The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming • Hacker News Board

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#231

Post by ende » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 4:14 AM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #199

kbenson wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Extending the source-code analogy, a lot of legalese needs more comments saying what the code is supposed to do, so that when a problem arises the legal system can actually debug it and better determine what raw code is is accidental or deliberately-misleading. Unfortunately some of those comments are never made, or are separate READMEs and not systematically tracked alongside the code itself.

That’s a very interesting idea. I feel like the next logical step after that would be unit tests.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#232

Post by lazyman75 » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 4:34 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #151

cptskippy wrote: post #135

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…

I agree, "write-only" Perl is perfect analogy

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#233

Post by TheCoelacanth » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 4:41 AM UTC

hshehehjdjdjd wrote: post #216

oliwarner wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plain English requirements for financial services (in the UK, not uncommon elsewhere) are a pretty decent example of why you're wrong. 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.

No matter how plain the language is, it cannot benefit someone who doesn’t read it. You may argue that the lack of plain language in T&C causes the lack of reading. But there’s a natural experiment here in the form of those same U.K. financial services terms you mentioned. Do you honestly believe that a large fraction of U.K. financial services consumers are informed about the terms of financial services they are con…

The main barrier is that the length of T&Cs is completely unreasonable relative to what is at stake. How can someone be expected to read through and understand something the length of a short novel just to post a few images online or something?

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#234

Post by TheCoelacanth » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 4:50 AM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #194

mhneu wrote: post #164

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.

Sometimes I wish that severability clauses were not allowed in contracts of adhesion so that lawyers would be forced to only include terms that were actually enforceable or else have the entire contract become invalid. Obviously it wouldn't work very well if even a small mistake made in good faith could invalidate an entire contract, but the problem of companies hoodwinking customers with unenforceable terms has gotten out of hand.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#235

Post by GerryRzeppa » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 4:52 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #72

mooneater wrote: post #47

True of legalese in contracts, but also Law in general has multiplied like Gremlins. Hammurabi's code of laws, was written in common language, and was brief enough every subject could understand them. It makes no sense that we should be subject to a volume of law that we could never even read, let alone understand. Musk is correct in insisting that laws should expire, and it should be easier to remove a law than add…

Do you think allowing programs to be specified in plain English is a good idea? We have "legalese" for the same reason we have programming languages. Terms have specific, sometimes slightly different or more narrow meanings to promote better understanding of intent in languages meant to specify a set of rules. Specifying laws in "plain English" makes about as much sense to me as programming in English. You'll quickly…

Our Plain English development system - unique interface, simple file manager, elegant text editor, hexadecimal dumper, native-code-generating compiler/linker, and wysiwyg page layout facility (for documentation) - 25,000 sentences, is hardly a trivial application. Yet we wrote it, conveniently and efficiently, entirely in Plain English. And the "ambiguity" of the language actually helped.

In Plain English you can, for example, say "Clear the screen" or "Erase the screen" or other similar phrases and still get the same result. So we could type our thoughts the way we happened to be thinking them at the moment, and didn't have to remember (or look up) the exact syntax of the routines we wanted to call.

The instruction manual is here:

www.osmosian.com/instructions.pdf

And the whole shebang (less than a megabyte!) is here:

www.osmosian.com/cal-4700.zip

Just download and unzip. No installation necessary. Exactly the same on any version of Windows from XP to 10.

Please address questions and comments directly to me:

gerry.rzeppa@pobox.com

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#236

Post by inetknght » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 5:10 AM UTC

fourthark wrote: post #229

hshehehjdjdjd wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However mortgages are something that rarely have side effects surprise the signers. I really don’t agree with this. Are you aware of the existence of adjustable rate mortgages?

Not the OP, but yes I do, and I'd argue that is one of the parameters that most people learn about when they get a mortgage. The trouble is, with an online service or a phone, we don't even know what the parameters are.

"EULA and T&C can change without notice to you."

This is, in a nutshell, the problem.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#237

Post by occamrazor » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 7:58 AM UTC

hshehehjdjdjd wrote: post #213

microDude wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, the length of your comment reads like a Terms of Service Contract.

Was a time long, thoughtful, informed comments on this site garnered plaudits rather than gripes. Considering this is one of the only informed, reality-based comment in the entire thread, I think it’s best to engage with and appreciate it, rather than making easy jokes.

