When it comes to wireline broadband, most people have few good choices. Some only have one option; in many parts of the country, getting anything over 6Mbps requires a cable modem. Because of this, consumers largely accept what the ISPs dish out, but it's still worth taking an occasional look at the terms governing Internet service—some surprising, even shocking, nuggets are buried in all that fine print.

Take Time Warner Cable. The company's acceptable use policy (AUP) governing Internet access generally makes sense, even when it tends toward the overbroad—TWC subscribers are not allowed to "upload, post, transmit or otherwise make available any materials or content that violate or infringe on the rights or dignity of others," for instance.

The dignity of others? Who knew that offending someone could be grounds for having your Internet access terminated? If you're the kind of person who spends weeknights photochopping Hitler mustaches onto portraits of Bush or drawing up offensive Obama-as-witch-doctor cartoons, you probably don't want TWC as your Internet provider.

The same goes if you work from home on occasion or write freelance articles for your local newspaper or start a nonprofit in your garage. "Unless you have specifically subscribed for commercial grade service, the ISP Service is provided to you for personal, noncommercial use only. The service cannot be used for any enterprise purpose whatsoever whether or not the enterprise is directed toward making a profit."

But most surprising is TWC's traffic management policy. Network management "may include detecting malicious traffic patterns and preventing the distribution of viruses or other malicious code, limiting the number of peer-to-peer sessions a user can conduct at the same time, limiting the aggregate bandwidth available for certain usage protocols such as peer-to-peer and newsgroups and such other Network Management Tools as Operator may from time to time determine appropriate."

That's unusually direct for this type of document, and it's doubly unusual given that Comcast recently concluded a multiyear fight with the FCC over the exact techniques at issue here—limiting P2P bandwidth by controlling the number of simultaneous sessions.

It's also a direct attack on anything resembling network neutrality. TWC reserves the right to discriminate against protocols it doesn't like, limiting their bandwidth while leaving other protocols untouched.

Given all the controversy over the entire issue during the last two years, we were quite surprised to find such a direct statement in the company's AUP, and we checked in to see if the company is actually making use of this provision.

"While our acceptable use policy does inform subscribers that we might use protocol specific bandwidth limitations, we are not doing so at this time," said TWC spokesperson Jeff Simmermon.

Many of these terms of service will never be used to harass subscribers. In fact, if you ask big copyright holders, they will tell you that ISPs turn a blind eye to all sorts of illegal behavior, like illicit file-sharing, because their subscribers engage in it so heavily.

Still, it's worth knowing what your ISP says you can do on (and with) the Internet and what it can do to stop you from doing it. Unless you read the fine print (and it's in multiple places, including the 5,800-word Terms of Service), you might not know that any WiFi access point must use a password or MAC address filter, and that "you cannot settle amounts you owe us by writing 'paid in full' or any other message on your bill or check."

And you might not know that TWC could ratchet down any specific protocol at any time.