Jeff Freeman

AT&T Yahoo! recently notified me of a change to the terms of service.

My first thought was, Aw, that was nice of them to tell me. They didn’t have to do that.

Seriously. They don’t have to do that:

AT&T Yahoo! reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove all or part of these Terms, including but not limited to any term, applicable fee, policy, or guideline, at any time without notice or acceptance by You,

My second reaction was to assume there’s something I used to be allowed to do, which I’m no longer going to be allowed to do. But that’s just cynical.

They put those fears to rest right away. The change is toward better service:

To better serve our customers, we’re updating the AT&T Yahoo! Small Business Consolidated Terms of Service.

Hot diggity! I love better service. I could hardly wait to find out what those changes were, and how they were going to serve me better. It felt like Christmas!

The notification email provided this link to the ToS.

Out of curiosity, I pasted it into OpenOffice to get a page count. In 12 point Verdana, it’s 53 pages long.

That only gave me 17 days to read the ToS before my agreement to the terms would be constituted by my continued use of the service. You know what kind of people agree to things without reading them?

Chumps, that’s who.

Then I realized the document includes the terms of every service AT&T Yahoo! offers. I wouldn’t need to read the whole thing.

I found which parts did not apply to me:

Except for Sections 10 & 12 these entire Terms apply to You.

That’s more like it. Snipping those sections from the document brought my Terms of Service down to a mere 50 pages.

Well that’s still a lot. But you can bet that AT&T Yahoo! was already on the ball, better serving me.

See, this is “business hosting”. As CEO of myself, I am an executive. I needed an executive summary, deserved an executive summary, and demanded an executive summary or heads were going to roll around here, I can tell you that. I take the bull by the horns, put a stake in the sand, grab the low-hanging fruit, and run a tight ship.

But AT&T Yahoo! had already provided just such a thing, which I can assure you saved someone’s ass. Since that would have meant going through the hassle of hiring someone to fire, I have to again give props to AT&T Yahoo! for their excellent support of my business needs.

Also I like how always capitalize You. It’s like they’re pointing when that say it. Have I got a deal for You!

The main changes include:

• The prohibition of adult content on sites hosted by AT&T Yahoo! Small Business.
• The requirement that web hosting services be used to host and service web pages, and not simply to store data.
• Stronger policies against abuse of Small Business services.

Fifty pages summed-up in three bullet points. That’s what I’m talking about. Just the main changes, too. Don’t tell me about the labor pains, just show me the baby.

I looked-up the sections of the terms of service related to the above, and ignored the rest of it. Obviously any other changes were insignificant, not worth the time of a man at my level.

The prohibition of adult content meant it was prohibited to:
(r) collect, transmit, or store any type of adult, mature, or sexually explicit content;

Now… problem. I thought that adult meant sexually explicit, and for that matter that sometimes the term mature content was used to mean the same thing. Seeing them listed separately, I had to admit that some content might be considered inappropriate for children, or adult, without necessarily being sexually explicit.

There’s alcohol and tobacco use, for example.

Oh crap! Is that what they mean? But I love alcohol and tobacco! Can I say that here? After the 9th will I need to come back and delete this post?

I figured I better find out what the difference between adult and mature meant. Maybe tobacco is mature and alcohol is adult?

An automated search was fruitless. The terms used in the terms of service aren’t defined anywhere. I started reading from the top.

It didn’t take long to find the answer. Once again, AT&T Yahoo! was there for me, better serving me with just what I needed (some legal ass-plating removed for clarity):

AT&T Yahoo! may also … terminate Your Service, … if AT&T Yahoo! concludes, in its sole discretion, that You (a) have breached, violated, or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of these Terms…”Termination for Cause”)

That made it so much clearer. I didn’t need to worry about what the terms meant, because AT&T Yahoo! would decide what they meant for me.

And anyway, it didn’t matter what the Terms of Service said, because all of the above is prefixed:

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein,

So how simple is that? Nothing for me to worry about. The terms of service say that AT&T Yahoo! alone determines their meaning, even if their determination is contrary to what the terms say.

Not even those busy-body Judges - you know how they are butting-in with their two-cents where interpreting legal documents and such are concerned! - will be getting in the way of AT&T Yahoo!’s ability to better serve me:

You expressly waive any statutory or other legal protection in conflict with the provisions of this Section

Even if the terms were defined, what would a judge know about it anyway? AT&T Yahoo! is way more qualified to identify “mature” and “adult content”.

They’d have to be, considering they’ve got some of their own:

Please be aware that there may be certain areas on the Service that contain adult or mature content and are designated for persons over 18 years of age.

I might have been concerned about the second ‘main change’, too. The restriction against data storage (and it turns out, web portals that just lead to a site some other web host is providing).

My log files ‘just store data’, for example. They don’t really have anything to do with serving web pages, but rather are the result of web pages having been served.

My pet web development projects might be a violation. I mean, sure, they serve web pages, but I generally keep ‘em locked-away in password-protected folders so that they won’t.

Then there’s that little Tumble Log Template for WordPress I keep in a zip-file for people to download. That’s 3k of pure file storage right there. Or is it? No one knows!

However, there’s no point my worrying about this or that little technicality, given that it’s all up to AT&T Yahoo!’s discretion.

They can terminate my account, delete everything on my server, immediately and without notice, for any reason or no reason, declare it ‘Termination for Cause’ no matter what the terms I’ve explicitly or implicitly agreed to actually say (and which they can change at any time and without notification in any case).

I know what you must be thinking… Weak!

Well, that was the third major change: ‘Stronger policies against abuse’.

AT&T Yahoo! reserves the right to … transfer the domain name from You to AT&T Yahoo! … AT&T Yahoo! will hold all rights of the registered domain name holder in respect of that domain name, including the right to sell the domain name to a third party

That ought to do it.

Incidentally, should that happen and you find yourself interested in this domain name for your business, I cannot recommend AT&T Yahoo! highly enough. If there’s one company you can trust to serve your business - maybe to entrust with your entire business - AT&T Yahoo! is definitely it!