Live data from Hacker News

US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov

151–160 of 458 posts

Re: US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why should a government prohibit private parties from agreeing to anything other than those 3 things? because ToS have been long used to demand unreasonable things and threaten people with expensive lawsuits. The advantage of companies losing bullying power significantly outweighs the disadvantage of less business freedom ToS are normally "contracts" (hard to even call them that) between a large corporation with ver…

> because ToS have been long used to demand unreasonable things and threaten people with expensive lawsuits. The advantage of companies losing bullying power significantly outweighs the disadvantage of less business freedom Why those in particular though? The criminal law one sure that's a part of contract law already. Why the others? Why not different ones? It was just asserted that those were reasonable and no othe…

The original comment asserted that there are “probably” a finite list of reasonable things everyone could agree on. The examples were parenthetical and surely not meant to be the last word.

The point they were making (rightly or wrongly) seems to be that contract law just isn’t the right way of managing consumer-business relationships. I suspect that actually meshes with the intuitions of a broad swath of the population, who want a reliable, predictable, consistent, and consumer-beneficial set of norms and laws around all consumption so that it is easy to manage and understand when you are departing from the norm and to be able to confidently conduct a public life knowing that your purchases are not subjecting you to any surprising gotchas other than having lost the money and having acquired a product.

You could take this line of thought charitably in another direction to assert that “unusual” agreements are presumed unenforceable but not that there are no legal mechanisms for adding additional clauses.

Re: US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

#152
And courts keep wondering why commoners lose respect for the law. I know a judge and had a couple of really interesting conversations with him. We agreed on lots of things but there was one item that stood out for me that made a massive difference in interpretation: to him the map was the territory, he saw the law as the thing that made the world, not the other way around. I always found that to be extremely interesting in that it explains why some of those decisions come across so completely tone deaf. On paper it may all look like it makes sense but in the real world it leads to bonkers effects.

Re: US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

#153

IMHO the problem is allowing changes to terms and conditions for existing contracts. If I have a contract with a company, that contract was made under existing T&C. The company should not be able to change those conditions without my explicit permission. Denying me service if I disagree should not be a valid option. I get this periodically on our overly-computerized car: Here are new T&C, click yes to agree. You can…

The other side of this is that companies do want to change their T&C from time to time, so what do they do, force you to quit and then sign up again? That adds a lot of friction. Or do they tag things and say "Customer X signed up on this date, so he is bound by T&C number 12, whereas this other customer signed up a year later and is bound by T&C number 13". That seems unwieldy since there is a common infrastructure.…

No it is absolutely fine. I pay my lawyer 100k/y to read through all my TCs for my 2k/y subscription spend. Makes sense.

This all just needs statutory laws and eliminate TCs for basic services. It is a scam.

Rental contract sure. Employment contract yeah.

I bet a single set of statutory rights for consumer and provider could cover most things.

B2B is different.

Re: US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

#154
post #100

Reminds me of the Sony bash.org joke > I will write on a huge cement block "BY ACCEPTING THIS BRICK THROUGH YOUR WINDOW, YOU ACCEPT IT AS IS AND AGREE TO MY DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS WELL AS DISCLAIMERS OF ALL LIABILITY, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL, THAT MAY ARISE FROM THE INSTALLATION OF THIS BRICK INTO YOUR BUILDING." And then hurl it through the window of a Sony officer…

Naturally, for this to work, one would need to incorporate first so that claim of free speech to be taken at face value.

Re: US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

#156
post #59

The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd. There are probably a handful of terms everyone agrees are reasonable (no attempted hacking, rate limits, do not break laws) and everything else should be unenforceable. Especially garbage like what you're allowed to do with the stuff you get from the service even while not using the service , or about setting up competing products. It…

> The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd. There are probably a handful of terms everyone agrees are reasonable (no attempted hacking, rate limits, do not break laws) and everything else should be unenforceable. Why? Why should a government prohibit private parties from agreeing to anything other than those 3 things? > Especially garbage like what you're allowed to do with t…

This is one of these cases like gun crime where:

USA: There is no solution!

Rest of world: slightly embarrassed look

There are legal terms and concepts like good faith, expected and unexpected terms, reasonable expectations, abuse of a legally unsophisticated party and so on. In other countries, neither the fiction that everyone reads or is expected to read the 10-page "dining contract" of a restaurant exists nor is it allowed (enforceable) to put any unrelated or unreasonable crap in there.

Re: US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

#157
post #59

The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd. There are probably a handful of terms everyone agrees are reasonable (no attempted hacking, rate limits, do not break laws) and everything else should be unenforceable. Especially garbage like what you're allowed to do with the stuff you get from the service even while not using the service , or about setting up competing products. It…

> It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it. Or Disney telling you they are exempt from killing someone in their theme park restaurants because you signed up to Disney+… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8jl0ekjr0go

Interesting, that case was just withdrawn a few days ago:

https://www.allergicliving.com/2026/03/03/lawsuit-against-di...

"Disney dropped its bid to force arbitration over the streaming service’s clause in August 2024, following a barrage of public backlash."

And not because it was a clearly outrageous thing to do.

Re: US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

#158
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, this would make a great court case.

I know I'd be listening intently if I were on the jury. I'm a "sauce good for the goose is good for the gander" kind of guy.

> ... if I were on the jury. ...

Too bad that v1.0 of the ToS their victims "sign" forced all disputes into their lap-dog arbitration system.

Re: US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd. There are probably a handful of terms everyone agrees are reasonable (no attempted hacking, rate limits, do not break laws) and everything else should be unenforceable. Why? Why should a government prohibit private parties from agreeing to anything other than those 3 things? > Especially garbage like what you're allowed to do with t…

> Why should a government prohibit private parties from agreeing to anything other than those 3 things? Because a severe power imbalance allows for abuse, and governments should prohibit such abuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability

In particular, one private party has an expensive and highly educated legal team and a lot of time. The other party wanted to eat a burger and didn't have a week to do a thorough legal review of the TOS to check if they were potentially selling any kidneys for a dollar.

Re: US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

#160
post #143

This would make more sense if email was 100% guaranteed to be delivered. Not sure if this angle was argued, but just like regular mail, just because something was claimed to be delivered is not enough to prove that it was, hence the existence (in the US) of certified mail and signature return receipts.

TOS updates almost always go to junk/spam. So delivered doesn’t mean seen, nor having a reasonable chance of being seen.

You often don’t determine what goes to junk, that’s decided by thousands of other people and the email provider. Junk folders often auto delete so there’s no recovery.

Post reply on HN