OT- Comcast Subscriber Agreement

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, at 5:58pm, greg at kettmann.com wrote:
> Section 6, subsection g of [Comcast's TOS] states ...

  I'm pretty sure AT&T Broadband's TOS has similar prohibitions on
multiplexing their service.  They also prohibit a number of other things.  
At one time, you could read their TOS as prohibiting non-Windows OSes, but I
think they changed that.

  Most ISPs also state that they can terminate your service at any time and
for any reason, so the specifics really don't matter much anyway.

  As far as reality goes, must high-speed ISPs follow a "don't ask, don't
tell"  policy.  As long as you're not causing a problem, they really don't
care what you do.  So, if you're just browsing from a couple different
computers in your home, they likely don't know or care.

  If you start sucking up massive amounts of bandwidth, or sharing it with
others, or call their tech support for help with your router, *then* you're
costing them money, and they'll drop the hammer on you.

> Also, and I know the laws are really flakey in this area, but wouldn't
> intercepting, decoding and reading my traffic be a breach of my privacy as
> well as a violation of the reverse engineering laws?

  Well, IANAL, but AFAIK, all said laws have specific provisions allowing
service operators to do what is necessary to maintain and protect their
operations.  I've had this argument with spammers before, and I can quote
specific parts of a few laws if you like.  :-)

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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