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Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

tosdr.org

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Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#101

Post by still_grokking »

vlovich123 wrote: post #88
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why they’re non enforceable in a real court. If I put the rights to your inheritance in a tos no judge is actually going to enforce that, because no one would reasonably sign that away for access to a website. In reality only things which you would reasonably expect to be in a tos or privacy policy could be enforced, given 99% of users don’t read them, or understand them.

That sounds like how you wish the works worked vs how it does. Are you aware of a single court case where a judge dismissed it on those grounds?

I don't know about US law but at least in Germany it's really like pointed out.

There is a law governing TOS terms, and it says among other things that the TOS can't contain unexpected und unrelated terms.

So if you write for example into the TOS governing your website something like that every visitor owes you 1000 bucks that won't be enforceable.

The TOS related legislation is nothing new. It was there already in the analog age to prevent companies form tricking people into signing inappropriate contracts.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#102

Post by hnarn »

II2II wrote: post #18

On the first day of a university course, several hundred students asked to line up and sign a two page agreement in order to access computing resources necessary for the course. When my turn came, I asked where I could read it without holding up the entire line. They were shocked that anyone would ask such a question, though they provided me a space to read over the document. If blindly signing a contract one of the…

I was kind of hoping that this was going to end along the lines of “I was actually studying law and the professor then called us out on the importance of reading contracts that you sign, and proceeded to list all the ridiculous things we had just agreed to”.

Too bad.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#104

Post by johannes1234321 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #53
alsetmusic wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think time spent would matter if someone took the deliberate action of clicking “Accept.” It’s like arguing that you didn’t read a contract before you signed. You still signed. I’m not arguing in favor of TOS. I just don’t buy this. The “I do not agree,” method reminds me of the tactics of “sovereign citizens.” They try to game things via highly specific language. People think they can loophole the system, bu…

My take is that if one party to a contract does not have a reasonable expectation that the contract was read by the other party, the contract should be invalid. People need to know what they’re signing. Imagine if a celebrity was signing a bunch of autographs for fans, and someone surreptitiously stuck a contract under their hand. We can agree that wouldn’t be valid, right?

You deliberately chose not to read it. Why should you then be allowed to use the service AND claim not being bound by the terms?

(And yes, I think german law has the right principle there: clauses which are "unexpected" to an average consumer are invalid with consumers (different in B2B context), thus risk as consumer is low when blindly accepting)

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#105

Post by joshka »

absolutelyrad wrote: post #4

Thought experiment: can we have a standard TOS for centralized services? Building the next Facebook? Legally bind yourself that you'll always provide API access and this right cannot ever be taken away to the extent permitted by the law. Maybe we need a standardization for centralized service TOS like MIT/GPL etc are for OSS. So people can decide more easily which centralized services to use.

I was thinking something similar the other day, but rather than a fully standard TOS, where I get to is that we need standard atomic pieces of contracts and TOS docs. For instance in the language in the definitions part about who the customer is, who the business is should be {common:customer-is-you, common:business-is-mybusinessname} or a part that talks about not using other customer's login information. Etc. Why should we have to read every single line when it's mostly the same? DRY the TOS.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#106

Post by sizzle »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #79
joekrill wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely astounding to me how many folks blindly sign legal documents. Especially employment related. Whenever I've pushed back on an employment contract, NDA, or similar it's always met with sudden confusion - as though this has never happened before. In fairness, it's almost never met with negatively. But it shows that no one else has ever bothered to question it. And when I talk to colleagues I definitely g…

When I have pushed back on the same topic, it usually is met with negativity. I believe recruiting and hiring staff have some incentives to treat you like you’re crazy if you want special provisions or need clarification on complex terms. In my career, I’ve negotiated - a severance package in my offer letter from a company that said, “we don’t offer severance packages as a matter of policy.” - a sign on bonus from a…

How did you do this without scaring the hiring manager? Assuming the hiring manager has to vouch for you to their bosses to get the negotiated terms, you must have a very sought after skill set?

Or is this purely negotiating with HR and/or legal for contract terms concessions without hiring manager as it doesn't come from their budget?

