New Terms of Service for Cable One

post, store, send, transmit, or disseminate any information or material which a reasonable person could deem to be indecent, pornographic, harassing, threatening, hateful, or intimidating;

This is part of the new terms of service that you are not allowed to do on Cable One. What is this? No legal porn? I mean, that is a major change in policy. And what is considered to be "indecent" to "reasonable" people?

Christian websites? Conspiracy websites? My friend is writing horror novels, are those indecent? Some of my music might offend someone, is that indecent? I think people should immediately either call up Cable One and complain, or immediately sever their services with them.

NOTICE: Posting "offensive" stuff on Facebook.

Disseminate: To scatter or spread widely.

Seems to me this is a direct attack on free speech.

Cable One Terms of Service

Well, I predict that lasts about 5 minutes to the first test in open court. Let them cancel someone because they went to Playboy.com or some other 100% mainstream porn site to get their evening jollies ...and see how fast Mr. Jolly gets a very nice settlement out of the deal, along with a few little changes to their TOS.

Some places are really are absurd.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


No kidding, Wrabbit. I certainly hope people vote with their wallets and this ends badly for Cable One.

The terms of service in NO way limit what websites you can visit. Visit naughty sites at will Just don't be copying the images and emailing them to your underage friends. Don't use Cable one to create a website that hosts stolen intellectual property. Don't use Cable One email to send spam...


Just as private entities such as Facebook and ATS don't allow you to disseminate pornographic, objectionable and/or inappropriate material on their websites, Cable One is again reiterating that they reserve the right to enforce the same rules.

Terms of Service. You either agree to the terms or you don't. There are other providers out there but I'm betting their TOS agreements are very similarly written.

As for one's freedom of speech, that right is reserved for a person to use his own body and his OWN property to express an idea or opinion. We have to get permission from another if we wish to express ourselves via their own personal property. Cable One doesn't give their permission to customers to use their property to share or spread the offenses spelled out in their TOS.

reply to post by NiteNGale2


I appreciate your interpretation but Cable One didn't say underage and they didn't make any of those specifications you imply they did. Things like Terms of Service don't work by implication or reasonable assumption. As someone who is in the web design business as at least a casual thing these days and runs a site, I'm real aware of the T.O.S. issue for how it's posted, what it means and how it's enforceable. Frankly. 90% of what they have there is standard ..if a little anal retentive, even by lawyer standards. That last 10% though? Well, that goes beyond what even a lawyer with a fixation on word count ought to be covering.

post, store, send, transmit, or disseminate any information or material which a reasonable person could deem to be indecent, pornographic, harassing, threatening, hateful, or intimidating;

That really does mean, literally, what it says though. At least, I promise you, it's enforceable that way until it's challenged and lost in court. They may never choose to....and I hope they don't, however, it won't be because the written terms they've laid out won't allow it.

During most of the 90's the Internet was something a personal could call optional and a luxury. Now? It's still somewhat optional, but anyone without it in the modern society is at a serious disadvantage just conducting basic business with both private and government levels. Some services under both those headings have all but moved entirely online.

I think Internet Providers and especially multi-jurisdictional ones, ought to be handled like Public Utilities at this point.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by NiteNGale2

 

I appreciate your interpretation but Cable One didn't say underage and they didn't make any of those specifications you imply they did. Things like Terms of Service don't work by implication or reasonable assumption. As someone who is in the web design business as at least a casual thing these days and runs a site, I'm real aware of the T.O.S. issue for how it's posted, what it means and how it's enforceable. Frankly. 90% of what they have there is standard ..if a little anal retentive, even by lawyer standards. That last 10% though? Well, that goes beyond what even a lawyer with a fixation on word count ought to be covering.

post, store, send, transmit, or disseminate any information or material which a reasonable person could deem to be indecent, pornographic, harassing, threatening, hateful, or intimidating;

That really does mean, literally, what it says though. At least, I promise you, it's enforceable that way until it's challenged and lost in court. They may never choose to....and I hope they don't, however, it won't be because the written terms they've laid out won't allow it.

During most of the 90's the Internet was something a personal could call optional and a luxury. Now? It's still somewhat optional, but anyone without it in the modern society is at a serious disadvantage just conducting basic business with both private and government levels. Some services under both those headings have all but moved entirely online.

I think Internet Providers and especially multi-jurisdictional ones, ought to be handled like Public Utilities at this point.

But it isn't a public utility. It is a private business who owns the servers. They get to say how their property is used.

Not sure why you singled out the underage part of the hypothetical no-nos when there were a few listed.

A person can design a website to offer anything they desire. But, doesn't it require an ISP to get that website to the intended target audience? I don't think very many people are in the position to set themselves up as their own personal ISP where they get to set the rules and the TOS. Most of us are stuck with the reality of relying on other people to privately maintain a system that allows us to connect to the internet. For a fee and with rules of course.

reply to post by NiteNGale2


I dunno..., Why would I mention underage anything? Well.. It was a passing comment, but to your intial mention of it.

The terms of service in NO way limit what websites you can visit. Visit naughty sites at will Just don't be copying the images and emailing them to your underage friends.

Indeed. Cable one is a private business. So was Prodigy, Compuserve and so are AOL and Time Werner/Roadrunner. They've all tried going a few steps beyond reasonable and decent for control of their customers in net access. They've all been sued for it...and if I'm not mistaken, they've all lost to various levels in court because of that attitude.

I'm not sure what you mean by websites. I hadn't even mentioned their IP restrictions because almost every provider in the world has that as boiler plate language. It just means you can't install Apache server software in your home P.C. and then use a dynamic IP service to insure the public can still access your web hosting, by a consumer provider, despite dynamic IP's being assigned in the first place. I wouldn't say I've used such things for short testing of design projects ... .. it might be against my providers TOS. lol....but I do see their point on THAT part. Sharing this connection for bandwidth across my loop, and larger community if it gets too far out of hand? I well appreciate that measure. Some idiots would start the next Ipage or Godaddy if allowed the opportunity to try .... 100% swamping the bandwidth for a whole community in the process.

It's that indecent nonsense. They aren't the Justice Potter with a time machine to another era of the Supreme Court and "I can't define it...but know it when I see it..." doesn't wash. They'll learn that little fact by another Judge in another courtroom, the moment someone gets sideways of their policy and decides not to put up with vague limitations of service like that.