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The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

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Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#81

Post by some_guy_there »

amarkov wrote: post #59
dvdhnt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. The terms and conditions, or some offering of them, should be available in the same way that quick start or full guides are - in a form that adds to the usability of the service. E.g. "when you upload a photo, ____ owns the photo, for _____ period, and may do a, b, c, and d with it"

The problem is that legal terminology doesn't always match conventional descriptions of what's happening. Copyright is actually a perfect example of this. In order to send my photo over the Internet to other people who want to view it, you need much more than the legal right to display my picture. Sending a picture over the Internet involves copying, distributing, and sublicensing the image countless numbers of times…

> When you upload pictures, you have to give us the right to make as many copies of the pictures as we want, modify them however we'd like, and send those copies to whoever we want anywhere in the world.

But isn't it precisely what the legalese means? I mean, unless otherwise restrict by some law other than the copyright laws, Imgur can use those images for anything. The statement does not limits the use to "reasonable business activities". Why will it be severely misleading to write it that way?

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#82

Post by solomatov »

jstarfish wrote: post #79
solomatov wrote: post #67

IMO, this is a question of consumer protection. It's ok to provide complicated contracts to corporations who can afford to hire lawyers, but it's not ok to do so with consumers. If we make a requirement that for consumer products, contract should be now longer than 1 page written in a language understandable by 10 year old, it will solve problem.

I like the elevator pitch approach. If you can't explain your T&S in as many words as it takes to explain your product, one or the other needs to be revised.

It sounds good in theory, but in practice there're aspect which prevents it from being applicable. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=16886176&goto=threads%...

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#83

Post by Firadeoclus »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #24

Disclaimer: I hate complex / abusive T&C's, and I'm keen to see them abolished. But... It seems to me like we as a public are blaming corporations for our failures. As adults we're responsible for what contracts we enter into, except in cases of coercion. 99% of us were stupid enough to state that we accepted terms that we didn't even read. Especially in cases where the product/service was purely optional (Netflix, C…

I would say accepting that we are flawed agents is pretty much the point.

If people are, in fact, acting stupid some of the time, prone to fall for certain persuasion tactics and subject to biases and common fallacies, then maybe a rule such as "as adults we're responsible for what contracts we enter into, except in cases of coercion" simply doesn't cut it.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#84

Post by golergka »

mooneater wrote: post #47

True of legalese in contracts, but also Law in general has multiplied like Gremlins. Hammurabi's code of laws, was written in common language, and was brief enough every subject could understand them. It makes no sense that we should be subject to a volume of law that we could never even read, let alone understand. Musk is correct in insisting that laws should expire, and it should be easier to remove a law than add…

This comment could be made about software and programmers and make exactly as much sense.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#85

Post by mieseratte »

kbenson wrote: post #72
mooneater wrote: post #47

True of legalese in contracts, but also Law in general has multiplied like Gremlins. Hammurabi's code of laws, was written in common language, and was brief enough every subject could understand them. It makes no sense that we should be subject to a volume of law that we could never even read, let alone understand. Musk is correct in insisting that laws should expire, and it should be easier to remove a law than add…

Do you think allowing programs to be specified in plain English is a good idea? We have "legalese" for the same reason we have programming languages. Terms have specific, sometimes slightly different or more narrow meanings to promote better understanding of intent in languages meant to specify a set of rules. Specifying laws in "plain English" makes about as much sense to me as programming in English. You'll quickly…

> Do you think allowing programs to be specified in plain English is a good idea?

The difference is that one is expected to consent and be beholden to something they could not reasonably understand without paying a large amount of money to a specialist.

That I write my code in brainfuck is of no consequence to someone, unless that brainfuck is potentially going to incarcerate them.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#86

Post by notabee »

xoa wrote: post #34

At a really high, generalized level (with contract law being a subset), I think the legal system (and in many ways society in general) has yet to really get a grasp on the concept of resource exhaustion attacks. We all know about DDOS as it applies to digital systems, but individual humans and the social systems we make also all have actual, hard limits on how much information we can possibly process, store, and comm…

The really scary part is that any form of democracy itself rests on a similar assumption. Time, human attention, and learning capacity are all finite and no longer map well at all to an abstract, unbound ideal of civic responsibility or awareness. Other countries seem to interpret contract law differently as well. https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treat...

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#87

Post by dsfyu404ed »

nordsieck wrote: post #76
Letmesleep69 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes no sense that we should be subject to a volume of law that we could never even read, let alone understand Why does that not make sense? The law must cover everything from "dont kill certain species" to "don't commit this very specific type of fraud". Society is so advanced we need more laws. Of course Hamurabi's code was short because it didn't need to stop investment bankers committing fraud or voting law…

The garbage part is not that there is a large volume of law, but that the law is made even larger implicitly through a system of historical precedent without being explicitly updated to reflect those changes. As an easy example, the commerce clause in the US constitution has come to mean something that no layman would ascribe to it.

>As an easy example, the commerce clause in the US constitution has come to mean something that no layman would ascribe to it.

Another easy example in the opposite direction is how case law has substantially diluted the meaning of words like "infringe", "unreasonable" and "excessive" in amendments 2^1, 2^2 and 2^3.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#88

Post by kbenson »

mattferderer wrote: post #71

Startup Idea - An AI language translator for legal language to English. It could convert a 20+ page contract to a 1 page bullet list. Maybe this has already been done or does the language of law require quantum computing?

An interesting idea, but complicated by the fact that as often as not the terms expressed are affected by the domain and locale.

For example, for every employment contract that contains a non-compete in California, there is relevant California state law that means it's probably unenforceable. What do you show for that?

Additionally, new case law is being made all the time. Laws aren't static, they are added to, amended or removed through legislature and case law. To my understanding, the case law changes are also more about the specific circumstances of the case as well, so may apply narrowly or widely, depending on ruling. And may be appealed.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#89

Post by grabeh »

I would make a few points:

- I don't think legalese is the issue. Even if you wrote terms in plain English they would still be at a similar length if you wanted to capture the same content of the base terms, and people would still not read them. I don't think there is a high proportion of people who are put off by legalese but would read terms if they were in plain English

- the article has a GDPR bent. Certainly when it comes to uses of personal data, that should form a bigger part of the sign-up experience and be separated out from the main terms.

- when you are looking at general terms & conditions outside of privacy, European consumer law and I imagine most consumer law protects customers from unreasonable actions by corporations toward consumers. It allows the user to assume the company will behave reasonably towards the consumer, and is arguably the appropriate remedy to cure the issue of over-long terms & conditions.

- There is of course limited scope to this and there will be a range of transactions where you are not acting as a consumer and are expected to thoroughly understand the full implications of the transaction you enter into.

- the reckoning in the article is already one partially addressed by the above steps at least in the European Union around consumer law protections, and requirements on the data protection side to call out data uses in the sign-up process rather than bury them in the terms.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#90

Post by haZard_OS »

jgh wrote: post #6

Why is obfuscating the intentions of a document in dense language most people can't properly understand a thing that's allowed to be upheld? They might as well write the damn things in Esperanto for all they're worth to most of the folks who click agree.

Mildly pedantic complaint: Esperanto is actually easier to learn than many other languages so the analogy doesn't work.

  But I get what you mean.
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