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Qwest Surrenders After Broadbanders Revolt
from the shining-a-light-on-terms-of-service dept
zanek writes "Broadband users large and small have been threatening to leave Qwest over the company's new rules. The fresh edicts seemed to bar using Qwest lines by many servers that had already signed up. In addition, those whose accounts were connected with spam in any way risked charges with no upper limits. After a weak verbal defense, Qwest capitulated. Email Battles compares the "before" with the "after."" As we mentioned, ridiculous terms of service are nothing new (and rarely enforced), but it's good to shine some light on them before they cause real problems. Update: Email Battles admits they made a mistake in their original analysis. Qwest only made minor modifications, but left the $5 per spam part in -- which was the main problem we originally noted.
Reader Comments
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Not so much
In the article referenced in this post it states taht qwest removed the $5.00 charge from their revised agreement. I just took a look at it on the Qwest web site http://www.qwest.com/legal/highspeedinternetsubscriberagreement/ which links to an agreement dated 1-12-06 and it DOES contain the $5.00 language. So battle not won as far as I can tell.
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Re: Not so much
@Greg. You are correct. I took the AUP copy from the sidebar instead of item 9 in the High Speed Internet Subscriber Agreement PDF. Qwest got more credit than deserved. We have changed our copy to:
Thanks for the correction. Sorry for the inconvenience to all.(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Re: Not so much
When I read the policy out of pure interest, the issue of five dollars only arose in the context of transmitting spam. Transmission of spam is against the law from what I understand, or at least, there are steps being taken to make it so. As far as I'm concerned people should be fined well more than five dollars. Like I said, it's just my opinion and before you think it, I'm also against spamming snail mail too. Unsolicited (e) mail is annoying and it makes you feel as though because you have an address, electronic or otherwise, people can send you things that account for 80 percent of what some receive and it's junk. Not a tirade, just my opinion...
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Re: Not so much
Transmission of spam is against the law from what I understand,
Yes, it's illegal (sort of) under the CAN SPAM law. However, the point is that Qwest's ToS is a little different. They're not saying if you're the spammer, just if your connection is used for spam. And, since so many spammers have been able to use zombie machines infected by trojans, that means that many innocent people may suddenly owe millions of dollars because their computers -- completely unbeknownst to them -- have been sending spam. That's the complaint.
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