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The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

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211–220 of 255 posts

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#211
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When exactly did it enter the public consciousness that drunk people are unable to give consent? I feel if this is true, there are many drunken hookups that become questionable. I'm in my mid-30s, and I feel this concept wasn't really a thing in my clubbing days.

You've never heard "alcohol is the most common date rape drug?"

nope, or at least I didn't back in my drinking days. it was just normal for people to get wasted and hook up. does that not happen anymore?

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#212
post #164
post #160

Yes. There are two separate issues here, I think. 1. When corporations "negotiate" with consumers, this is an abuse of the legal system. Contract law was conceived for situations where both parties have at least some amount of negotiating power. Handing a consumer some long contract written by a set of well-paid lawyers, and asking them to sign it or walk away from any benefit from a product, is not the kind of contr…

One other comment for non-lawyers here: When two companies negotiate a contract, typically what happens is this. One team of lawyers drafts the contract. They send it to the other lawyers. Both business teams consult their lawyers, and the lawyers update the contract with their desired changes. Then the first company comments on desired changes and they negotiate. The result, after perhaps many rounds of negotiation,…

Are you an attorney?

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#213

The basic law relating to online terms and conditions has been stable for some years now and should remain so. It certainly is not headed for a "reckoning." When private parties transact business in a free society, the law of contracts steps in to provide rules enabling them to do so in a well-defined and orderly manner. Contract law has some fundamental principles that anchor it and, beyond those, has a vast number…

No offense, the length of your comment reads like a Terms of Service Contract.

Was a time long, thoughtful, informed comments on this site garnered plaudits rather than gripes. Considering this is one of the only informed, reality-based comment in the entire thread, I think it’s best to engage with and appreciate it, rather than making easy jokes.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#214

The basic law relating to online terms and conditions has been stable for some years now and should remain so. It certainly is not headed for a "reckoning." When private parties transact business in a free society, the law of contracts steps in to provide rules enabling them to do so in a well-defined and orderly manner. Contract law has some fundamental principles that anchor it and, beyond those, has a vast number…

Its beyond even being a legal fiction in many situations. There is no option for most people when it comes to certain terms and conditions.

Take phones for instance. You cannot live in modern society without a phone. You will not be able to get a phone, without agreeing to one of these long terms and conditions. They come from landline providers, they come from cell phone providers, they come packaged in the box in the cell phone from prepaid phone sellers.

How is saying, you're cut off from society or you can agree to a contract designed in a way that you have no reasonable chance of actually understanding it, something we want for society?

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#215
post #164
post #160

Yes. There are two separate issues here, I think. 1. When corporations "negotiate" with consumers, this is an abuse of the legal system. Contract law was conceived for situations where both parties have at least some amount of negotiating power. Handing a consumer some long contract written by a set of well-paid lawyers, and asking them to sign it or walk away from any benefit from a product, is not the kind of contr…

One other comment for non-lawyers here: When two companies negotiate a contract, typically what happens is this. One team of lawyers drafts the contract. They send it to the other lawyers. Both business teams consult their lawyers, and the lawyers update the contract with their desired changes. Then the first company comments on desired changes and they negotiate. The result, after perhaps many rounds of negotiation,…

What you're describing is just an adhesion contract, and it doesn't happen only with consumers. For instance, around here the supermarkets have a lot of bargaining power over their suppliers, and make use of rather lopsided adhesion contracts (e.g. the supermarket decides whether, how much, and for how long to discount the product and the supplier pays for the discount).

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#216

The basic law relating to online terms and conditions has been stable for some years now and should remain so. It certainly is not headed for a "reckoning." When private parties transact business in a free society, the law of contracts steps in to provide rules enabling them to do so in a well-defined and orderly manner. Contract law has some fundamental principles that anchor it and, beyond those, has a vast number…

Plain English requirements for financial services (in the UK, not uncommon elsewhere) are a pretty decent example of why you're wrong. In those scenarios, the bar is moved up a notch to informed consent . Parties must know exactly what they stand to lose. A fair explanation of how your data could be leveraged against you should be a requirement because users don't understand this currently.

