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Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

tosdr.org

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Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#151

Post by _v7gu »

nerdponx wrote: post #25
stunt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as long as they make it a required step. It's your fault if you choose to not read it.

I am curious if there is any legal doctrine on this in any part of the world.

In Turkey the precedent is that not only ToS'es and any kind of pre-written contracts have to be fair by law (ie punitive measures for the customer while there is none for the firm will simply be thrown out by the court) and not include any unexpected conditions. Some time ago, the higher court ruled in favor of a guy who simply claimed he didn't read the long contract and the unexpected conditions shouldn't have been enforceable.

Also all consumer disputes below a certain amount have to be resolved by consumer referees, so no binding arbitration clauses here either.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#152

Post by Wowfunhappy »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #148
gorgoiler wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious contracts are witnessed or, better, notarised. These witnesses attest to the good faith involved in the signing ceremony. Accept button clicking is not witnessed. Any contract so-signed should be good for all of $10 worth of dispute. No more.

Assuming that became a law: I now need to get witnesses to me checking a box to use some software? What’s to stop me from just being my own witness under a fake name? I get the explosion of TOS contracts are stupid and need to be fixed, but we can’t just be crazy with fixing it.

Why should you need to sign a TOS in order to use some consumer software? No, what would happen is TOS's would go away for everything but high-level professional software.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#153

Post by aflag »

icedchai wrote: post #92
aflag wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to access the service you need to register. The registration form would not allow you to register without accepting it. They only need to prove that you indeed access the service. That doesn't seem too hard to prove for most services out there, or at least the most popular ones.

I think you missed the point. They can't prove it was him actually filling out the registration form, only someone from some IP address at a specific time. They can't prove the person who logs in using that registered username/password is the same one that accepted the TOS. ToSes are mostly useless. They generally contain a line that indicates the terms can change at any time and you accept them by continuing to use…

I guess you'll need to convince the judge that there's reasonable doubt that you did not create the Facebook account that you use and that you were unaware of the ToS and not acting in bad faith. Not saying it's impossible, but it's not as difficult to enforce the ToS as it has been suggested. They are certainly not useless.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#154

Post by icedchai »

aflag wrote: post #153
icedchai wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point. They can't prove it was him actually filling out the registration form, only someone from some IP address at a specific time. They can't prove the person who logs in using that registered username/password is the same one that accepted the TOS. ToSes are mostly useless. They generally contain a line that indicates the terms can change at any time and you accept them by continuing to use…

I guess you'll need to convince the judge that there's reasonable doubt that you did not create the Facebook account that you use and that you were unaware of the ToS and not acting in bad faith. Not saying it's impossible, but it's not as difficult to enforce the ToS as it has been suggested. They are certainly not useless.

They are useless in that reading them is pointless since they can be modified and/or enforced arbitrarily. If you violate the ToS, the site might kick you off. If you do something the site doesn't like, they can change the ToS and kick you off anyway.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#155

Post by joekrill »

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…

Well that's when you get a lawyer to review it for you. I realize there is a cost involved here, but when you're talking about something like this it's usually well worth it - if only to know exactly what you are agreeing to.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#156

Post by colejohnson66 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #152
colejohnson66 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that became a law: I now need to get witnesses to me checking a box to use some software? What’s to stop me from just being my own witness under a fake name? I get the explosion of TOS contracts are stupid and need to be fixed, but we can’t just be crazy with fixing it.

Why should you need to sign a TOS in order to use some consumer software? No, what would happen is TOS's would go away for everything but high-level professional software.

Websites with accounts all have TOS because they need some legal recourse to boot you from their platform. The TOS lays out what you are allowed to do on the site (in addition to other things). That’s not changing no matter what you (or I) wish would happen without a massive change in how the legal system works in America.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#157

Post by joshka »

joshka wrote: post #105
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 s…

Looks like someone actually started doing some of this already: is https://stonecutters.law/

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#158

Post by lcall »

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…

I do the same kinds of things, but sometimes it helps warn them in a friendly way before scheduling the appointment. :) Often, I try to request the papers etc in advance, to make it easier on all of us, then I can take my time, ask questions, etc.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#159

Post by lcall »

hnarn wrote: post #102
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.

I knew a pleasant fellow, a FLOSS maintainer somewhat well known at least in his niche, who provided wifi to neighbors, but they had to click through an agreement first. Only one read it. Buried in the text, experimentally, it said they had to give him all their possessions upon request. (He isn't the type to do it, but wanted to know who read it.)

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#160

Post by lcall »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #27
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…

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.

IANAL, but it seems like I have read multiple times (incl. on HN discussions, maybe by a lawyer) that such agreements are in fact enforceable in real courts, at least in the USA. I read many years ago that in the 9th circuit one provision was struck down, that the user was bound by any changes posted online w/o notice, but I don't know the status of that anywhere now.
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