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Lawyers Don't Read Adhesion Contracts Either

The next time you big-firm wankers have to recycle boilerplate in a brief about how some poor schmuck should be bound by an absurd, ridiculous adhesion contract that no one read, let alone understood, try to remember that you too are a victim of bullcrap contracts filled with nonsensical and unenforceable clauses:

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.''

But the provisions are rarely enforced, except against obvious miscreants like spammers.

Consumer outrage would have been the likely result if AT&T took advantage of its stated right to block any activity that causes the company ``to be viewed unfavorably by others.''

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University, said this clause was a "piece of boilerplate that is passed around the corporate lawyers like a Christmas fruitcake."

Passed around like "Christmas fruitcake"? You foppish Brit!

He meant these crappy clauses are passed around like tres leches on Noche Buena.

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on April 08, 2008 (boomark / email).