I’ve read your entire comment and still think that the GP is an appropriate joke. You gave a good overview, in clear language, trying to be as concise as possible. The result us still quite long, in fact I guess it is long enough that most commenters won’t read it in full, just like a typical T&C document.

Contracts are long for good reasons, but excessive contract length is a real problem.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#238

Post by oliwarner » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 9:17 AM UTC

hshehehjdjdjd wrote: post #216

oliwarner wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plain English requirements for financial services (in the UK, not uncommon elsewhere) are a pretty decent example of why you're wrong. 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.

No matter how plain the language is, it cannot benefit someone who doesn’t read it. You may argue that the lack of plain language in T&C causes the lack of reading. But there’s a natural experiment here in the form of those same U.K. financial services terms you mentioned. Do you honestly believe that a large fraction of U.K. financial services consumers are informed about the terms of financial services they are con…

I think we're talking about slightly different things here. While many financial institutions (and others now) will provide a plain English explanation of the whole contract, I'm just talking about the key terms.

"Your house may be at risk if you do not keep up with repayments. Variable rates can go up and down." etc.

These sorts of things are required not just at point of agreement, but everywhere a financial product is marketed. They're short enough. Same thing as you'll see in where medical marketing is allowed.

So in that vein, before Facebook takes data about you, it should be explaining that they and their partners operate a marketing platform that is used to monitor and influence your political views. That they can use your photos of you and your children and others for their own marketing purposes. That licenses you grant them to your content are everlasting and irrevocable.

Somebody did a "joke" list of what Facebook's might look like https://signupforfacebook.org/

It's over-done (on purpose) but initialling each term like this should be a requirement for contracts that subvert your rights [to privacy, here] as is required elsewhere.

I don't have data on the efficacy of said warnings. The rules here have existed longer than I have. But it's not illogical to suggest that forcing somebody to actually engage with the text before they give up data will mean more will read it.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#239

Post by grigjd3 » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

hshehehjdjdjd wrote: post #218

lovich wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its beyond even being a legal fiction in many situations. There is no option for most people when it comes to certain terms and conditions. Take phones for instance. You cannot live in modern society without a phone. You will not be able to get a phone, without agreeing to one of these long terms and conditions. They come from landline providers, they come from cell phone providers, they come packaged in the box in t…

For practical purposes, you can’t secure a dwelling without signing a long, complicated contract (be it a lease or a mortgage note). Yet dwelling is a necessity, even more so than a phone. And, in these contracts, so much more is on the line. According to your argument, you should not have to be bound by the terms of these agreements. You may indeed believe that, but I hope you can see how much of our society is base…

I'm not sure I agree with the previous poster about phones, but I never signed a 50 page lease agreement. Typically they have been about three pages. Buying a house requires a bit more and a home loan requires a lot more, but it's only once you are taking a home loan out that you end up with a contract comparable to what internet companies come up with. Further, when you take out the home loan and make the purchase, there is a human being to walk you through the details. Also, I consider a house purchase to be significantly more serious than a pay-go phone.

Re: The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

#240

Post by edwhitesell » Sat, Apr 21, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

grigjd3 wrote: post #239

hshehehjdjdjd wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For practical purposes, you can’t secure a dwelling without signing a long, complicated contract (be it a lease or a mortgage note). Yet dwelling is a necessity, even more so than a phone. And, in these contracts, so much more is on the line. According to your argument, you should not have to be bound by the terms of these agreements. You may indeed believe that, but I hope you can see how much of our society is base…

I'm not sure I agree with the previous poster about phones, but I never signed a 50 page lease agreement. Typically they have been about three pages. Buying a house requires a bit more and a home loan requires a lot more, but it's only once you are taking a home loan out that you end up with a contract comparable to what internet companies come up with. Further, when you take out the home loan and make the purchase,…

I think there are some US states where housing rental/lease agreements are regulated to be shorter/simpler. I want to say our lease in Washington was only 3 or 4 pages. Whereas, I recall other places have been in the dozens of pages.

Of course, I'm one of the minority who reads every page of those...and everything singed when buying a house. Luckily, most title companies will supply copies ahead of time.