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We should stop lawyers from re-defining words like unlimited. We should make sure that if somebody says unlimited in advertisment or product description it real

We should stop lawyers from re-defining words like unlimited. We should make sure that if somebody says unlimited in advertisment or product description it really means unlimited. I know, I am an idealist. :)

smackfu 11y ago
I had to take some training for a BigCo client, and they made a special point that you had to run marketing that used words like "free", "unlimited", and "lifetime" past a lawyer because you couldn't just fine print your way out of the common meanings.
- istvan__ 11y ago
  I understand that it is much easier to sell something with unlimited (even if it is not) or free (even if it is not).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
hueving 11y ago
So what does unlimited mean then in your definition? Even before they throttle, you will be limited by the throughput of the cell tower.
- istvan__ 11y ago
  This is not about the speed, more like about the volume of data. They limit you after you reached a limit that should have never reach because it was advertised limitless.
- revscat 11y ago
  Interesting question. "Unlimited: Wherein the amount of bandwidth, measured by megabits/s up/down, will not be artificially affected. While system outages or other technical limitations can at times affect throughput, at no point will AT&T or its subsidiaries place constraints upon throughput based upon the amount of data transferred over the course of one or more billing periods."
  - derefr 11y ago
    Would an ISP still be able to call their service "unlimited", by this definition, if some of their distribution nodes (cable optical nodes, wireless cell towers, whatever) are oversubscribed+saturated to the point of degraded service for the customers on that node? If they could, then would they still be able to call the service "unlimited" if they enforced moment-by-moment QoS at the distribution node (so your neighbour's download will slow down to allow you to Skype, as if you were both connected through the same router in a building)? And if that is allowed, then what is the difference if they're doing the QoSing by long-time-window statistical aggregation rather than packet-by-packet prioritization? Decreasing the bandwidth available to a given link that has reached some monthly "quota" on a given oversubscribed node†, has exactly the same incentives as decreasing the bandwidth available to a given link for as long as someone else is trying to saturate the pipe with higher-priority traffic. Either method disincentivizes everyone on the link from "wasting" their bandwidth unnecessarily (in a "you don't want your neighbour to do X, so you stop doing X and hope that they have empathy" way), such that the link becomes less saturated on a long-term basis. But only one is ever highlighted by the news as explicitly breaking the promise of "unlimited." Why is this? --- † (...where that quota is the area-under-the-curve of the router's upstream bandwidth, divided by the number of users attached to the distribution point—in other words, the user's ration of the distribution node's available transit. If the quota is an arbitrary fixed number that isn't anywhere near this number, then that's just price-gouging.)
    - georgerobinson 11y ago
      I would think so. Let's use "unlimited" in the context of public transport. You have paid for a Travelcard on the London Underground Zones 1 to 6, including peak hours. If there is congestion on the line, or it's a busy rush hour morning is your Travelcard no longer "unlimited"? I mean you're not paying an SLA in which you're guaranteed a seat and that trains will be delayed no longer then X minutes. I'm not defending AT&T in the slightest, but I think "unlimited usage", "100% availability" and "100% link rate" are not the same.
      - derefr 11y ago
- bachmeier 11y ago
  For the purposes of this action, it means you can use it as much as you want. AT&T was selling it as unlimited 3G/4G, they were not told the conditions that would result in throttling, and they were not told that they would effectively have an unusable data plan after throttling. My memory may be fuzzy, but this story[1] provides a few more details. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/technology/FTC-says-ATT-deceived-consumers-on-unlimited-data-plan.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/technology/FTC-says-ATT-de...
- msravi 11y ago
  FYI, "unlimited data" != "unlimited throughput". No one's asking for unlimited throughput. What people who signed up thought they were getting was pretty straightforward - unlimited data at the throughput promised. Period.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - nathan_long 11y ago
    > unlimited data at the throughput promised I'm with you, but I've noticed that ISPs generally state speeds using "up to". Eg, AT&T's lowest U-verse tier gives you "Speeds up to 6Mbps". Which is exactly the worst guarantee possible. "Don't worry, we certainly won't give you more than 6Mbps!" Of course, if you pay them more, they'll guarantee not to give you more than 18Mbps.
