Lawyers Don't Read Adhesion Contracts Either

The next time you big-firm wankers have to recycle boilerplate in a brief about how some poor schmuck should be bound by an absurd, ridiculous adhesion contract that no one read, let alone understood, try to remember that you too are a victim of bullcrap contracts filled with nonsensical and unenforceable clauses:

What's scary, funny and boring at the same time? It could be a bad horror movie. Or it could be the fine print on your Internet service provider's contract.

Those documents you agree to -- usually without reading -- ostensibly allow your ISP to watch how you use the Internet, read your e-mail or keep you from visiting sites it deems inappropriate.

Some reserve the right to block traffic and, for any reason, cut off a service that many users now find essential.

The Associated Press reviewed the ''Acceptable Use Policies'' and ''Terms of Service'' of the nation's 10 largest ISPs -- in all, 117 pages of contracts that leave few rights for subscribers.

'The network is asserting almost complete control of the users' ability to use their network as a gateway to the Internet,'' said Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press, a Washington-based consumer advocacy group. ``They become gatekeepers rather than gateways.''

But the provisions are rarely enforced, except against obvious miscreants like spammers.

Consumer outrage would have been the likely result if AT&T took advantage of its stated right to block any activity that causes the company ``to be viewed unfavorably by others.''

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University, said this clause was a "piece of boilerplate that is passed around the corporate lawyers like a Christmas fruitcake."

Passed around like "Christmas fruitcake"? You foppish Brit!

He meant these crappy clauses are passed around like tres leches on Noche Buena.