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US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

arstechnica.com

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Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#451

Post by bippihippi1 »

cortesoft wrote: post #441
Glyptodon wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 million or more rule seems silly when that's the cost of ~10 stoplights and there are like 33 million businesses in the US. But it also seems ridiculous to skip since four people doing nothing but having a discussion about a new rule for 30 minutes across a good portion of those businesses is easily $100mil w/o them even having to lift a pinky besides.

Wait, a stoplight costs $10 million?

maybe that includes the software and hardware to run the stoplight, the salaries of the operators and maintenance etc and their admin staff, and the all the analysis to figure out when it should be red/green, all that stuff.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#452

Post by eddd-ddde »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #346

From the article >"While we certainly do not endorse the use of unfair and deceptive practices in negative option marketing, the procedural deficiencies of the Commission's rulemaking process are fatal here," As with a lot of judge rulings, and what they're always supposed to do, they ruled on what the actual law is and not just on what sounds good. >The FTC is required to conduct a preliminary regulatory analysis wh…

Of course anything that benefits the consumer will affect business revenue. That's the whole point!

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#453

Post by sssilver »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #426
marcusverus wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the ultra-wealthy be this administration's in-group? Trump won voters with under 100K income, while Harris won those over 100K.[0] Among high-net-worth individuals, Harris had a 10 point lead among those with $1-5mm in net worth and a ~2 point lead with those >$5m, according to the only polling I could find that specifically targeted high-net-worth individuals.[1] It's possible that the "ultra-wealthy" buck…

Trying to extrapolate the behavior of people with $100 billion from the behavior of people with $5 million is clearly nonsense. That's as big of a difference as between someone who makes $20 million per year and someone at the global extreme poverty line of $2.66 per day. Of the five richest people in the world, 80% were personally sitting right behind Trump at his inauguration.

More like “five richest people in the US according to their tax returns”. Nobody has counted the money of the Saudi Prince, the president of Russia, and a few dozen other characters like these.

Intuitively it feels like their wealth would eclipse Elon Musk.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#454

Post by Ekaros »

rafram wrote: post #247
aqme28 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I don't know if it's the FTC or FCC, but the moment I swap back to my American SIM card on trips to the US, I start getting spam texts that I cannot get rid of. Meanwhile I get absolutely zero of these with my European number.

People don't really use SMS in Europe, do they? WhatsApp spam is very pervasive, though.

I don't think I get any corporate communication from WhatsApp it is all SMS. For chatting WhatsApp is popular, but companies just send SMS.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#455

Post by justin66 »

cortesoft wrote: post #441
Glyptodon wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 million or more rule seems silly when that's the cost of ~10 stoplights and there are like 33 million businesses in the US. But it also seems ridiculous to skip since four people doing nothing but having a discussion about a new rule for 30 minutes across a good portion of those businesses is easily $100mil w/o them even having to lift a pinky besides.

Wait, a stoplight costs $10 million?

No, it absolutely does not.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#456

Post by sophacles »

zaphar wrote: post #353
sophacles wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who the fuck cares? Seriously - a corporation is a piece of paper that separates ownership from responsibility. It's already a fucking stupid idea - You're deeply liable if you can't keep you trees maintained, or your car under control, but if you can't control you company, it's no problem? We hand out these get-out-of-trouble cards to the type of useless trash that destroy lives (see pollution, workplace safety, dan…

Then get legislation through congress to change it. The courts are not there to fix legislation unless it is superseded by other higher legal authorities. Such as the constitution national or state. Current legislation gives them corporations rights. If you think that is wrong then the way to change it is to get people elected who can change that legislation.

One of the key steps to get Congress to change things is to first get support from voters for the change.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#457

Post by 0xTJ »

cortesoft wrote: post #441
Glyptodon wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 million or more rule seems silly when that's the cost of ~10 stoplights and there are like 33 million businesses in the US. But it also seems ridiculous to skip since four people doing nothing but having a discussion about a new rule for 30 minutes across a good portion of those businesses is easily $100mil w/o them even having to lift a pinky besides.

Wait, a stoplight costs $10 million?

No they don't. I'm not sure where they got that number from, but it's either wrong or being misrepresented (costs of entire infrastructure project confused with cost of lights). $10M is off by 1-3 orders of magnitude, depending on if you're counting installation of just one signal or a complete intersection.

It's conceivable for the installation of traffic lights in a remote place to be an expensive project if there's no power available there, but that's a much larger project than just a single traffic light.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#458

Post by privatelypublic »

db48x wrote: post #34
SoftTalker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah not a great article. "failed to follow required procedures under the FTC Act during the rule-making process" but no real details on what the procedures require that the commission did not do.

A trivial search will get you the court opinion itself https://ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/25/07/243137P.pdf >, so regardless of how bad the news article is you should not be uninformed. From the abstract: …the Commission failed to follow procedural requirements under § 22 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC Act”), 15 U.S.C. § 57b-3(b)(1) A more detailed explanation: The Commission’s formal rulemaking authority…

Thank you! I haven't a way with words to explain this in such a way. I saw that the article quoted the opinion as being based on "they didn't do a study for more than $100m impact, and I find that unlikely.

It'd be interesting/debatable if this was a "look, this was never legal- now we're just painting a bullseye on people doing it- the 100m impact isn't needed" And the judge went with 100m impact anyway. But that's beyond what I know or care to participate in past throwing it out there as a talking point.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#459

Post by t-writescode »

mindwork wrote: post #386
pjmlp wrote: post #140

The consumer protection laws are so bad the other side of Atlantic. Most European countries, have their own version of consumer protection agencies, usually any kind of complaint gets sorted out, even if takes a couple months. If they fail for whatever reason, there is still the top European one. Most of the time I read about FTC, it appears to side with the wrong guys.

At the same time European laws got whole internet littered with "Accept cookies" banners

The standard "Accept Cookies" banner is, give or take, malicious compliance to the EU's cookie laws. For actually required things, it doesn't *need* to be a banner. Companies tend to use a standardized, third-party-powered "follow the EU law" tool that they get the ugly cookie banner. And even that banner's malicious compliance is under attack now because it takes too many steps to opt out.

For things like sign-in, you barely have to mention the use of cookies on your website, because it's necessary. For things like items in an anonymous shopping cart, a simple "adding this item to the cart when you're not logged in will cause the item to be saved in a cookie so we can remember it later" would suffice.

I'm not a lawyer, but that's my understanding.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#460

Post by t-writescode »

crims0n wrote: post #436
okanat wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a persistent stupid take but many HN readers are also on the wrong side of the consumer protection. Those startups don't make money out of thin air eh? Once again. The full consumer protection would be banning behavior-based advertisement completely, which I would welcome. GDPR is striking a balance. It forces the companies to ask if they are going to collect data and use it in any other purpose from deliveri…

Plenty of well-meaning laws have unintended consequences. Intent does not absolve being the cause of the effect.

Sure, but the cookie law is a bad example of it.
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