- Aloisius 11y ago
  I would define it as without limits imposed by the company. Limits imposed by nature are fine. I'm not going to complain about unlimited talk time when there are only so many seconds in the month. I'm even ok with prioritization for congestion control since you're hitting a natural limit of available bandwidth. This is apparently what AT&T is doing now according to Ars Technica.
- colechristensen 11y ago
  When it comes to networking providers wired/wireless/mobile it means speed is invariant with regards to volume. Network neutrality means speed is invariant with regards to source. I have mixed feelings about traffic shaping between users and protocols – that is limiting a minority of whales taking an unfair share.
- mangeletti 11y ago
  Certainly "unlimited plan" doesn't mean "limited to a greater extent than the limited plan". If AT&T had set the bandwidth rate to match that of their normal 5GB plan, there would be no problems. In fact, I think that would be seen as expected behavior. What they instead did was punish their long-time customers who were grandfathered into a mistake that AT&T made. I signed up for unlimited data in 2008, after the second iPhone was out, so it's not like the term "Internet" was suddenly redefined and AT&T was in a new paradigm of mobile Internet access. What really happened is that they got greedy and oversubscribed their network, and they decided to punish us for that.
- biot 11y ago
  Throughput, latency, and so on are natural limitations of consuming bandwidth (internet and RF) which is shared across subscribers. What the FCC took exception to (and rightly so) is that AT&T imposed artificial limitations on subscribers based on their consumption. You can't say that your service has no limits but then go on and impose limits.
- VLM 11y ago
  My daily driver has an unlimited top speed. Rather optimistically according to my xbox and Forza it can top our around 100-110. (Edited to add, Forza seems to imply I can get my car up to 115 or so, then stability control loses it, but theres no hard coded limit). In the army I drove a pos HMMWV and it has a limiter topping it out at 55 mph from memory. Although if you remove the governor supposedly it rockets along at 75+. My pos would have leaked out all the oil or something before it ever got to 75, but in theory a reliable one can go that fast. The civilian model replaces the 100 HP indestructible engine with a 600 HP consumer engine so those move quite fast.
zkhalique 11y ago
If the throttling slows it down but not to the extent of asymptotically approaching a limit within the month, then I think the word "unlimited" really applies. The limit might be, say, 5x less than what you would get with normal tower reception. But it's still "unlimited" in the same sense as being limited by cellphone throughput. So I guess the lawyers can argue that truly being "unlimited" is clearly impossible anyway.
- ohw 11y ago
  How do you define "asymptotically approaching ... within the month"?
  - hellbanner 11y ago
    A formula, perhaps
  - bhauer 11y ago
    I read that as if to mean that it would be possible for the ISP to set a limit, say a 10 GB monthly cap, and once a lower threshold (say 5 GB) is reached, decrease bandwidth as usage continues to climb. As usage grows and bandwidth decreases, you could eventually reach a point where it is so slow (say at 1,000 bits per second) that it becomes more or less unusable for the consumer and therefore unfeasible to realistically exceed the 10 GB limit. Sort of like halving the distance between you and a destination repeatedly ultimately leads you to a position infinitesimally separated from your destination, but never past it.
- joesmo 11y ago
  No, because you're paying for unlimited 4G or HSDPA access, not unlimited access at any speed. AT&T is wrong, they know they're wrong, and they should pay the money. It clearly misleads consumers and that's the issue here.
elihu 11y ago
Lawyers? I think the problem here is with words being redefined by marketers.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Every single letter of AT&T marketing materials is obsessively filtered by a crack legal team. The lawyers are very much involved here.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tomjen3 11y ago
My home ISP gives me a certain number of megabit up and another down. My contract essentially says 60up/20down unlimited, which means that I can download as much as I want, subject to the limitation not to download more than 60 megabit a second. We could use that as a template for 3g sales as well - granted we may have to specify the speed as 3g or 4g rather than a certain number of megabits - but ISPs hate that they are selling a commodity (which they shouldn't. Butter, toothpaste and oil are commodities but Procter and Gamble, Unilever and Saudi Arabia are all rich).
- ohw 11y ago
