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

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

#161

Post by gloosx »

danlitt wrote: 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…

Actually it's like McDonalds removing pickles from the big mac after it was already served to your table

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

#162

Post by mycall »

nomercy400 wrote: post #109

Can I do the reverse now as well? Email a company a unilateral change in the TOS? Or do TOS's have provisions against that as well? "I do not agree with your new TOS and will continue under your old TOS, and I will continue to use your service". And see when they will close your account down.

Now if most of their customers did that, they wouldn't close down all the accounts. Forgotten power of the people.

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

#163

Post by ahartmetz »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #102
short_sells_poo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the power is disproportionally concentrated with one party - the service provider. The users of the service are numerous, comparatively small and uncoordinated. In a situation like that, users have no means of resisting egregious terms, and no you cannot pull up stuff like "if you don't like it, don't buy it". As I wrote, the users are uncoordinated, and would take a huge effort to coordinate. Boycotting serv…

But some terms were claimed to be reasonable. If power being disproportionate is sufficient to void terms, why not those terms too? > The government is not there just to enforce laws, but also to legislate such that the scales are balanced. Otherwise we may as well live in a dictatorship. Should the state just prohibit all agreements between two parties unless the state's adjudicator decides they are exactly equal in…

> Should the state just prohibit all agreements between two parties unless the state's adjudicator decides they are exactly equal in "power" and permits it?

It's pretty simple. You can write whatever you want into a contract, but if you want to enforce an unreasonable term, you will lose in court and might be forced to remove the term from current and future contracts. That's how it works everywhere. The difference between legislations is just what is considered a reasonable term.

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

#165

Post by ipython »

lstodd wrote: post #122
carefree-bob wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I'm still on a contract from 2016 or so with my mobile (cell) operator. 10 years of inflation, I pay basically nothing for some occassional data use and more voice than I could ever use. Of course it irks them much to not be able to sell me less for more. But they can't do anything short of disconnecting me and that is unspeakable for a mobile operator. I like this very much.

You can probably do even better with a prepaid mvno at this point

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

#166

Post by shirro »

There are so many advantages to turning off and disconnecting these days. Avoiding TOS is just a small part.

There are too many demands on our attention and our wallets and most of us aren't getting more money or time. I cancelled all the family's streaming services in 2025. Everyone adapted. It turns out a lot of things we are told we need, we really don't. People lived without them as recently as a few years ago. A lot of the novelty of mobile, streaming, social media and weird tech nobody needs has worn off and the value has been eroded. There are so many better things to do and experience and you don't need to hand over your privacy or sign your soul away.

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

#168

Post by halJordan »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #101
RicoElectrico wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pro tip is pasting such long ToS into NotebookLM and asking it to list e.g. top 5 surprising clauses (if you ask just about surprising clauses it treats you like an idiot and lists everything)

But that gives you absolutely no legal advantage whatsoever, so you might as well save your time and not do it.

You're suffering from the unfortunate fallacy of "this has no immediate concrete value to my particular concern, so it is altogether worthless"

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

#169

Post by Terretta »

Joker_vD wrote: post #89

Well, just one step more, and we'll have "TOS may be unilaterally updated by publishing the new terms on the firm's web site, it is entirely the user's duty to keep himself up to date, continued use implies unrevocable consent and giving up the right to re-negotiate" legal as well.

That's not one step more, that's been how clickwrap is written since late 90s.

Cases cited from '98 and '00: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickwrap

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