by emptywheel

It's a good think I chose Comcast's oligopoly service for broadband internet service and not AT&T (my two easy choices for real broadband). That's because I tend to point out that our government is becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T. And AT&T just changed its acceptable use policy to prevent you from using AT&T's Toobz to tell others about the bad things AT&T is doing (via boing boing).

Failure to observe the guidelines set forth in this AUP may result in AT&T taking actions anywhere from a warning to a suspension of privileges or termination of your Service(s). When feasible, AT&T may provide you with notice of an AUP violation, via Email or otherwise, and demand that such violation be immediately corrected. AT&T reserves the right, however, to act immediately and without notice to suspend or terminate Service(s) in response to a court order or other legal requirement that certain conduct be stopped or when AT&T determines, in its sole discretion, that the conduct may (1) expose AT&T to sanctions, prosecution or civil action, (2) cause harm to or interfere with the integrity or normal operations of AT&T's network(s) or facilities, (3) materially or repeatedly interfere with another person's use of AT&T's Service(s) or the Internet (4) damage or disparage the reputation of AT&T or its Service(s), or (5) otherwise present a risk of harm to AT&T or AT&T's customers , employees, officers, directors, or agents. [snip] You are prohibited from engaging in any other activity, illegal or not, that AT&T determines in its sole discretion, to be harmful to its subscribers, operations, network(s), reputation, goodwill, or customer relations.

This telecommunications thing is really heading to a really nice place, where we can't use the Toobz to discuss how the Toobz are being used to watch over what we do and say. But I guess we should have anticipated that.