  I would say "60up/20down unlimited" means your ISP guarantees this bandwidth as part of the contract, rather than upper bound the bandwidth by this number. In the off peak hours you may be allowed to download at a rate higher than this number, but even in the peak hours you should be able to fully utilize your guaranteed bandwidth.
  - userbinator 11y ago
    Even a "guaranteed bandwidth" becomes impossible if you're transferring from a server that can't provide those speeds, or over some portion of the Internet that can't due to link congestion/etc., and your ISP can't do anything about that. In that sense, all bandwidths are "up to". The significantly more expensive "business level" plans usually do have some sort of guarantee via SLA, but once again that only applies to the part of the network between you and the ISP.
    - istvan__ 11y ago
      You can check that with torrent. If it is not a single server and a single connection you should be able to saturate your network connection.
ams6110 11y ago
Well redefining words is pretty common these days, and quite popular too if it's for the politically correct reasons.
- istvan__ 11y ago
  Absolutely, I still don't like it. :)
- qopp 11y ago
  Politically correct is a pejorative term, you must use the word benevolent or words "socially progressive" /s.
tomp 11y ago
Depends what they're advertising as "unlimited". If it's unlimited broadband/internet, then it should actually be unlimited. On the other hand, if it's just unlimited data, then that says nothing about the speed. However, truth be told, my operator (3 in the UK) is pretty explicit that after 5GB or so (each month) the speed is reduced, and there is no unlimited (free) data when you're abroad.
- brianpan 11y ago
  I don't see the difference. If you're limiting the bandwidth I can't access the data. I think it's reasonable to expect "unlimited" to mean without artificial restrictions or limitations to accessing the thing they are providing.
- Cerium 11y ago
  Unlimited should mean limited only by the physics of the device. The limit should be determined by the bandwidth and the number of seconds in a month.
  - tomp 11y ago
    Yes, but the question is, unlimited what. You don't go to an "unlimited food" restaurant expecting unlimited drinks as well.
    - DougWebb 11y ago
      You shouldn't expect unlimited food either. "All you can eat" doesn't mean "Please move in and live here for the rest of your life."
rayiner 11y ago
I guarantee you that it was marketing, not legal, that came up with those definitions. After all, its marketing that gets the credit while the company sells throttled service as "unlimited," but its legal that takes the blame when the FTC fines the company $100 million for that practice.
- dctoedt 11y ago
  > its marketing that gets the credit while the company sells throttled service as "unlimited," but its legal that takes the blame when the FTC fines the company $100 million for that practice. That's possible; AT&T legal might have advised against advertising the service as "unlimited" but been overruled. I'd be really surprised if AT&T didn't have a policy where every advertisement goes through legal review. Alternatively, Homer might have nodded in the AT&T legal department, especially if Homer was in fact a junior attorney. Self-cite: A few years ago I pulled together a collection of marketing words and phrases to avoid or rephrase, culled from a large corpus of advertising reviews I did for a large company. [1] The AT&T situation illustrates the truth of a rule of thumb mentioned in that collection: All categorical statements are bad — including this one. [1] http://www.oncontracts.com/marketing-legal-review-some-words-and-phrases-to-avoid-with-safer-alternatives/ http://www.oncontracts.com/marketing-legal-review-some-words...
- Gustomaximus 11y ago
  As a marketeer that has worked big telco, I guarantee you legal signed off that definition. A marketing department will propose content and then EVERYTHING will go via legal for approval. Legal taking responsibility is entirely appropriate. Marketing are there to make ideas that sell, legal are there to make sure all ideas are within the rules.
grecy 11y ago
In Australia there are extremely strict "false advertising" laws just like you propose. A few years back Holden (GM) had an "Employee prices for all" sale - so supposedly regular people were getting the same deal that employees were getting. It came out a while later that wasn't true, and so Holden (GM) were forced to give customers a refund of the difference to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. If you advertise it, and it's not true, you'll be forced to make it true.
- ezzaf 11y ago
  Holden were indeed investigated by the ACCC for this, but they were not forced to refund the difference. The resolution was to "offer an opportunity to return the vehicle for a full refund of the purchase price including additional charges"[1], and applied to only 250-300 customers. [1] https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/holden-employee-pricing-backfires https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/holden-employee-pricin...

