other than "Thomas".
    2. Users named "Thomas".

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Thinboy00 (1190815)

        "[I]t is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to[...] (b) transmit uninvited communications, data or information"

        I'd say this is pretty Pythonesque. I can't send you data until you invite me. Of course, you sending me an invitation is prohibited unless I invited you to do that. But I can't do that unless you invited me first. Etc.

        That just means in theory that VZ customers can't contact each other.

        Of course, in theoretical practice VZ customers can't contact anyone by any reasonable and modern protocol.

        Of course, in practical practice it means VZ can terminate its customers whenever it wants.

  • by Jazz-Masta (240659) on Tuesday December 01, @01:58PM (#30286816) Homepage

    How DARE you break the terms of your agreement! Have we stooped so low? What next? Downloading of Movies, Music, etc?

  • Oopsie (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rindeee (530084) on Tuesday December 01, @02:19PM (#30287198)
    What Verizon (Comcast, and others) are going to learn the hard way is the liability that comes along with this. IANAL, but, from experience I understand that if you specifically say something is prohibited, but then do not enforce prohibition of it and someone causes harm to another where it would have been precluded had you enforced the prohibition of said activity, guess who's liable. :)
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sopssa (1498795) *

        But the problem here is the constant Windows vs. Linux fighting. We've spend all this time fighting and completely forgot to laught at how stupid Mac OS X users are.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by PPH (736903)

      I'm going straight to hell!

      If you are a Verizon customer, you are already here.

    • Re:I'm Not! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kjella (173770) on Tuesday December 01, @01:51PM (#30286652) Homepage

      Seriously though - how are they going to enforce this without reading the information I'm sending over the net. Shouldn't that be Illegal?

      Honestly, they don't care as long as you pay and nobody complains. This is just another case where if they get complaints from someone, they can terminate you for ToS violation. In reality, not much has changed - have you read some of them? There's usually enough insane terms to terminate anyone, any time anyway. This is just adding one more possible excuse to put on the termination notice.

    • Re:I'm Not! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by quickOnTheUptake (1450889) on Tuesday December 01, @02:00PM (#30286850)
      I suspect this is just the next level of ISPs' disallowing spamming. They probably aren't planning to actively enforce it, but if it were to come to their attention that one of their accounts is being used to post 100's of more or less subtle marketing messages a day to forums, they reserve the right to cut the account off.
      That said I actually have no idea, just a guess.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Cute. That statement amounts to giving themselves the power to inspect both the origin/destination and the content of all communications.

      Better SSL up.
      • Re:haha that's funny (Score:4, Informative)

        by gid (5195) on Tuesday December 01, @01:57PM (#30286780) Homepage

        Never knew about NO CARRIER but I remember +++ath0 could make some modems hang up, but you had to get the user on the other end to type it in to get the modem to hang it up. If they were running a linux machine, you could craft an icmp packet, or use sendmail or ftp to echo the string back to you.

        Some modems fixed this by requiring a pause.

        • Re:haha that's funny (Score:5, Informative)

          by sopssa (1498795) * on Tuesday December 01, @02:04PM (#30286916)

          Some Linksys router's were even more fun (along with some Norton antivirus I think). If you sent "CHR(1)DCC SEND test 0 0 0" to IRC channel or private message, it would make the Linksys router drop all connections hence disconnecting the user from IRC too. That done in a large channel and you saw hundreds of users dropping.

        • by Grax (529699) on Tuesday December 01, @02:17PM (#30287166)

          A bear walks into a bar and says "I would like a beer ... ", waits 30 seconds, then says "... and a wine cooler."

          The bartender says, "OK. But why the big pause?"

          The bear says, "I dunno. I've always had them"

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Jazz-Masta (240659)

      Because being a Linux fanboy was too mainstream.

      Wow, it takes talent to be modded offtopic on an offtopic conversation.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by conlaw (983784)

      The wording is broad, but that may very well be to make sure that they can reasonably catch it all and respond.

      But if it's too broad, an affected customer can try to get a court to throw it out on grounds of ambiguity! Now do the hokey-pokey and turn yourself around. That's what its all about!

    • by Chyeld (713439) <chyeld@noSpAM.newsguy.com> on Tuesday December 01, @02:25PM (#30287296)

      If you read the whole section, it's a list of examples of what they consider to be violations of Section 1. Someone just got diarrhea of the fingers and started listing all the ways to misbehave online. They even include flaming.

      The takeaway is Verizon is attempting to say that if you act out in any manner whatsoever, do anything they don't like, or just get on the wrong side of one of their IT folk, your service is dead. Overbroad is an understatement. This is them writing a blank check to themselves to allow them to do whatever they want, whenever they want.

      1. General Policy: Verizon reserves the sole discretion to deny or restrict your Service, or immediately to suspend or terminate your Service, if the use of your Service by you or anyone using it, in our sole discretion, violates the Agreement or other Verizon policies, is objectionable or unlawful, interferes with the functioning or use of the Internet or the Verizon network by Verizon or other users, or violates the terms of this Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP").
      2. Specific Examples of AUP Violations. The following are examples of conduct which may lead to termination of your Service. Without limiting the general policy in Section 1, it is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to: (a) access without permission or right the accounts or computer systems of others, to spoof the URL, DNS or IP addresses of Verizon or any other entity, or to penetrate the security measures of Verizon or any other person's computer system, or to attempt any of the foregoing; (b) transmit uninvited communications, data or information, or engage in other similar activities, including without limitation, "spamming", "flaming" or denial of service attacks; (c) intercept, interfere with or redirect email or other transmissions sent by or to others; (d) introduce viruses, worms, harmful code or Trojan horses on the Internet; (e) post off-topic information on message boards, chat rooms or social networking sites; (f) engage in conduct that is defamatory, fraudulent, obscene or deceptive; (g) violate Verizon's or any third party's copyright, trademark, proprietary or other intellectual property rights; (h) engage in any conduct harmful to the Verizon network, the Internet generally or other Internet users; (i) generate excessive amounts of email or other Internet traffic; (j) use the Service to violate any rule, policy or guideline of Verizon; (k) use the service in any fashion for the transmission or dissemination of images containing child pornography or in a manner that is obscene, sexually explicit, cruel or racist in nature or which espouses, promotes or incites bigotry, hatred or racism; or (l) use the Service in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria or any other E:1 Country as designated by the Department of Commerce.

      To cover the fanfic requirement:

      DOOM: Repercussions of Evil

      John Stalvern waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were demons in the base. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Cernel Joson were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
      John was a space marine for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the spaceships and he said to dad "I want to be on the ships daddy."
      Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY DEMONS"
      There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the space station base of the UAC he knew there were demons.
      "This is Joson" the radio crackered. "You must fight the demons!"
      So John gotted his palsma rifle and blew up the wall.
      "HE GOING TO KILL US" said the demons
      "I will shoot at him" said the cyberdemon and he fired the rocket missiles. John plasmaed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.
      "No! I must kill the demons" he shouted
      The radio said "No, John. You are the demons"
      And then John was a zombie.

    • Err.. no. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Fished (574624)
      IANAL. I don't even play one on TV. However, your "constitutional rights" are a list of things that the government may not do to you. While there might be some legal angle based on Verizon's status as a common carrier, public utility, etc., generally speaking a private company has no obligation to enable your freedom of speech. Think about it... does a newspaper have to print your letter to the editor? No. Same deal here.
Necessity is a mother.