Our Second Most Commented Post of Year: Hey we're AT&T, don't diss us or you could be gone!

A few months ago, several bloggers noted a clause in AT&T's contracts that advised customers the following:

AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.

And there’s more that neither Slashdot or Ars Technica reported. That’d be 5.2:

Deletion of data after Termination or Cancellation. You agree that if your Service is terminated for any reason, AT&T has the right to immediately delete all data, files, and other information stored in or for your account, including email messages, without further notice to you.

This language provided grist for our second-most commented on post of the year: ATT-"tend to damage" our name and you could be terminated just like that.

Strike one for the warmth of customer relations. Or better yet, that's the world you get when you let lawyers rule.

Once again, we, and several other blogs, raised hell. It felt so-o-o-o good to do so. So much hell, in fact, that AT&T later decided to modify that stupid, and yes, offensive, policy.

Blogistan rules!