smackfu 11y ago

I had to take some training for a BigCo client, and they made a special point that you had to run marketing that used words like "free", "unlimited", and "lifetime" past a lawyer because you couldn't just fine print your way out of the common meanings.

istvan__ 11y ago
I understand that it is much easier to sell something with unlimited (even if it is not) or free (even if it is not).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

hueving 11y ago

So what does unlimited mean then in your definition? Even before they throttle, you will be limited by the throughput of the cell tower.

istvan__ 11y ago
This is not about the speed, more like about the volume of data. They limit you after you reached a limit that should have never reach because it was advertised limitless.
revscat 11y ago
Interesting question. "Unlimited: Wherein the amount of bandwidth, measured by megabits/s up/down, will not be artificially affected. While system outages or other technical limitations can at times affect throughput, at no point will AT&T or its subsidiaries place constraints upon throughput based upon the amount of data transferred over the course of one or more billing periods."
- derefr 11y ago
  Would an ISP still be able to call their service "unlimited", by this definition, if some of their distribution nodes (cable optical nodes, wireless cell towers, whatever) are oversubscribed+saturated to the point of degraded service for the customers on that node? If they could, then would they still be able to call the service "unlimited" if they enforced moment-by-moment QoS at the distribution node (so your neighbour's download will slow down to allow you to Skype, as if you were both connected through the same router in a building)? And if that is allowed, then what is the difference if they're doing the QoSing by long-time-window statistical aggregation rather than packet-by-packet prioritization? Decreasing the bandwidth available to a given link that has reached some monthly "quota" on a given oversubscribed node†, has exactly the same incentives as decreasing the bandwidth available to a given link for as long as someone else is trying to saturate the pipe with higher-priority traffic. Either method disincentivizes everyone on the link from "wasting" their bandwidth unnecessarily (in a "you don't want your neighbour to do X, so you stop doing X and hope that they have empathy" way), such that the link becomes less saturated on a long-term basis. But only one is ever highlighted by the news as explicitly breaking the promise of "unlimited." Why is this? --- † (...where that quota is the area-under-the-curve of the router's upstream bandwidth, divided by the number of users attached to the distribution point—in other words, the user's ration of the distribution node's available transit. If the quota is an arbitrary fixed number that isn't anywhere near this number, then that's just price-gouging.)
  - georgerobinson 11y ago
    I would think so. Let's use "unlimited" in the context of public transport. You have paid for a Travelcard on the London Underground Zones 1 to 6, including peak hours. If there is congestion on the line, or it's a busy rush hour morning is your Travelcard no longer "unlimited"? I mean you're not paying an SLA in which you're guaranteed a seat and that trains will be delayed no longer then X minutes. I'm not defending AT&T in the slightest, but I think "unlimited usage", "100% availability" and "100% link rate" are not the same.
    - derefr 11y ago
bachmeier 11y ago
For the purposes of this action, it means you can use it as much as you want. AT&T was selling it as unlimited 3G/4G, they were not told the conditions that would result in throttling, and they were not told that they would effectively have an unusable data plan after throttling. My memory may be fuzzy, but this story[1] provides a few more details. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/technology/FTC-says-ATT-deceived-consumers-on-unlimited-data-plan.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/technology/FTC-says-ATT-de...
msravi 11y ago
FYI, "unlimited data" != "unlimited throughput". No one's asking for unlimited throughput. What people who signed up thought they were getting was pretty straightforward - unlimited data at the throughput promised. Period.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- nathan_long 11y ago
  > unlimited data at the throughput promised I'm with you, but I've noticed that ISPs generally state speeds using "up to". Eg, AT&T's lowest U-verse tier gives you "Speeds up to 6Mbps". Which is exactly the worst guarantee possible. "Don't worry, we certainly won't give you more than 6Mbps!" Of course, if you pay them more, they'll guarantee not to give you more than 18Mbps.
Aloisius 11y ago
I would define it as without limits imposed by the company. Limits imposed by nature are fine. I'm not going to complain about unlimited talk time when there are only so many seconds in the month. I'm even ok with prioritization for congestion control since you're hitting a natural limit of available bandwidth. This is apparently what AT&T is doing now according to Ars Technica.
colechristensen 11y ago
When it comes to networking providers wired/wireless/mobile it means speed is invariant with regards to volume. Network neutrality means speed is invariant with regards to source. I have mixed feelings about traffic shaping between users and protocols – that is limiting a minority of whales taking an unfair share.
mangeletti 11y ago
Certainly "unlimited plan" doesn't mean "limited to a greater extent than the limited plan". If AT&T had set the bandwidth rate to match that of their normal 5GB plan, there would be no problems. In fact, I think that would be seen as expected behavior. What they instead did was punish their long-time customers who were grandfathered into a mistake that AT&T made. I signed up for unlimited data in 2008, after the second iPhone was out, so it's not like the term "Internet" was suddenly redefined and AT&T was in a new paradigm of mobile Internet access. What really happened is that they got greedy and oversubscribed their network, and they decided to punish us for that.
biot 11y ago
Throughput, latency, and so on are natural limitations of consuming bandwidth (internet and RF) which is shared across subscribers. What the FCC took exception to (and rightly so) is that AT&T imposed artificial limitations on subscribers based on their consumption. You can't say that your service has no limits but then go on and impose limits.
VLM 11y ago
My daily driver has an unlimited top speed. Rather optimistically according to my xbox and Forza it can top our around 100-110. (Edited to add, Forza seems to imply I can get my car up to 115 or so, then stability control loses it, but theres no hard coded limit). In the army I drove a pos HMMWV and it has a limiter topping it out at 55 mph from memory. Although if you remove the governor supposedly it rockets along at 75+. My pos would have leaked out all the oil or something before it ever got to 75, but in theory a reliable one can go that fast. The civilian model replaces the 100 HP indestructible engine with a 600 HP consumer engine so those move quite fast.

