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

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

#201

Post by Teever » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

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…

Why needlessly complicate this with so many obtuse hypotheticals when you can just look at other countries that have objectively lower crime rates, greater citizen happiness levels, lower wealth inequality and see how the solved this problem?

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

#202

Post by Forgeties79 » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 1:15 PM UTC

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #198

Forgeties79 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The big thing is being able to stream outside of my home network. Running stuff locally is easy enough with basically any system luckily

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

#203

Post by colejohnson66 » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

klempner wrote: post #186

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

Except it is a stretch to say it is "their theme park restaurant". This story was dramatically oversimplified in the media and Disney's position was nowhere near as unreasonable as everyone understands it to be. The argument was not "they agreed to a EULA 5 years ago and therefore mandatory arbitration in all disputes with Disney". This is a privately owned restaurant at a glorified shopping mall within the larger Wa…

It's my belief the Disney+ EULA claim was just the lawyers doing the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" shtick (no pun intended). They knew it was likely to not hold up, but tried it anyway because, if it did, it helps future claims.

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

#204

Post by cnsrthecase » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

If you cannot identify the user, you should not claim in court that the user agreed to your terms of service agreement.

If you have not proved that the user who agreed to an agreement was the user using the account, then you could very well be attempting to prosecute the wrong person.

It is very possible for one user to steal the account credentials of or impersonate another user.

For example, Police officers routinely impersonate other users in order to collect evidence.

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

#205

Post by mghackerlady » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 1:18 PM UTC

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #188

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…

This ruling taken in conjunction with “in the future you will own nothing, and you will be happy” paints quite the dystopian picture where not even “turning off and disconnecting” will save you.

the way we're headed (and largely already are) "turning off and disconnecting" will be a privilege of the rich and dream of the stubborn

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

#206

Post by cityzen » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 1:18 PM UTC

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…

I had a lot of issues with plex on Apple TV and switched to Infuse. I haven’t tried jellyfin but figured I would mention it.

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

#207

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 1:18 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #182

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…

Every single ToS is written to benefit the company, and when necessary, harm the consumer. The answer is to enter into as few service contracts as possible. Use open source software. Control when your software updates. Really, never use the cloud version of anything whatsoever except where unavoidable. (eg: email and such) They feel like the legal equivalent of Calvin Ball. So long as you just stash it in a ToS, you…

>The answer is to enter into as few service contracts as possible.

Any contract where the other party performs so little seeking of my agreement (none at all really) that no representative talks to me in person or even electronically in an individual capacity, where no one witnesses me put my mark on the paper or hears by verbal assent, is in fact no contract at all. Despite what the courts may say. Should they say otherwise, they're wholly illegitimate.

That any of you have let something else stand as the norm is bizarre and alarming. Contracts require explicit, sought agreement, by their very definition. Nothing can be implied. If their business model relies on implicit agreement because anything else would be too difficult, then they simply shouldn't be allowed to remain in business.

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

#208

Post by Teever » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

Quarrel wrote: post #73

impossiblefork wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Sweden the thing that makes something a contract is that you can't change it-- that it has definite provisions that have been agreed and that both parties actually expect the other to hold up their part. The US breaking its contract law to treat non-contracts as contracts is one of the most insane things I've seen a legal system do to itself.

I do not think this is true for Sweden. The key difference, is that the US is many jurisdictions (Federal + 50 states + a lot of others, from counties to cities to territories to MANY others), and the variance amongst those is high. The key thing well regulated places like Sweden get right, is that in consumer contracts you have minimum bars that you must meet regardless of what you can get the consumer to agree to.…

Do you think it's likely that these kinds of things come about because there's varity in the myriad of jurisdictions in America or that there are monied interests who stand to benefit from it?

Like to put it another way how much of this is 'We must do it this way because Americans are simply built different and we're just special' vs 'this makes a handful of people a bunch of money and they have teams of lobbyists, marketers, and lawyers to normalize this kind of stuff in society over time'?

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

#209

Post by mghackerlady » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: 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…

I've got a little icon on my desktop bar that gives me a random bash.org quote. God I miss that place

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

#210

Post by throwaway173738 » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #72

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…

>It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it. And the way the resteraunt this right is by covering their walls with TOS text like an Egyptian tomb.

Like if Subway had a terms of service as wallpaper instead of weird news articles.