SCN: ISP

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes

=======================

(John C. Dvorak, Forbes)---Imagine buying a car that comes with an 
"Acceptable Use Policy" to which you have to agree. In the policy are pages 
and pages of provisions, such as, "You may not use this car to commit 
illegal acts, including but not limited to speed law violations and illegal U-
turns" and "You may not engage in seditious conversations within the 
confines of the car." Finally, you are told that if you violate the policy the 
car will be repossessed and your money will not be refunded.  

You'd think the carmaker was crazy. But this is the kind of idiotic agreement 
you are already making if you use almost any Internet access service.  

Take the license for the popular AtHome cable modem system (check it out 
at www.home.com/aup). It puts severe limits on how you can use the 
service. The agreement can change without notice, and you are legally 
bound by any new demands.  

"They could suddenly demand you wear a bra and panties and dance in the 
street, and you are contractually bound to it, the way this is written," says 
Andrew Weill, a partner at Benjamin, Weill & Mazer, an intellectual property 
firm in San Francisco.  

Yet the AtHome agreement is not unusual. Internet access providers and 
Web sites are doing anything possible to limit their liability and minimize 
their responsibilities. Stephen Davidson, past president of the Computer 
Law Association and a lawyer with Leonard, Street & Deinard, calls the 
AtHome policy a "mutating bill of rights."  

But don't expect mercy from a court of law. Says he, "If this policy is 
presented properly to the user, then the court will uphold it as a contract, 
despite the fact that nobody reads it. They were given the chance to read it." 
 

Much of the AtHome contract is defensive legalistic blather designed to 
keep the company out of court. The more onerous aspects of the agreement 
are the bandwidth limitations imposed by AtHome. These suggest to me 
that the service is having a hard time delivering on its promised bandwidth, 
225 kilobits to 1 megabit per second upstream and 10 megabits 
downstream.  

The most ludicrous example of this is the chat room policy: "Any computer 
or other device connected through the services may not maintain more than 
two simultaneous chat connections. This includes the use of automated 
programs, such as 'bots' or 'clones.' Automated programs may not be used 
when the account holder is not physically present at the device." Anyone 
who regularly chats online tends to have two or more chats going at once, 
since data speeds are so slow. The conversations take forever. If AtHome 
is concerned about someone typing to more than two people at once, then 
something is terribly wrong with the architecture. According to the terms of 
the agreement, if I get up to get coffee during a chat and my computer sends 
an automatic message saying "I'll be right back," then I'm in violation.  

And, yes, they can catch you because AtHome gives itself the right to spy 
on your every activity, although it says its policy is not to do it routinely. 
Isn't that comforting?  

So let's stop right here. Big Web sites have legal notices. Software 
packages have lengthy license agreements. Does anyone besides me 
sense a creeping Soviet Union-type atmosphere here? Even ignoring the 
eavesdropping, there is weird psychology in all these contracts: People 
perceive them as a joke, knowing they can get away with violations without 
much fear of getting caught.  

In a Soviet-style system you are in violation of some law at any given time; 
you just assume you won't get caught unless someone is out to get you. 
When we live our lives this way, we end up as a community of Soviet-style 
scofflaws. I believe this environment has given rise to services like 
Napster. Young people, who were raised with computers, are more likely 
than older people to ignore copyright laws and to freely trade music without 
fear of serious reprisals.  

No legal expert thinks any of this is going to subside in the short term. "All 
this cyberactivity is a new frontier for the law. It will take years to sort itself 
out," says Davidson.

Copyright 2000 Forbes.com  






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