🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <66ae96c0.0211191010.5f8e4db@posting.google.com>,
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=F4-#=AC_tayl=F2rchuk_=B3=AE|I?= <db2639@netzero.com> wrote:
:Yes we should all be very worried about the actions that Shaw has
:taken.

:They chose to cancel my account despite the facts that:

:1. I did not violate their AUP
:2. I am a paid up customer

:They sent a cancelation email and failed to identify ANY violations of
:their AUP but simply said..

:"it is no longer economically feasible for us to continue to provide
:you with Internet services:.

"Freedom of Expression" in Canada has never EVER meant that a
communications provider is required to provide a medium of expression
to everyone. The closest you get to that in Canadian law is that
vendors that offer service to the public must not avoid all of the
prohibited grounds of descrimination; they could not, for example,
refuse you an account -just- because you are male [unless they had
some very good reasons for doing so!]

When there are established economic grounds *specific* to you, or any
other grounds that fall outside the Charter, then a company is free to
tell you that your patrongage is not desired. If you were to go into a
restaurant and someone come over and pushed you around; and this were
to happen on several different occasions, then even if in every case
you'd just been "minding your own business", the establishment would
have every right to say, "We're sorry, but trouble seems to follow you
and it's upsetting our customers and is bad for our business, so we
don't you to come back."

The police understand this voluntary refusal of service well:  it's the
tactic the Winnipeg police have *requested* Winnipeg bars and
restaurants use with regards to known gang members (e.g., Hells
Angels).  The police passed around a list of names and pictures and
asked owners not to serve those people: even if those particular people
had never been in before, and weren't planning to give a hint of
trouble, the police want the owners to employ their right to refuse
service to -individuals-.

I am absolutely NOT suggesting that you have even the slightest linkage
to the Angels or similar: I'm showing that even the local peace and
justice people think it is perfectly fine for vendors to refuse service
to people even when those people have not violated any "contract
terms".

Vendors are not obligated to continue providing you service until you
break some obvious house rule: unless you have a contract with them
that says otherwise, they have wide lattitude about asking people to
take their business elsewhere. "I'm sorry, you remind our waitress
strongly of her brother who was killed by a mugger right in front of
her, and she gets badly shaken up every time you are in. She's a
valuable employee to us, and we don't want to lose her, so we ask that
you not come back." You don't have to have done anything "wrong": when
the vendor says "please just leave", then that's something the vendor has a
right to do, and you have no recourse other than to recommend to
others that they avoid the vendor.




To address a possible objection to my "never EVER", above:
yes, it is true to some extent that "The Press" has a level
of obligation to present balancing views. This is more at the level
of a Code of Ethics than any kind of law with respect to newspapers,
because you are always free to start your own competing newspaper
and to try to convince people to listen to you.

Radio is different under law because radio is a restricted medium with
a license offering exclusive access to a limited public resource and
unlicensed broadcasts being illegal outside of narrow bands.  But again
it isn't a matter of Charter Rights or the Human Rights Act:  instead
it's just that the government via the CRTC has made *regulations* (not
laws!) that it feels are in the best interest of the public.

Under the Code of Ethics of the Newspaper Council of Canada
[a voluntary organization that many smaller newspapers do not belong to!],
if you feel that someone is publishing inaccurate informations
or harmful viewpoints, the obligation of the publisher is really only
to provide you with just enough space in the Letters To The Editor
section to get across the bare bones of your contrary view. You could,
I suppose, interpret that as a requirement to carry your viewpoint
for "free", but notice that it is NOT a "right"; and notice
that they are allowed to edit the material provided the meaning is not
substantially changed; and notice that it is at best a one-time deal:
you get to say your piece *once* and after that you can be ignored
with respect to those arguments. So at most you get a little bit
of space to rebut what someone else has said, and that's the end of
the matter.

Usenet newsgroups are by no means a "limited public resource", so if
someone posts something you disagree with, then the most that the
vendor is obliged to do is to not block off the last *possible*
mechanism for you to post a short rebutal. If there are lots of other
vendors that can provide you with access to the same newsgroup, then
the vendor has no further obligation other than under any termination
clauses *specifically* set forth in their contract with you. When there
are multiple public vendors of the same "publication" resource then it
is well established that your Charter rights are in no way violated if
a particular vendor refuses service. Lawsuits against a vendor
on Rights grounds, with regards to lost communications opportunities,
just won't stick unless perhaps there is a monopoly situation.


What we are left with, legally, is a plain contract dispute.  And that
contract is (was) between *you* and the vendor, so except to the extent
that might be -specifically- stated in the contract, anything that the
vendor might or might not do with regards to other customers (who might
have the same or different contracts) has no relevance to your
dispute.  If the vendor choses to employ a contract term to terminate
the contract, and did not choose to employ the same contract term to
terminate the contracts of other customers, then you have no actionable
case with regards to the vendor treating you differently than it treats
others. [No actionable case, that is, unless you want to claim
discrimination on grounds prohibitted under the Charter, in which case
showing that they treated others differently would become fair
evidence.]

Basically, your contract with the vendor said "We can terminate your
contract for nearly any reason we feel like, and the decision is
*completely* up to us." And that's a perfectly valid contract term [in
the absence of an effective monopoly.] Under contract case law, the
time to object to such a clause was *before* starting the contract: you
could have asked the vendor to have those clauses modified or stricken
from the contract, and you were free to seek service with a competing
vendor if the first vendor would not agree to the modified terms. I
know for sure that some of the competition was willing to negotiate
with respect to similar contract terms, as I made a point of
investigating these kind of contract terms and was successful in having
several vendors modify their terms.

That's how contract law works: you have to pay attention to what you
are asked to sign, and if you don't like it, then you negotiate for
different terms. And if you read a contract and don't understand it,
then you are supposed to *ask* about it or consult to your legal
council BEFORE signing. "Let the buyer beware".

You signed a contract that gave full discretion to the other party, and
you got surprised when they then used that discretion. Likely you
should now treat what happened as a "Learning Experience" and move on.
--
   I wrote a hack in microcode,
   with a goto on each line,
   it runs as fast as Superman,
   but not quite every time!                 -- Dave Touretzky and Don Libes