Perhaps we've been missing out. While ISPs and web developers have long granted themselves god-like clauses allowing them to censor, block, throttle, or disconnect just about anyone for anything, we at Ars have yet to capitalize on the many powers we could grant ourselves by writing a contract that no one will ever read. By being in the content business instead of the network business, we have sadly been unable to 1) disconnect anyone who ever badmouths the site, 2) send killer robots to the homes of those who block ads on the site, and 3) demand that the sweet stem cells of your firstborn be stockpiled in order to keep Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher alive until the singularity comes.

Okay, so ISPs can't do all those things either, but as a group, they are no stranger to the Over-Broad Contract. The AP took a recent look at the contracts of the ten largest US ISPs and—surprise!—they tend to be highly restrictive.

Most can be changed at any time without warning. Users can be disconnected for just about anything. Traffic can be blocked no matter if it is legal or not. Users can be booted for criticizing the company.

Such provisions are buried in pages of text that can only charitably be described as "obfuscatory." No one ever reads them, not even the people who work for Consumers Union. Bob Williams, a telecoms expert with the nonprofit, told the AP that he didn't look at his FiOS contract until it came in the mail... after FiOS was installed and running. "I really should have examined it better than I did," he said.



If this man doesn't read

his contracts, will you?

If Bob Williams doesn't read his contract, will your mom? Your brother? Will you? (Do you?)

One solution to the problem might be to have regulators lay down certain ground rules so that consumers don't have to wade through the fine print to know the basics of their service details. The FCC may in fact get involved in just such exercise when it comes to setting bandwidth management ground rules in the current Comcast case. Apart from that, though, there's not really much that consumers can do; few people are going to avoid signing up for FiOS because they're worried about a contract term, and most people are caught like fish in the broadband duopoly net.

But so long as there is at least a modicum of real competition, even the largest companies remain sensitive to widespread customer outrage, so perhaps this isn't the big deal it appears to be. We've already seen a host of quick volte face maneuvers on the part of companies in recent months when confronted with egregious terms of service provisions. When someone noticed that AT&T reserved the right to disconnect critics of the company, AT&T quickly changed the terms of service to remove the offending provision. Google made a similar move when faced with criticism over its terms of service for Google Docs, and Adobe has just done the same with its PhotoShop Express web service.

It doesn't always work, though. Comcast changed its own terms of service in the wake of the uproar over its P2P "delaying" tactics... but it used the change simply to make its own throttling policy more clear, not to alter it. Change only came in the wake of FCC action and continuing Internet agitation.

So what says the hive mind: do we need regulatory action, will the marketplace keep companies from overreaching, or is the whole debate overblown? Despite the presence of these clauses, companies rarely act on the most restrictive ones.