191–200 of 255 posts
The basic law relating to online terms and conditions has been stable for some years now and should remain so. It certainly is not headed for a "reckoning." When private parties transact business in a free society, the law of contracts steps in to provide rules enabling them to do so in a well-defined and orderly manner. Contract law has some fundamental principles that anchor it and, beyond those, has a vast number…
The basic law relating to online terms and conditions has been stable for some years now and should remain so. It certainly is not headed for a "reckoning." When private parties transact business in a free society, the law of contracts steps in to provide rules enabling them to do so in a well-defined and orderly manner. Contract law has some fundamental principles that anchor it and, beyond those, has a vast number…
No offense, the length of your comment reads like a Terms of Service Contract.
The basic law relating to online terms and conditions has been stable for some years now and should remain so. It certainly is not headed for a "reckoning." When private parties transact business in a free society, the law of contracts steps in to provide rules enabling them to do so in a well-defined and orderly manner. Contract law has some fundamental principles that anchor it and, beyond those, has a vast number…
In those scenarios, the bar is moved up a notch to informed consent. Parties must know exactly what they stand to lose.
A fair explanation of how your data could be leveraged against you should be a requirement because users don't understand this currently.
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,…
In fact, they will frequently put in clauses that are known to be invalid, hoping that customers simply cave in when shown the clause.
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…
There is also a EU-wide regulation ensuring similar laws exist in all EU countries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
> There, the company's lawyers draft a contract that is as favorable to them as is legal. In fact, they will frequently put in clauses that are known to be invalid, hoping that customers simply cave in when shown the clause.
*knowing
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…
That sounds noble. However, the actual practice of getting patients consent for medical trials is pretty much the same as a website ToS click-through [1].
[1] Source: it used to be my dayjob to sign patients on consent forms.
The basic law relating to online terms and conditions has been stable for some years now and should remain so. It certainly is not headed for a "reckoning." When private parties transact business in a free society, the law of contracts steps in to provide rules enabling them to do so in a well-defined and orderly manner. Contract law has some fundamental principles that anchor it and, beyond those, has a vast number…
No offense, the length of your comment reads like a Terms of Service Contract.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We have "legalese" for the same reason we have programming languages. The intended purpose of "legalease" is to eliminate ambiguity and to clearly outline terms and conditions, however it's often used to introduce ambiguity and obfuscate the actual intent of terms and conditions or to redefine existing known and understood laws. "Legalese" is a programming language that allows unsafe pointers. It's compiler not onl…
> The intended purpose of "legalease" is to eliminate ambiguity and to clearly outline terms and conditions, however it's often used to introduce ambiguity and obfuscate the actual intent of terms and conditions or to redefine existing known and understood laws. Brief plain English would be about as bad. English with similar verbosity would be much worse. Obfuscating meaning in colloquial English is so trivial it hap…
Unfortunately some of those comments are never made, or are separate READMEs and not systematically tracked alongside the code itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The difference is that one is expected to consent and be beholden to something they could not reasonably understand without paying a large amount of money to a specialist. I've found that this is generally less true than I imagine it to be. A lot of law is not actually so difficult to understand. Legalese is still English, and Google is great for figuring out the odd meanings of certain terms of art. Most of the ex…
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…
Facebook data policy: https://www.facebook.com/policy.php
I agree Lindsay Graham is a skilled orator and politician. But if he blew up the font size until those pages required two inches of 8x11 paper, he must have just terrible eyesight ;-)
Also, neither of those documents is terribly difficult to understand. Like... where, specifically, is Graham getting horribly confused?! Point to the concrete line in one of those two links that requires something beyond a high school education!
Now, I'm sure there's nuance I don't pick up on. But I definitely feel I can understand the ToS and privacy policy without consulting a lawyer.
I don't think some of the terms are fair. But that's a consumer rights issue, not a "legalese" issue.
More generally, on two occasions I've had to get in front of a real judge in a "real" courtroom and make an argument based upon some written piece of law I had to look up and interpret myself. In both cases, I was able to successfully convince a judge that I was on the right side of the law without the help of a lawyer. I'm certainly not saying that's always possible, but I do believe there is a lot of "learned helplessness" when it comes to digging through legeal code or contracts and reading legalese. It's a PITA sometimes, but in many many cases it doesn't require years of training.