Is your landlord after your electronics?

But what if you use it in the corridor?

(Credit: Jason Cipriani/CNET)

Sometimes, readers send me things to incite an emotion or two.

Sometimes it's laughter. Sometimes it's nausea. Sometimes, though, it's mere bafflement.

An example of this last one came from a reader in Houston. She sent me a lease agreement created by a company called Fine Arts Apartments.

She asked me to focus on one particular clause: "No use of electronics in common areas."

This seemed so peculiarly draconian that I wondered how it might have come about.

Did it really mean that you couldn't walk along the corridors of one of Fine Arts Apartments' buildings listening to Beethoven or Nirvana on your iPod? Did it mean you couldn't take pictures of its no doubt pristine paintwork with your Samsung Galaxy S3?

Then I wondered about what sort of mind might have written these words, which appear to threaten that if you so much as whip your iPad out in common parts, you could be breaking the terms of your lease.

Reaching bravely for my electronics, I contacted Arne Haarhaus, who represents the management of Fine Arts Apartments.

I wondered what he had against electronics. I wondered what would happen if there had been an emergency and someone had whipped out their cell phone to, for example, warn of a hir... [Read more]