Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

tosdr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 174 posts

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#131

Post by 1ncorrect »

byecomputer wrote: post #49
1ncorrect wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been chewing on an idea for a while around programmatically handling license agreements, basically each clause is checked atomically, with flow logic as necessary. You could have a personal profile, possibly multiple, of things you’ve decided to accept or reject beforehand, and the anomalous clauses would be presented as a list to review. Providers would have an incentive to reduce the friction by limiting scope…

So the idea is a form with a checklist?

That’s one major function it would provide if clauses were included which weren’t covered by the pre-populated profile.

A core component would be standardising clauses so they could be handled individually and automatically. If you’ve already answered the clause, and the parameters (time spans, quantities) were within the range you’d set, it would be ‘green’ and could be hidden. Clauses which you had answered but are outside your criteria would be ‘amber’, and unanswered clauses would be ‘red’. As you process more agreements, your can save answers to your profile so the process becomes more optimised over time.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#132

Post by JustinBack »

Daho0n wrote: post #126

>Yep, we use cookies as well and we have to show it to you as we are based in Germany, sorry folks! Following one law and breaking another by not having a No button (only a link to duckduckgo.com under "get my out of here"). Not sure I trust someone to explain me Terms if they don't understand it themselves.

Sorry for the confusion, the cookie notice was a fast implementation. Now, cookies will only be stored once you click the accept button. "No" will hide it for the on the current page.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#133

Post by Aeolun »

joekrill wrote: post #70
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…

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…

I think part of it is coming from a country where any ‘unreasonable’ or ‘unfair’ conditions will almost certainly be considered nonapplicable in court (if it ever came to that).

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#134

Post by Aeolun »

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…

> throwing caution to the wind

If people were regularly burned by these legal documents then maybe, but I expect that literally nobody or their friends ever had any issues, so most people will accept that that applies for them too.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#135

Post by dragonsngoblins »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #123
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…

When I went into sing my Mortgage Loan, the officer pointed at the X's and said "sign here, here, and initial here, here, and here" I then turned to page one and started reading. The conversation that ensued, where they tried to get me to sign without "wasting their time" was amazing. I get I'm unusual for wanted to read what I'm signing, but I can't have been the only one. I do suspect I was one of the rare ones tha…

A mortgage is a lot of money, how can so many people not be reading them?

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#136

Post by m463 »

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…

What about objecting and still participating?

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#137

Post by m463 »

WindyLakeReturn wrote: post #107
alexfromapex wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shou…

> 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.

Well then you should be bothered by lots of legal documents/terms of service, many of which say...

"blah blah blah. if you live in california you have specific rights"

A friend told me of a lawyer he knew that would cross out the binding arbitration clause in all legal documents he signed. In california you have the right to opt-out of binding arbitration.

So the last bit of many documents frequently nullifies other things above.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#138

Post by m463 »

dragonsngoblins wrote: post #135
banana_giraffe wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I went into sing my Mortgage Loan, the officer pointed at the X's and said "sign here, here, and initial here, here, and here" I then turned to page one and started reading. The conversation that ensued, where they tried to get me to sign without "wasting their time" was amazing. I get I'm unusual for wanted to read what I'm signing, but I can't have been the only one. I do suspect I was one of the rare ones tha…

A mortgage is a lot of money, how can so many people not be reading them?

They are worried they won't be lent the money and the purchase will fall though.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#139

Post by m463 »

hundchenkatze wrote: post #96
gorgoiler wrote: post #6

If a website knows I didn't really read a contract, can they claim I am bound by it? I like to hope that the time-spent-reading is logged somewhere. Should it come up in court, Website.com would be required to disclose their logs which would show that I spent all of 1.35s reading their terms and conditions, most of which was spent scrolling. Another puerile hack of mine is to sign a document with the name "I do not a…

Here's a case between Uber and a blind person [0]. TLDR: - Someone is suing Uber for discrimination because drivers didn't allow the person's guide dog in the car. - Uber's terms state users can't sue Uber and must go through Uber's arbitration process - Uber's terms were presented in the "By continuing you agree to these terms" fashion - Person claimed they never agreed to arbitration and that they should be allowed…

California allows you to opt-out of binding arbitration at the time of signing or for a period after signing.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#140

Post by WindyLakeReturn »

bigwavedave wrote: post #124
WindyLakeReturn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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's like a child signing a contract. I don't know if I'd go that far. There's a whole class of laws around protecting children (two quick examples here in the US: age of consent; being tried as a minor vs tried as an adult) because the reality is that, in general, children are easier than adults to exploit. I mean, I convinced my nephew over the holiday that eating all his broccoli was like doing extra credit for S…

Our current law makes a sharp divide between children and adults, but I think when you ignore the current law and instead look at the reasoning and the data we have, the comparison is pretty sound. The gap in knowledge and domain specific reasoning ability between the average child and adult is smaller than the gap between the average adult and a corporate team of lawyers. While I think that is already a sign the issue needs to be considered, we have corporations exploiting this knowledge gap to their advantage. There are also many countries have recognized this as a problem and have developed different attempted solutions, such as creating limits on what sort of contracts can be enforced.

So I do not see how the overall idea can be dismissed as nonsense.

Post reply on HN