The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming • Hacker News Board

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#161

Post by recursive » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

jkaplowitz wrote: post #121

jstarfish wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? What's so bad about forcing us to re-evaluate the reasons why given laws are on the books? Plenty of laws are relevant only to a specific point in time, but they rarely, if ever, get repealed. Take the US Chicken Tax. It was put in place in the 60s to deal with economic concerns with France and West Germany at the time (which no longer exists as such!). Why shouldn't it have been given an expiration date? Instea…

Some laws, like that one, should be enacted with an expiration date. Some laws even are - e.g. a lot of the post-9/11 surveillance state laws need periodic reauthorization. Plenty of other taxes are enacted as temporary, too, despite how routinely they're extended. But not all laws should expire. Having, say, the crime of murder expire would be quite unhelpful.

One question then, is whether laws are generally more like murder, or more like the chicken tax. I don't know, but I suspect there are more chicken-tax-like laws by a considerable margin.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#162

Post by mhneu » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:07 PM UTC

mooneater wrote: post #47

True of legalese in contracts, but also Law in general has multiplied like Gremlins. Hammurabi's code of laws, was written in common language, and was brief enough every subject could understand them. It makes no sense that we should be subject to a volume of law that we could never even read, let alone understand. Musk is correct in insisting that laws should expire, and it should be easier to remove a law than add…

Rule of law is a really good thing in most societies.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#163

Post by dhimes » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #147

Digit-Al wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ. > Waving a 2-inch-thick printed version of the social network’s user agreement, Senator Lindsey Graham quoted a line from the first page, then intoned: “I’m a lawyer, and I have no idea what that means.” 1) Two inch thick I've read some pretty long books in my time but that takes the cake. Most people these days don't even have enough attention span to read a complete internet article. How do you exp…

You can simultaneously believe that * FB is doing their absolute best to make sure no "user" understands what they have agreed to * writing the law in "plain english" is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in my life. See the multi million dollar lawsuit this year about whether a missing Oxford comma changed wage rules for a class of truck drivers. Any attempt to write law in plain english introduces giant ambigui…

That law you cited was not written in "plain English." It was Maine's legal code. And it was ambiguous.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#164

Post by mhneu » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:28 PM UTC

mhneu wrote: post #160

Yes. There are two separate issues here, I think. 1. When corporations "negotiate" with consumers, this is an abuse of the legal system. Contract law was conceived for situations where both parties have at least some amount of negotiating power. Handing a consumer some long contract written by a set of well-paid lawyers, and asking them to sign it or walk away from any benefit from a product, is not the kind of contr…

One other comment for non-lawyers here:

When two companies negotiate a contract, typically what happens is this. One team of lawyers drafts the contract. They send it to the other lawyers. Both business teams consult their lawyers, and the lawyers update the contract with their desired changes. Then the first company comments on desired changes and they negotiate.

The result, after perhaps many rounds of negotiation, is often a far different contract than was originally proposed.

That is NOT what happens with consumer terms and conditions agreements, or cell phone contracts. There, the company's lawyers draft a contract that is as favorable to them as is legal. The consumer does not have the legal team or negotiating power to push back: their choices are to sign, or to walk.

These quite different contract processes are worth thinking about. Is this the way we, as a society, want contract law to be used?

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#165

Post by torstenvl » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:33 PM UTC

lainga wrote: post #131

torstenvl wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an easy example, the commerce clause in the US constitution has come to mean something that no layman would ascribe to it. Any support for that statement?

I think you would be hard-pressed to find a layman who, when presented with the commerce clause, replied that he had inferred the Dormant Clause [0] or Civil Rights Act [1] from it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 - "... principally its power to regulate interstate commerce"

I dunno. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Commerce among the states is Congress's domain, so state laws can't unduly interfere.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#166

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:37 PM UTC

Digit-Al wrote: post #148

The thing nobody seems to be talking about is 'why do we need all these complex Terms & Conditions anyway?' If I buy a fridge I don't need to read and agree to reams of T's and C's before I can use it. The same with a toaster or an oven or a washing machine. If I buy a knife I don't have to agree to indemnify the manufacturer if I kill someone with it. What's so special about software? I'm starting to think that ther…

Have you looked at user agreements, warrantees, and software licences that come with appliances lately?

Often not revealed until accessing via some interface, or being modified on software upgrades.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#167

Post by freehunter » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

steve_g wrote: post #133

torstenvl wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an easy example, the commerce clause in the US constitution has come to mean something that no layman would ascribe to it. Any support for that statement?

Wheat grown by a farmer for his own consumption, not bought or sold, not carried across state lines, can be regulated by Congress as it affects "commerce ...among the several States." See Wickard v. Filburn.

If you don't want to look it up but still want to understand it, the gist is that by growing your own wheat, you're not buying wheat from farmers, which lowers the price of wheat that may be grown by out-of-state farmers. By growing your own wheat, you're impacting inter-state commerce.

At least that's the logic of the court.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#168

Post by freehunter » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

losteric wrote: post #78

Letmesleep69 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes no sense that we should be subject to a volume of law that we could never even read, let alone understand Why does that not make sense? The law must cover everything from "dont kill certain species" to "don't commit this very specific type of fraud". Society is so advanced we need more laws. Of course Hamurabi's code was short because it didn't need to stop investment bankers committing fraud or voting law…

> Certainly there are improvements but you will never fit it all into one short book that a layperson could read. However, the law could still certainly be shortened and simplified. The GDPR is written in plain English.

Yet GDPR is so vague that most companies I talk to about it have each taken very different things from it. "Except as required for security purposes" is a big exception.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#169

Post by moate » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

reificator wrote: post #153

moate wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But code allows for Plain English: Comments. And nobody writes code without clear comments right? Right? Dear god please tell me you people aren't doing that!?

Depends on what it is and how complex it is. Depends on how explicit the variables and functions can be named. Depends on whether the thing I want to express is a how or a why or a how to use. Depends on if it's a public API or an internal helper used in one place with an unambiguous name. Depends on whether the audience are first year CS students, 50 year old business majors, senior developers with years of experien…

Without getting too spicy here: What I was saying is that comments allow for people to provide "plain English" context to their code by giving a summary of what the code does, something that most contracts don't do. I was trying to point out that the example OP was using is a flawed comparison.

Code comments are typically written for whoever they're written for. I understand that"Plain English" might be a 2 sentence summary, a line by line review of each step, or a 3 letter reference to a common phrase, but it doesn't change that you have a tool available to you to provide summary context for potentially confusing or complicated pieces of logic.

I was also making the joke that if you're writing extremely complex pieces of code and not providing some kind of comment to accompany it in a setting in which that code, you're probably doing it wrong.

Some people should do some things some of the time, and other things never, but not always. Things can include writing comments for code. fixt

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#170

Post by tzs » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:58 PM UTC

> Waving a 2-inch-thick printed version of the social network’s user agreement, Senator Lindsey Graham quoted a line from the first page, then intoned: “I’m a lawyer, and I have no idea what that means.”

Anyone have a link to that document? Looking for the terms I'm supposed to agree to if I want to use Facebook as an ordinary user, I find this page, which purports to link to everything [1]. Looking at the "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities", the "Data Policy", and the "Community Standards", I don't see anything that would take 2 inches when printed. Those seem to be most of what would be necessary for an ordinary user to agree to.

There are several links to other terms and policies and such on the left, but those are mostly for things like developers, payment handling, and other things that that an ordinary user would not need to agree to.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/policies