What's in fine print on ISP contracts?
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."
Some findings:
• Practically all ISPs reserve the right to read your e-mails and look at the sites you visit, without a wiretap order. For privacy purposes, e-mails are more like postcards than letters. It's prompted by the ISPs' need to identify and stop subscribers who use their connections to send spam e-mails.
• ISPs can block you from Web sites. Or at least they would like to think so. Broad enforcement of this kind of clause for business purposes other than protecting users is likely to draw attention from regulators like the FCC.
• ISPs can shut you down for using the connection too much, such as downloading a lot of high quality video. This rarely has been an issue but the advent of high-definition Internet video set-top boxes like the Apple TV and the Vudu could make it more common.
But these provisions are rarely enforced, except against obvious miscreants like spammers.
Most companies reserve the right to change the contracts at any time, without any notice except an update on the Web site.
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 subscriber rather than the Internet 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.
Bob Williams, who deals with telecom and media issues at Consumers Union, says there should be an onus on regulators to make sure ISP contracts are being handled correctly. If there were more competition, market forces might straighten out the contracts, he said. But most Americans have only two choices for broadband: the cable company or the phone company.
Williams himself knows it's tough to pay attention to the contracts. He recently signed up for a service without reading the contract.
"I'm a hard-nosed consumer advocate type … I really should have examined it better than I did," he said. But, he added, he acted like most people, because of the lack of alternatives. "You click the 'Accept' button because it's not like you're going somewhere else."