zkhalique 11y ago

If the throttling slows it down but not to the extent of asymptotically approaching a limit within the month, then I think the word "unlimited" really applies. The limit might be, say, 5x less than what you would get with normal tower reception. But it's still "unlimited" in the same sense as being limited by cellphone throughput. So I guess the lawyers can argue that truly being "unlimited" is clearly impossible anyway.

ohw 11y ago
How do you define "asymptotically approaching ... within the month"?
- hellbanner 11y ago
  A formula, perhaps
- bhauer 11y ago
  I read that as if to mean that it would be possible for the ISP to set a limit, say a 10 GB monthly cap, and once a lower threshold (say 5 GB) is reached, decrease bandwidth as usage continues to climb. As usage grows and bandwidth decreases, you could eventually reach a point where it is so slow (say at 1,000 bits per second) that it becomes more or less unusable for the consumer and therefore unfeasible to realistically exceed the 10 GB limit. Sort of like halving the distance between you and a destination repeatedly ultimately leads you to a position infinitesimally separated from your destination, but never past it.
joesmo 11y ago
No, because you're paying for unlimited 4G or HSDPA access, not unlimited access at any speed. AT&T is wrong, they know they're wrong, and they should pay the money. It clearly misleads consumers and that's the issue here.

elihu 11y ago

Lawyers? I think the problem here is with words being redefined by marketers.

oldmanjay 11y ago
Every single letter of AT&T marketing materials is obsessively filtered by a crack legal team. The lawyers are very much involved here.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tomjen3 11y ago

My home ISP gives me a certain number of megabit up and another down. My contract essentially says 60up/20down unlimited, which means that I can download as much as I want, subject to the limitation not to download more than 60 megabit a second. We could use that as a template for 3g sales as well - granted we may have to specify the speed as 3g or 4g rather than a certain number of megabits - but ISPs hate that they are selling a commodity (which they shouldn't. Butter, toothpaste and oil are commodities but Procter and Gamble, Unilever and Saudi Arabia are all rich).