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#107

Post by WindyLakeReturn »

alexfromapex wrote: post #44
II2II wrote: post #18

On the first day of a university course, several hundred students asked to line up and sign a two page agreement in order to access computing resources necessary for the course. When my turn came, I asked where I could read it without holding up the entire line. They were shocked that anyone would ask such a question, though they provided me a space to read over the document. If blindly signing a contract one of the…

I had a quiz in middle school where the end of the directions said to ignore everything and put down your pencil. Really wish all schools taught this.

I had a similar quiz. I never really liked them because it always bothered me why I was expected to follow the last instruction first, regardless of what it said. Even if it said to ignore the previous instructions, I would only be following it once I reached it, which would mean all other instructions had been followed. Nothing in the initial rules that said to read all instructions gave any indication that one should pick and choose which instructions to follow or that you should do them in reverse order.

Perhaps this was the moment when I first started the path to being a programmer.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#108

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

mech422 wrote: post #86
CodeGlitch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem arises especially when the document is written in legalese. I also feel like I'm not really qualified to understand these documents - they are generally written for people who have the appropriate qualifications. For example when buying a property in the UK, the soliciter will be the one parses the legal documents. It's crazy to think that normal people are expected to fully understand these, and it doesn…

I feel this is one of the major problems with most TOSs... You generally don't have a lawyer around to explain every TOS you come across, so people ignore them and hope for the best. Hmm - I wonder if there would be a niche for a website that explains specific, common TOSs in easy to understand terms?

Tbh I don't find tos very hard to understand. They are akin to programming for the law. And generally speaking they just tell you what you should already know about the terms under which you use the service, so that you can't sue the service for absurd things.

For the sake of demonstration, I just went and read the first seven sections of Personal Capital's TOU. Not a single surprise in there, so far. To give one example, section 5 just says that for the sake of displaying the information you are agreeing that personal capital can retrieve on your behalf, personal capital has your authorization to act legally on your behalf. This is to prevent some idiot from suing them for fetching account info that said idiot inputted into personal capital. Another section says, hey, we aren't responsible for mistakes you make with your investments, even if you base your decisions on the information we show to you. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing as well -- you literally could not run a service like this otherwise.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#109

Post by WindyLakeReturn »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #104
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take is that if one party to a contract does not have a reasonable expectation that the contract was read by the other party, the contract should be invalid. People need to know what they’re signing. Imagine if a celebrity was signing a bunch of autographs for fans, and someone surreptitiously stuck a contract under their hand. We can agree that wouldn’t be valid, right?

You deliberately chose not to read it. Why should you then be allowed to use the service AND claim not being bound by the terms? (And yes, I think german law has the right principle there: clauses which are "unexpected" to an average consumer are invalid with consumers (different in B2B context), thus risk as consumer is low when blindly accepting)

>Why should you then be allowed to use the service AND claim not being bound by the terms?

It is like a child signing a contract. The child isn't bound to it, but the other party is. In this case, a corporation attempted to use an extreme disparity in knowledge and power to take advantage of a much weaker party. The disparity is larger than that between an average adult and an average child. As a consequence of this, it seems just as fair as in the case of contracts signed by children.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#110

Post by throwaway2048 »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #80
joekrill wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely astounding to me how many folks blindly sign legal documents. Especially employment related. Whenever I've pushed back on an employment contract, NDA, or similar it's always met with sudden confusion - as though this has never happened before. In fairness, it's almost never met with negatively. But it shows that no one else has ever bothered to question it. And when I talk to colleagues I definitely g…

The problem arises especially when the document is written in legalese. I also feel like I'm not really qualified to understand these documents - they are generally written for people who have the appropriate qualifications. For example when buying a property in the UK, the soliciter will be the one parses the legal documents. It's crazy to think that normal people are expected to fully understand these, and it doesn…

Reminds me of a recent change in the privacy policy of my bank, it spends pages and pages talking about "getting my consent to use my private information" in all sorts of contexts strongly implying they will ask me before selling off my information, then later, in a different part it defines my "usage of the service" as consent for them to use said info.
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