171–180 of 191 posts
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No, that's nonsense. I don't know if there's a special exemption in the US but contracts and policies can be and absolutely are under copyright. Individual clauses might not be but the contract in its entirety likely meets the threshold of originality required for it to not simply be considered a plain collection of facts. The similarity between standard contracts does make it harder to demonstrate a copyright violat…
So, you’re saying only one company in the history of the world can install garages, or every company that wants to install garages must pay that company or ensure that it’s contracts are distinctly different so they don’t get sued? That sounds absurd. What country is this?
No form of intellectual property applies to “in the history of the world” — all IPs expire their monopoly protections after a period of time.
And yes, contracts must be distinctly different from copyrighted contracts. [1] Just because computers and the internet allow copy-paste of content with no effort does not mean it is necessarily legal.
[1] https://www.upcounsel.com/are-contracts-copyrighted#using-so...
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VisualPing already does this: https://visualping.io/blog/how-to-monitor-changes-in-terms-a... Docacracy did it a decade ago, but closed shop. The problem isn’t the tech — it’s coming up with a business model that pays for the system and upkeep. As much as people give lip service about privacy, they sure don’t throw money at lobbying efforts that protect their rights in those areas.
Why does such a thing need to be a business to begin with? Just host a github or expose this functionality on wikipedia.
People are too eager to expect some other person to invest their own time and effort in an open source project without considering the consequences of such an expectation.
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So, you’re saying only one company in the history of the world can install garages, or every company that wants to install garages must pay that company or ensure that it’s contracts are distinctly different so they don’t get sued? That sounds absurd. What country is this?
That’s not what your parent said and you jumped a lot of logical steps to get where you did. No form of intellectual property applies to “in the history of the world” — all IPs expire their monopoly protections after a period of time. And yes, contracts must be distinctly different from copyrighted contracts. [1] Just because computers and the internet allow copy-paste of content with no effort does not mean it is ne…
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No one said it had to be a business. They were making the point that its hard to keep something like that running and maintained for free.
Crowdsource it. Something like Wikipedia might work.
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I think the spirt of the statement still works if you move the incompetence up when level so something along the lines of ~"It is spectacular how incompetent that the law allows confused/convoluted communication to act as protection to the company hired the lawyers to produce said communication." It seems like society would be better off if the law were set up to where only when clear communication has happened that…
It wouldn’t be much better if the language were plain and simple. “We can do what we want with your data and you can’t sue us under any circumstances resulting from your use of the service, and you disclaim all rights to the maximum extent permissible by your local consumer laws” wouldn’t be any better for you. The problem is contracts of adhesion are inherently unconscionable , as are contracts that require signing…
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Hard is not impossible, and if you want to put strange moral constraints on who you work for, that's your cross to bear.
Interesting. So riddle me this. Microsoft goes to great lengths to court primary education systems to instill themselves as the "taught software stack". You say no one has any right to Microsoft's products... Then does that not run into somewhat of a public contradiction when public education systems shove it down students throats? In point of fact, it sounds like the publically taught option should be exclusively GP…
If you want to nationalize Microsoft, petition your congressperson to do so.
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It wouldn’t be much better if the language were plain and simple. “We can do what we want with your data and you can’t sue us under any circumstances resulting from your use of the service, and you disclaim all rights to the maximum extent permissible by your local consumer laws” wouldn’t be any better for you. The problem is contracts of adhesion are inherently unconscionable , as are contracts that require signing…
I agree there would still be problems, but it would be obvious what is going on and would allow services to compete on those terms. Right now there is no competition on those terms and no real reason to try since the general consumer assume that TOS and similar are pointless hard to read and probably powerless anyway so why bother.
People primarily buy on cost, they’ll buy whatever is $10 cheaper. And in a truly efficient market this would be passed along to the consumer and people would buy the one that’s cheaper with worse tos - just like people buy ad-loaded smart tvs instead of a premium one with no telemetry or smarts or a tos attached.
Regulation is the only thing that’s gonna get you there. Contracts of adhesion are not gonna go away on their own unless you outlaw them. The market isn’t efficient like that, even if it were the efficient scenario is likely there one favoring cheapness and contracts of adhesion over consumer friendly behavior, and the behavior is unconscionable anyway. Just outlaw it.
The libertarian take on regulation is wrong, there’s a reason the EU does its consumer regulation with regulations and not with labeling. And in this case it’s actually contract law that is being warped by anticompetitive participants so you’d really think even the libertarians would be on board. A contract without consideration is not a contract, literally. And “we’re not going to let you use the good/service that you already paid for” is not a consideration, it’s blackmail and strongarm robbery.
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What I do is spot check, i.e. open an agreement, pick two or three spots at random, and do my best to read and understand those. My hope is if just 1000 people did that, they’d be able to collectively spot unexpected/unacceptable terms and make them public.
and what if you find something? tweet into the void?
If it’s some other piece of software, you can go to a package repository such as the AUR [1] or Chocolatey [2], and leave a comment for the package even if it’s non-free.
If it’s a pure SaaS, there’s little you can do though, apart from tweeting, word-of-mouth, or Google reviews.