ohw 11y ago
I would say "60up/20down unlimited" means your ISP guarantees this bandwidth as part of the contract, rather than upper bound the bandwidth by this number. In the off peak hours you may be allowed to download at a rate higher than this number, but even in the peak hours you should be able to fully utilize your guaranteed bandwidth.
- userbinator 11y ago
  Even a "guaranteed bandwidth" becomes impossible if you're transferring from a server that can't provide those speeds, or over some portion of the Internet that can't due to link congestion/etc., and your ISP can't do anything about that. In that sense, all bandwidths are "up to". The significantly more expensive "business level" plans usually do have some sort of guarantee via SLA, but once again that only applies to the part of the network between you and the ISP.
  - istvan__ 11y ago
    You can check that with torrent. If it is not a single server and a single connection you should be able to saturate your network connection.

ams6110 11y ago

Well redefining words is pretty common these days, and quite popular too if it's for the politically correct reasons.

istvan__ 11y ago
Absolutely, I still don't like it. :)
qopp 11y ago
Politically correct is a pejorative term, you must use the word benevolent or words "socially progressive" /s.

tomp 11y ago

Depends what they're advertising as "unlimited". If it's unlimited broadband/internet, then it should actually be unlimited. On the other hand, if it's just unlimited data, then that says nothing about the speed. However, truth be told, my operator (3 in the UK) is pretty explicit that after 5GB or so (each month) the speed is reduced, and there is no unlimited (free) data when you're abroad.

brianpan 11y ago
I don't see the difference. If you're limiting the bandwidth I can't access the data. I think it's reasonable to expect "unlimited" to mean without artificial restrictions or limitations to accessing the thing they are providing.
Cerium 11y ago
Unlimited should mean limited only by the physics of the device. The limit should be determined by the bandwidth and the number of seconds in a month.
- tomp 11y ago
  Yes, but the question is, unlimited what. You don't go to an "unlimited food" restaurant expecting unlimited drinks as well.
  - DougWebb 11y ago
    You shouldn't expect unlimited food either. "All you can eat" doesn't mean "Please move in and live here for the rest of your life."

rayiner 11y ago

I guarantee you that it was marketing, not legal, that came up with those definitions. After all, its marketing that gets the credit while the company sells throttled service as "unlimited," but its legal that takes the blame when the FTC fines the company $100 million for that practice.

dctoedt 11y ago
> its marketing that gets the credit while the company sells throttled service as "unlimited," but its legal that takes the blame when the FTC fines the company $100 million for that practice. That's possible; AT&T legal might have advised against advertising the service as "unlimited" but been overruled. I'd be really surprised if AT&T didn't have a policy where every advertisement goes through legal review. Alternatively, Homer might have nodded in the AT&T legal department, especially if Homer was in fact a junior attorney. Self-cite: A few years ago I pulled together a collection of marketing words and phrases to avoid or rephrase, culled from a large corpus of advertising reviews I did for a large company. [1] The AT&T situation illustrates the truth of a rule of thumb mentioned in that collection: All categorical statements are bad — including this one. [1] http://www.oncontracts.com/marketing-legal-review-some-words-and-phrases-to-avoid-with-safer-alternatives/ http://www.oncontracts.com/marketing-legal-review-some-words...
Gustomaximus 11y ago
As a marketeer that has worked big telco, I guarantee you legal signed off that definition. A marketing department will propose content and then EVERYTHING will go via legal for approval. Legal taking responsibility is entirely appropriate. Marketing are there to make ideas that sell, legal are there to make sure all ideas are within the rules.

grecy 11y ago

In Australia there are extremely strict "false advertising" laws just like you propose. A few years back Holden (GM) had an "Employee prices for all" sale - so supposedly regular people were getting the same deal that employees were getting. It came out a while later that wasn't true, and so Holden (GM) were forced to give customers a refund of the difference to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. If you advertise it, and it's not true, you'll be forced to make it true.

ezzaf 11y ago
Holden were indeed investigated by the ACCC for this, but they were not forced to refund the difference. The resolution was to "offer an opportunity to return the vehicle for a full refund of the purchase price including additional charges"[1], and applied to only 250-300 customers. [1] https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/holden-employee-pricing-backfires https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/holden-employee-pricin...