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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]

#291

Post by encom »

gruez wrote: post #247
dpoloncsak wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>Of course, then you're spending $10 to save $10.... Most VPN subscriptions are around $5, whereas netflix with ads costs $8, and $18 without ads. Even at $18 though, it's still not 4K, whereas you can easily pirate 4K versions with your VPN subscription.

Netflix won't even sell me 4K content at any price, because don't use any of their approved spyware operating systems. But the Torrent Store will.

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

#292

Post by throwaway27448 »

parineum wrote: post #278
thephyber wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the company violates their ToS, you can take them to court (or arbitration). It is bi-directionally enforced contract, just not a symmetrically beneficial one.

The benefit is the product. If the TOS is onerous, you can not use the product.

Good luck with that, buddy. Let's see what kind of shithole society you build with this sort of worldview

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

#293

Post by hrmtst93837 »

gloosx wrote: post #161
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…

Actually it's like McDonalds removing pickles from the big mac after it was already served to your table

[flagged]

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

#294

Post by WarmWash »

chrischen wrote: post #279
WarmWash wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In my book, none of the Hollywood deserves a single cent. It’s an amazing feeling to be in the power to dictate this. Then you don't consume it...you boycott it. Freeloading on honest consumers isn't some kind of moral high ground. If Hollywood is corrupt and full of shitheads, letting someone else pay for your ticket doesn't make you a morally pure viewer. It's fine if you just own that you don't want to pay for wh…

The whole concept of intellectual property rights is a social and legal construct designed to promote innovation in an economy. If you don't care about that, then there really isn't any moral or immoral aspect to it. The immorality of it and associating it with stealing was just MPAA propaganda to try to shame people into paying for stuff. If I found some DVD lying on the ground and watched it and I didn't pay for it…

The bedrock of the argument is that you give for what you take. This is very fundamental, not just some capitalist drivel. You'd be hard pressed to find a single level headed individual who could form a coherent argument against it (generally speaking, not just protracted edge cases). Even your most hippie communist commune requires giving in order to receive.

People act (many even think) like this doesn't apply to digital goods, since copying has no material cost. But producing that digital good costs time and money (anyone on HN care to disagree?). So then you have to decide who are the ones who pay and who are the ones who get free copies. Conveniently, everyone who is getting a free copy thinks that they have a rightful stake to it for free. And because nothing is actually free (see the first line), the ones paying are the ones also covering the cost for those who get is free.

I wouldn't expect teenagers to grasp this, after all we were the teenagers who devised this "piracy as a moral crusade" back in the 90's/00's (how convenient that a side effect of this moral crusade was all the free content your dead broke ass could imagine). But now, if you are in your 30's or older and still haven't logic'ed this out, it's time to catch up.

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

#295

Post by quietbritishjim »

hrimfaxi wrote: post #274
quietbritishjim wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email with proof of receipt (e.g. Outlook's read receipts) would be fine. But sending an email and hoping for the best doesn't meet that condition.

A read receipt is not proof of receipt but proof that you read it. They are not the same thing. If your office receives registered mail but your secretary threw it away without you reading it, you're still legally served right?

Agreed, but there's no delivered (but not necessarily read) receipt that applies to email so that was closest I could think of that counted. The overall point remains: sending an email, with no further evidence, does not count as proof of delivery (all the way to the inbox).

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

#296

Post by amiga386 »

bombcar wrote: post #255
silvestrov wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it. and you are not allowed to criticize it or write about the size of it or how much meat there is in it or how filling it is to eat the burger. and you are definitely not allowed to compare it to burgers from other companies.

Apparently a bunch of luxury brands make you beg and apply to buy, and if you ever disparage them, you never get to buy from them again. So eventually that'll apply to McDonalds.

Luxury brands vs... McDonalds. I don't think it will.

However, the luxury brands have the Soup Nazi's business model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soup_Nazi

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

#299

Post by ndriscoll »

WarmWash wrote: post #294
chrischen wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole concept of intellectual property rights is a social and legal construct designed to promote innovation in an economy. If you don't care about that, then there really isn't any moral or immoral aspect to it. The immorality of it and associating it with stealing was just MPAA propaganda to try to shame people into paying for stuff. If I found some DVD lying on the ground and watched it and I didn't pay for it…

The bedrock of the argument is that you give for what you take. This is very fundamental, not just some capitalist drivel. You'd be hard pressed to find a single level headed individual who could form a coherent argument against it (generally speaking, not just protracted edge cases). Even your most hippie communist commune requires giving in order to receive. People act (many even think) like this doesn't apply to d…

Simple: people who want it to exist can fund its creation. People who are indifferent or don't want it to exist can choose not to, and once it exists, there's obviously no moral question either way. We already have lifetimes of media available. It costs nothing to replicate infinitely. Do we need to specifically incentivize more?

I think the world would also be a lot better off if software could all be freely distributed and if warranty law required software sales to come with source as well. If you need the computer to do something, you pay a programmer to make it so. You or that programmer can then share the solution with others. The goal is to solve more problems and build a wealthier society for our children, not create rent extraction machines.

Likewise with things like the textbook racket. The government should just commission updates for k-12 books (including AP, so basic uni) every ~15 years or so. Most of this stuff is not changing. It should be "done".

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

#300

Post by ajross »

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.

For clarity, and while the HN seems to imply that, that is not what this decision was actually about.

It was about the specific requirement that disputes be handled by binding arbitration. The circuit court was actually clear they weren't making decisions about the facts of the case, precisely because the arbitrator gets to make those calls.

Now, sure, that can mean "you lose" in practice, depending on the claim and the arbiter. And in this specific situation it's a death knell for the plaintiffs, because this was an emerging class action suite looking for a big payout.

But no, the 9th circuit has not found that companies have the ability to enforce "arbitrary terms of service" via a TOS update email. They only made a call on this particular term update, and they were clear that they did so because it does not represent an actual change to the service terms (only to the dispute process).

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