AT&T has responded to the recent blogstorm about its TOS, interesting to see that the policies they promulgate came in part from their deal with Yahoo. But it’s good to see the company respond quickly and clearly.
The company has sent me this statement:
AT&T respects its subscribers’ rights to voice their opinions and concerns over any matter they wish. However, we retain the right to disassociate ourselves from websites and messages explicitly advocating violence, or any message that poses a threat to children (e.g. child pornography or exploitation). We do not terminate customer service solely because a customer speaks negatively about AT&T. (my emphasis)
This policy is not new and it’s not unique to AT&T.
As a result of our recent mergers, we have simply incorporated language from the AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet Terms of Service into the Terms of Service for our legacy Worldnet and BellSouth customers. The language is consistent with that of previous documents for those companies, and is equally consistent with former AT&T and its legacy companies’ policies.
I got the same email from the same PR person, looking for a “correction” on Boing Boing. I told him that if AT&T wanted to demonstrate its sincerity in promising not to disconnect users for criticising it, it should revise its ToS so that it no longer reserves the right to do so.