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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]

#211

Post by dpoloncsak »

juleiie wrote: post #177
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 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…

Any $10/mo VPN solves this, and probably advertises it as a selling point.

Of course, then you're spending $10 to save $10....

I have the whole *arr stack setup with Plex running in the US just fine, but that's for sure not for everyone and was a few headaches to get up and running

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

#212

Post by teeray »

They don’t even send you the changes. They just say “we’re updating our terms” in an email and you’re now bound by contract to offer the company your first born as an indentured servant upon demand. Fortunately, the “bury them with paperwork” strategy is waning in effectiveness now that an LLM can read a 50 page ToS and quickly tell me if there’s anything that works against my interests.

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

#213

Post by dpoloncsak »

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…

Similar boat...I'd also like to swap off Plex but a few of my less techie friends use it and I'm worried about the compatibility/ease of setup of Jellyfin on their devices.

Thought about running both in parallel but that seems like a waste. Think I just need a migration day eventually

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

#214

Post by blharr »

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…

Sure, but even the specific case isn't about TOS within the limits of screen time or online browsing. It's about tracking your physical location via Tile trackers. Sure, you can get off streaming services, but you're still signing a TOS or waiver by using any service. Meta/Google/etc has a profile on you even if you've never logged in based on others sharing their contacts and pictures that may include you.

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

#215

Post by SkyBelow »

carefree-bob wrote: post #79
bradley13 wrote: post #24

IMHO the problem is allowing changes to terms and conditions for existing contracts. If I have a contract with a company, that contract was made under existing T&C. The company should not be able to change those conditions without my explicit permission. Denying me service if I disagree should not be a valid option. I get this periodically on our overly-computerized car: Here are new T&C, click yes to agree. You can…

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.…

>so what do they do, force you to quit and then sign up again? That adds a lot of friction.

Maybe that's a good thing? Imagine if changing the T&C required cancelling everyone's account and then letting people sign up with new accounts if they still want to do business. That would probably make any T&C changes much harder to justify, creating a balance against what many see as abusing T&C updates.

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

#216

Post by Aurornis »

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…

> The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd.

ToS can’t enforce completely arbitrary rules. They are still bound by the limitations of the law and the worst they can usually do is terminate your account.

> It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it.

And practically speaking they would be limited to telling you that you’re not welcome to come back and buy another one if you break those rules. They are not legally obligated to have you as a customer.

You can break the ToS all you want for how to use online services. The risk you take is that they decide they don’t want your money any more and turn off your account. In my opinion, that’s a fair trade.

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

#217

Post by throwaway173738 »

alpinisme wrote: post #151
stinkbeetle wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because ToS have been long used to demand unreasonable things and threaten people with expensive lawsuits. The advantage of companies losing bullying power significantly outweighs the disadvantage of less business freedom Why those in particular though? The criminal law one sure that's a part of contract law already. Why the others? Why not different ones? It was just asserted that those were reasonable and no othe…

The original comment asserted that there are “probably” a finite list of reasonable things everyone could agree on. The examples were parenthetical and surely not meant to be the last word. The point they were making (rightly or wrongly) seems to be that contract law just isn’t the right way of managing consumer-business relationships. I suspect that actually meshes with the intuitions of a broad swath of the populat…

We could have a sort of “Consumer Protection Agency” that broadly enforces these norms when a company feels the need to avenge themselves on someone. A sort of regulatory agency, if you will.

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

#219

Post by mghackerlady »

gopher_space wrote: post #150
close04 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the “initial” T&C allows them to cancel your contract unless there’s a minimum contractual period. They can take that opportunity to force you into a deal change. The change is that now just using the service is considered consent. The real problem is that the law allows this power imbalance and doesn’t tip the scales to even it out for the end user. That for me is evidence that the law is made for the companies…

Strike out the parts that you don’t like and email it to legal@ Include a cute little JavaScript cat animation to brighten their day.

please no. no js in anyone's inbox. please. (I do think attaching a gif to the email is a good idea though ;) )

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

#220

Post by dwallin »

So if I email the company a TOS and say that continuing to allow me to use the tool should be considered acceptance of my new TOS that should be valid? Sometimes it's amazing to see the legal contortions people use to justify bad behavior on the part of companies.
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