'Unusual' UTVIP T's and C's

tribble

While reading through the Terms and Conditions of the UTVIP XL Dialer program I found the following...


3.4 Soliciting subscribers to other services in not allowed
...
It is also not acceptable to use our service to solicit subscribers to become subscribers of other competitive information services.

Am I reading this correctly? If use the UTVIP XL service I relinquish my right to reccommend any other competing service that I may have experience of :eek: - best avoid boards from now on lest i slip up... :rolleyes:


4.1 We may monitor your account but will respect your privacy

Ok, so monitoring may be a standard condition of service for all ISP's but lets not pretend that you can do so without intruding on somebodys privacy.


If we have cause, we may monitor the conduct of your account to determine whether this policy is being followed. If we monitor the conduct of your account we will safeguard your privacy unless to do so would involve us in concealment of a criminal offence or inhibit the enforcement of this policy.

So we've already agreed not to "solicit subscribers to become subscribers of other competitive information services" so monitoring somebodys traffic for instances of "EsatBT" "Anytime" and "recommend" is kosher?


You must not refer to your pages by any means other that the addess www.username.utvinternet.com. Specifically, you must not reference or cause your free WWW space to be referenced by dotted IP addresses.

Why's this then?


I don't know, these may be standard accross the industry but they seem a little harsh. No?

tribble

corkie

... UTVinternet ---- IF use there webspace!

Not the T&C of the UTVipXL service which can be found here:
http://www.utvip.com/tc.asp?loc=ie



I am not going down the pantomine route on this thread.

Terms include with the dialer are for using UTVinternet services in general, i.e. their website and e-mail.

If you have hosting somewhere else, they can not restrict what you put on that website as long as it is not illegal.

The link to the terms above, apply to the use of UTVipXL/UTVip as your internet access provider.

If your worried about the terms get clarification from UTV.


What you are quoting from is available under:

Acceptable Use Policy

All subscribers are required to read, and agree to abide by, the Acceptable Use Policy of UTV Internet available online here. We reserve the right to alter our Acceptable Use Policies without prior notification.


Which applies more to the use of UTVinternet services (i.e the free web space, etc.).

tribble

You are incorrect.

My quotes come directly from the UTVIP XL Dialer Install Program.

tribble

DMT

If you haven't installed the dialer then you're not legally bound to these terms of service or the three month contract and won't have agreed to anything.

The happened with eircon's I-Stream did it not? - people set up their connections manually, avoided agreeing to the terms by not using the installation CD and were able to get out of their contracts early as a result.

drjolt

There was an incident a few years back where one ISP bought an account with one of their competitors, went onto the competing company's support newsgroup, collected a slew of customer email addresses, and spammed them with an offer to migrate to their service. Hence nowadays ISPs prohibit customers from soliciting other customers.

corkie

Originally posted by DMT
If you haven't installed the dialer then you're not legally bound to these terms of service or the three month contract and won't have agreed to anything.

You have allready agreed to T&C. It doesn't matter if use the dialer or not. See Clause 2.
But this was at the end of the form you used to sign up:

• I wish to apply for the UTVip home phone service. • I authorise eircom to activate the above choices on my behalf. • The above will override any previous call options on the call categories selected above. • I am authorised to act on behalf of the household on this matter. • I have read, understood and accept the Terms and Conditions. • I am over 18 years of age.

But on the other handed, I believe (*and I'm not going into the reasons why) that if you do use the Dialer (UTV are strongly urging you to do so) that it may make the T&C null and void.

I did say 'may' make because:
a: I am not a lawyer and
b: I have more researching yet to do on this dialer.

* I am not going into the reasons on this board because It may cause me to be in breach of the AUP.

With the above said the T&C are there to protect UTV and also us the end user.

Serbian

Originally posted by corkie
But on the other handed, I believe (*and I'm not going into the reasons why) that if you do use the Dialer (UTV are strongly urging you to do so) that it may make the T&C null and void.

I did say 'may' make because:
a: I am not a lawyer and
b: I have more researching yet to do on this dialer.

* I am not going into the reasons on this board because It may cause me to be in breach of the AUP.

Hey Corkie,

Not taking a shot at you or anything, but if you can't reveal details of claims such as the one above, then I think it's just a waste of time mentioning them at all. It just looks sensationalist.

As per the first part of your post, it looks like Tribble has in fact already agreed to the T&C's...

Serb

DMT

Originally posted by corkie
You have allready agreed to T&C. It doesn't matter if use the dialer or not. See Clause 2.

That's not true.

I agreed to the T&C for UTVip - these are not the same the T&C for UTVip XL as it's a completely different product.
And I'm not held to the T&C for UTVip anymore either has the contract for that product has ended.

Bottom line - the T&C for UTVip have nothing to do with UTVip XL.


:ninja:

tribble

As per the first part of your post, it looks like Tribble has in fact already agreed to the T&C's...

Nope I chose not to agree and canceled the install.
I may yet agree to them as soon as a couple of things are cleared up. For the moment I just use Windows DUN with the modified XL number (and accept that I may have to re-dial sometimes to get connected because of the traffic).

Thanks for reading the thread though.

tribble

corkie

Originally posted by Serbian
Hey Corkie,

Not taking a shot at you or anything, but if you can't reveal details of claims such as the one above, then I think it's just a waste of time mentioning them at all. It just looks sensationalist.

Sorry if it looks sensationalist, I did mean it to.

But I still believe that it may make some or all of the T&C null and void. Below are some of my reasons on thinking this. I still haven't fully looked into/researched it yet.

1. The dialer is Third Party Software, you can find interesting information on it here: http://www.usefulware.com/cmdialup.asp

2. It is self updating and I could not find any utility on the software to turn this feature off.

Quates from the T&C that are relevant to the above:

6.2 UTV Internet shall make reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access to the Service by third parties but shall have no liability to the Customer for any unauthorized access to the Customer's Equipment.

6.6 We shall not be liable for claims arising out of a breach in the security or privacy of messages transmitted using the Service provided by us unless the breach results from a willful act or omission of UTV Internet or its employees.

I can get over the fact that dialer on install can can change the homepage and search functions of your browser they can be fixed easily. But what I didn't like was it altering networking configuration settings (i.e. Workgroup identifiaction), with out notify me or seeking permissions to do so.

On another note for the dialer to work as utv intended it to, you would have to allow it through your firewall (if you have one). Not allowing it would be the same as not using the dialer at all.

I have now removed the dialer from my PC, and will not use it again unless I get some clarification on the above points from UTV.


With all the above said, I am very gratefull to UTV in providing the UTVipXL service.

sceptre

Can't see anything wrong or nullifying from a legal POV in what corkie has posted. I'm a little paranoid so like to do these little connection settings myself (there will come a time when I won't have anything on a machine that I haven't compiled yet but happily I don't have the technical ability yet to be 100% sure that it'll all work if I do that) but that's only a personal thing - I like to make sure the door is locked just before I go to sleep as well.

Someone please post up whatever sets of T&Cs there are and I'll let my semi-trained legal mind (5 years of law does not a fully-trained mind make) have a looksee at it.

Sir Random

UTVipXL T&C:
http://www.utvip.com/tc.asp?loc=ie

My only concerns were
Hours/cost (180 hours for €24.99 is cheap enough)
Hosting (Unlimited webspace & emails are very useful)
Contract (3 months? that's reasonable)

To be honest, I can't imagine here's anything else in the T&C that would be of concern to most users.