A reader has pointed out a remarkable tale recently aired by WCBS-TV in New York. Consumer affairs reporter Arnold Diaz discovered a Queens woman who had made the mistake of using the services of an outfit called Parkingticket.com to try to get a $115 parking ticket dismissed. Not only was the ticket not dismissed, but she was informed by Parkingticket.com that they were going to charge her $5,000 for violating their terms and conditions.

The woman's sin had apparently been removing one sentence from the letter that Parkingticket.com had instructed her to write the traffic bureau, which she had removed because the statement was untrue. While it was understandable that she didn't want to send the authorities a letter with a lie in it, modifying the letter certainly would seem to violate this term in the Parkingticket.com license:

20. Unauthorized use. Customer agrees not to copy, edit or modify any material prepared by parkingticket.com for any use other than to submit that paperwork to the respective municipality for the dismissal of a parking ticket for which Customer has paid parkingticket.com in advance. Should Customer copy, edit, modify or otherwise alter paperwork prepared by parkingticket.com for their benefit or the benefit of any other related or unrelated third party and uses that paperwork, or a facsimile thereof, for the purposes of fighting a parking ticket for which they have not paid parkingticket.com, Customer agrees such use would constitute an unauthorized use of parkingticket.com's services. Customer further agrees that such unauthorized use of parkingticket.com's services will be billable and chargeable at a fee of no less than five thousand dollars per occurrence.

Not only was Parkingticket.com charging her credit card $5,000, but the company threatened to bring criminal charges against her if she filed a credit card dispute with her bank. Exactly what crime they would accuse her of committing isn't entirely clear from the story, although another provision in the license hints that editing their materials is also a copyright violation:

22. Copyright and Intellectual Property Clause. Customer acknowledges and agrees that all materials prepared by parkingticket.com are the intellectual property of parkingticket.com. Customer further agrees not to copy, edit or otherwise use such property for any purpose whatsoever without express, written and signed authorization by an Officer of parkingticket.com. Should Customer use such intellectual property without such written consent as described above then Customer agrees that parkingticket.com will be entitled to collect a fee from Customer for a minimum of $5,000.00 for each unauthorized use. In such an event, Customer specifically authorizes parkingticket.com to charge Customers credit or debit card or checking account for such fees. Should Customer contest such fees Customer agrees that it will compensate parkingticket.com for reasonable legal fees and related court courts to bring an action to collect such fees and to obtain an injunction by any court of competent jurisdiction against Customer's use of parkingticket.com materials.

While Parkingticket.com beat a hasty retreat once Diaz got involved, the story is one that demonstrates just how far some operations are willing to push their sneakwrap terms. But the truly sad fact is that there is no longer any guarantee that they can't get away with it. Every day brings more evidence of how our politicians want to eliminate consumer rights in the name of intellectual property protection, and how our judges are enforcing fine print disclaimers that would have been laughed out of court not long ago. And there is nothing at all funny about that.