No matter how plain the language is, it cannot benefit someone who doesn’t read it. You may argue that the lack of plain language in T&C causes the lack of reading. But there’s a natural experiment here in the form of those same U.K. financial services terms you mentioned. Do you honestly believe that a large fraction of U.K. financial services consumers are informed about the terms of financial services they are consuming? I have no data here, but the concept beggars belief. Even if they are ten times as informed as American consumers of internet services, that would mean order 1% of consumers had read the terms, as opposed to 0.1% if people reading web T&Cs.

Even that strikes me as very unlikely, just examining my internal estimates how likely I’d be to read terms and conditions if they were in plain language. I don’t think the impenetrability of the language is the main barrier to reading T&Cs. The main barrier is that there is little on the line, and, moreover, I can already guess approximately what the T&Cs are going to say.

This is just a gut reaction. If you have some data to show that U.K. consumers are significantly more informed based on these plain language requirements, I’m happy to recant.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#217
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you would be hard-pressed to find a layman who, when presented with the commerce clause, replied that he had inferred the Dormant Clause [0] or Civil Rights Act [1] from it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 - "... principally its power to regulate interstate commerce"

I dunno. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Commerce among the states is Congress's domain, so state laws can't unduly interfere.

Its also been interpreted by the courts to mean that you cannot grow crops you consume yourself, because you would have purchased the crops otherwise and are affecting interstate commerce.

Whether or not you agree with that interpretation, it would take some willful ignorance to say that the plain text reading of regulating interstate commerce means you can regulate all commerce because you might have bought something from someone otherwise

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#218
post #214

The basic law relating to online terms and conditions has been stable for some years now and should remain so. It certainly is not headed for a "reckoning." When private parties transact business in a free society, the law of contracts steps in to provide rules enabling them to do so in a well-defined and orderly manner. Contract law has some fundamental principles that anchor it and, beyond those, has a vast number…

Its beyond even being a legal fiction in many situations. There is no option for most people when it comes to certain terms and conditions. Take phones for instance. You cannot live in modern society without a phone. You will not be able to get a phone, without agreeing to one of these long terms and conditions. They come from landline providers, they come from cell phone providers, they come packaged in the box in t…

For practical purposes, you can’t secure a dwelling without signing a long, complicated contract (be it a lease or a mortgage note). Yet dwelling is a necessity, even more so than a phone. And, in these contracts, so much more is on the line. According to your argument, you should not have to be bound by the terms of these agreements. You may indeed believe that, but I hope you can see how much of our society is based on the assumption that these agreements have force, and how far we are from moving to a state where they do not. You may wish it were otherwise, but there is essentially no chance of that change being enacted in the foreseeable future.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#219

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…

> Law in general has multiplied It's no surprise reading the comments here and elsewhere these days. The media helps build a furor amongst people, and people believe there is no other choice but to use the heavy hand of the government to solve their issues. Many times it's done without alternatives attempted first with the proponents criticizing those against a law as against its intentions. We see it with the Patrio…

The power of corporations is at this point like a smaller government with some companies wielding more power than smaller nation states. We are currently in an upswing of corporations extracting more and more money out of people and trying to control them more and more. What are people supposed to do? Wait for companies to just change out of the goodness of their hearts? You cant even talk with your wallet anymore when many practices that are anti consumer, such as tracking every bit of data about you and selling it to anyone, are industry wide practices, couple with the fact that the larger corporations are inching closer and closer to the same level of monopoly power as the robber barons 100+ years ago.

Government overreach is bad, and the government is frequently a bad actor itself, but at least if they are trying to cancel out corporations power we end up with both groups hobbling themselves a bit

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#220
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its beyond even being a legal fiction in many situations. There is no option for most people when it comes to certain terms and conditions. Take phones for instance. You cannot live in modern society without a phone. You will not be able to get a phone, without agreeing to one of these long terms and conditions. They come from landline providers, they come from cell phone providers, they come packaged in the box in t…

For practical purposes, you can’t secure a dwelling without signing a long, complicated contract (be it a lease or a mortgage note). Yet dwelling is a necessity, even more so than a phone. And, in these contracts, so much more is on the line. According to your argument, you should not have to be bound by the terms of these agreements. You may indeed believe that, but I hope you can see how much of our society is base…

My mortgage is easier to understand than any of my software licences.

Just sayin’

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