I was clicking through my RSS feeds this morning when I saw an interesting note on Om Malik's GigaOM blog. AT&T who was in the news recently (by recently, I mean about a week ago) has decided to revise its terms of service. Big deal right?
It is a big deal. AT&T is a phone company. Phone companies are known for notoriously lousy personal service. They often do things in bizarre ways. Billing for every single detail of your interaction for example. See iJustine's Tasty Blog Snack for the Bill in a Box.
Anyway, the phone company was previously declaring in its terms of service that if DSL customers publicly criticized the company, then service could be terminated by the company. Nice, huh? Well, here is a snippet of the email Om received.
We are revising the terms of service to clarify our intent. The language in question will be revised to reflect AT&T’s respect for our customers’ right to express opinions and concerns over any matter they wish. And we will make clear that we do not terminate service because a customer expresses their opinion about AT&T.It just goes to show why the Internet should stay open. You don't need tons of money and lawyers to make a difference.
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