AT&T Changes TOS, Limits Streaming, Tethering

MojoKid writes "Just one day after announcing plans to subsidize netbooks, AT&T wised up to the fact that those netbooks and connections could be used to download movies and enjoy other bandwidth-intensive applications. Apparently trying to avoid bogging down their network, the company revised its data plan service terms to single out and prohibit 'downloading movies using P2P file-sharing services, customer initiated redirection of television or other video or audio signals via any technology from a fixed location to a mobile device, and web broadcasting...' The license agreement further prohibits tethering the device to PCs or other equipment. That's a pretty strict set of rules. After all, the new terms of service seems to limit applications such as SlingPlayer, Qik, Skype, and Jaikuspot, which many AT&T customers are currently using without issue." Update — April 4, 02:50 GMT by SS: Reader evn points out an Engadget report that AT&T quickly retracted the changes.

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To Avoid Bogging Down Their Network?

[Greyfox]

Is this the same slower-than-hell network the iPhone connects to? 'cause I got news for them, it's already bogged down. Perhaps they should worry less about the 3 guys who can be bothered to figure out how to tether their netbook and add some more pipes instead...

Guarding against minor changes in Terms of Service

[KWTm]

Ever notice how just about every contract/eula has some statement to the effect of "we reserve the right to change these terms at any time without notice"? ... Of course, they'll do everything in their power to prevent you from noticing the changes.

Agreed! While I still haven't figured out what to do about such notices on paper, I decided to do something about the electronic equivalent where (for example) every time I pay my cell phone bill online, they have a tiny scrolling window with the Terms & Conditions (T&C) with the "accept" and "reject" buttons.

Of course, if you don't actually check, you don't realize what a huge bunch of text there is within the tiny scrolling window. And since I pay the bill monthly, I'm not about to wade through all that text each time to see if they added a "and you owe us your first-born son" clause or something.

I wrote a quick shell script to make a comparison. Now whenever such T&C text shows up, I select the text with my mouse and run the script, which pulls text from the clipboard and compares it to a bunch of text files in a directory (which contain T&C from various web sites, services, etc). It will identify which file contains the old version of the T&C, and check if there are any changes. If there are, it will alert you.

So far I haven't found any service trying to sneak in changes yet, but I'm going to keep my guard up.

If you're interested in the script, I put it in this entry in my journal [slashdot.org]. Constructive criticism welcome. GPL.

This is interesting...

[catdriver]

Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following:
...
(ii) as a substitute or backup for private lines, landlines or full-time or dedicated data connections;

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this seem to imply that you *must also* have dedicated home telephone *and* data service or you're violating their TOS?