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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]

#191

Post by cube00 »

jacquesm wrote: post #157
misnome wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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Interesting, that case was just withdrawn a few days ago: https://www.allergicliving.com/2026/03/03/lawsuit-against-di...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.

The flood of Disney+ cancellations likely contributed to their decision to back down on Kimmel, kind of heartening to know we've still got some power over these mega corps.

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

#193

Post by arvid-lind »

05 wrote: post #178
juleiie wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t live in US or five eyes so I pirate all the stuff basically Scot free. I understand that it’s not so easy for Americans whose internet activity is constantly scrutinized. I’ve had the privilege of choosing exactly who and what I pay. I usually don’t subscribe to any streaming service, but when I do choose to pay for something, my money goes to smaller entities that I don’t actively want to see fail. In my boo…

Surely even the poorest of Americans can pay a couple bux a month for a seedbox?

The way I see it, you can get a top tier VPN (mullvad) and a seedbox for the cost of one streaming service per month.

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

#194

Post by paulnpace »

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.

They email from invalid addresses, so you cannot respond.

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

#195

Post by juleiie »

dfc wrote: post #187
juleiie wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t live in US or five eyes so I pirate all the stuff basically Scot free. I understand that it’s not so easy for Americans whose internet activity is constantly scrutinized. I’ve had the privilege of choosing exactly who and what I pay. I usually don’t subscribe to any streaming service, but when I do choose to pay for something, my money goes to smaller entities that I don’t actively want to see fail. In my boo…

If you think Hollywood content is worthless why bother pirating it at all? It seems like you would just not consume it.

I don’t think it’s totally worthless. I think people who make it, producers, are extremely corrupted friends of Jeffrey Epstein with each one sooner or later turning out to be a sex offender.

There is a difference.

If you have any sort of conscience you simply don’t want to fund these people. Don’t enable them. Let it wither. Nothing of particular value will be lost.

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

#196

Post by Teever »

ahartmetz wrote: post #156
stinkbeetle wrote: post #84

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…

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…

During friendly discussions and arguments my lawyer friends like to make the same kind of thought terminating cliche filed arguments that you just replied to.

I think that your response really hit the nail on the head and it raises the question my mind of how do we most effectively eliminate these kinds of malformed American-system brained thoughts from disrupting real and possibly even productive conversations about these kinds of topics?

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

#197

Post by jacquesm »

cube00 wrote: post #191
jacquesm wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The flood of Disney+ cancellations likely contributed to their decision to back down on Kimmel, kind of heartening to know we've still got some power over these mega corps.

I have no power over any of them. I avoid them all like the plague they are.

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

#198

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #173
shirro wrote: post #166

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…

I canceled all of our subscriptions about two years ago and set up a Plex server. I don’t love the direction Plex is going in so I’m teeing up to flip to Jellyfin, but still, it has been so much better than dealing with all of these companies and nonsense. I feel like we can’t even call it “advertising“ anymore. It’s such a misnomer. It’s basically data fracking and psychological warfare to make us all into little ad…

Jellyfin is nice but I could never understand how to setup when all I wanted was to watch videos from server for example.

So I used copyparty[0] and used VLC and set a username and password.

I recommend copyparty if you just want something quick and easy actually. Just try it out on cheap VPS and just run it and forget it.

https://github.com/9001/copyparty

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

#199

Post by bell-cot »

nickorlow wrote: post #175
bell-cot wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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.

My new ToS I sent them allows me to appoint anyone (including my self) as the arbiter.

That's a nice daydream - but v1.0 gave them exclusive rights to update the ToS or pick arbiters. Along with lots of other "heads we win, tails you lose" stuff. :(

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

#200

Post by jmyeet »

There's a bunch of people here commenting that clearly didn't read the ruling and are saying hyperbolic things like (made up example) "DoorDash can take your house by silently updating the ToS to say if you don't tip, they can take your house". That's not what this says at all.

The issue is here is quite narrow: it concerns if cases need to go to arbitration or not or if the Northern California district court has jurisdiction. This concerns a change in the ToS (in October 2023). So, first off, the notion that can enforce arbitrary terms this way is false.

There's case law and legislation that the burden on the party seeking arbitration received assent for that and all this ruling does is say that sending the terms for that to the user-supplied email address combined with continued use of the app or website is sufficient to show that.

It's really no different to say that if you send someone a letter then that qualifies as notice. If that goes to your spam folder or you choose not to read it, that's kind of your fault.

But no, this isn't carte blanche to imply consent for any and all changes in ToS sent by email from continued use.

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