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Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

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Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#91

Post by guitarbill »

nemo44x wrote: post #54
alexfromapex wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a quiz in middle school where the end of the directions said to ignore everything and put down your pencil. Really wish all schools taught this.

It’s good training for test taking in general. Read every question before starting. Then solve the ones you find easy first. Many people are “bad at tests” because they get stuck on something, panic, waste all their time and then blow the test.

I used to do the opposite, start from the back where the bigger/harder questions where when I was still fresh, and work backwards(?) to the easier questions with fewer points. Agree that leaving a question half finished with enough space to come back to it and finish it is also a good idea, instead of getting stuck and demoralised.

In any case, I think it's fair to say that reading all of the test, thinking about how you want to approach it, and not just blindly following the ordering provided is going to be better than a naive approach - no matter what ordering is chosen.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#92

Post by icedchai »

aflag wrote: post #71
rusk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You still signed Prove it was me that signed. Prove it was me that clicked accept.

In order to access the service you need to register. The registration form would not allow you to register without accepting it. They only need to prove that you indeed access the service. That doesn't seem too hard to prove for most services out there, or at least the most popular ones.

I think you missed the point. They can't prove it was him actually filling out the registration form, only someone from some IP address at a specific time. They can't prove the person who logs in using that registered username/password is the same one that accepted the TOS.

ToSes are mostly useless. They generally contain a line that indicates the terms can change at any time and you accept them by continuing to use the service.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#93

Post by chki »

gorgoiler wrote: post #6

If a website knows I didn't really read a contract, can they claim I am bound by it? I like to hope that the time-spent-reading is logged somewhere. Should it come up in court, Website.com would be required to disclose their logs which would show that I spent all of 1.35s reading their terms and conditions, most of which was spent scrolling. Another puerile hack of mine is to sign a document with the name "I do not a…

This will depend on your specific jurisdiction but just to give you an example of the law in Germany (which I expect to be similar in other places, especially in Europe where a EU-regulation was created on the basis of the German law):

Terms of services ("Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen" (AGB)) are pre-formulated clauses that one party introduces into the contract without giving the other party the possibility to object to or at least negotiate these clauses.

The ToS are part of your legal contract with the other party, regardless of whether you read them. One example of ToS could also be the house rules in your local gym, which possibly weren't even handed out to you but instead they are up on a wall somewhere near the front desk. The important thing is that you need to have the _possibility_ to read them (if you are blind they will need to make sure there is a workaround). Depending on the circumstances the obligation to make sure that you are aware of the ToS can be more strict.

The important caveat to using terms of services as a company is a strict content control. § 307-309 of the german civil law define certain things that you cannot possibly put in your ToS. And if a company still does it, a Court will not try to interpret the rule in a favorable way for them, they will strike it out completely. (no "geltungserhaltende Reduktion")

Examples of content control include that when buying something it is impossible to sign away (some of) your rights as a consumer for a faulty product. But there are also some "catch-all" clauses in there that will check whether parts of the ToS placed an unfair burden on you as a consumer.

ToS can also be void if they are unclearly written.

Edit: Signing with "I do not agree" is an interesting approach and sometimes these "hacks" can actually work in Court. That being said, it would probably not hold up. Pressing on "accept" is not somehow invalid just because you said so somewhere else.

Off topic but an interesting example of a similar hack is this case of a man changing a pre formulated contract with his bank which they send to him first and then signed it when he had send it back to him. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2013/08/14/man-who-outwitted-...

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#94

Post by hansvm »

aflag wrote: post #71
rusk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You still signed Prove it was me that signed. Prove it was me that clicked accept.

In order to access the service you need to register. The registration form would not allow you to register without accepting it. They only need to prove that you indeed access the service. That doesn't seem too hard to prove for most services out there, or at least the most popular ones.

It's not really that cut and dry.

- They need to prove that "you" accessed the service, not somebody claiming to be you, somebody with the same full name and rough location as you, etc.

- Websites are often pretty bad at actually requiring ToS acceptance to register. The fact that you've accessed the service doesn't necessarily imply you've accepted anything.

- Even if registration is ironclad, accessing the service won't prove you agreed to any particular version of the ToS. The ever popular amend-at-will clauses never hold up in court, so you really do need to know which version was agreed to.

- ToS are often presented coercively. Maybe you've already signed a lease and moved in, but to actually pay your rent you need to accept an additional one or more third-party ToS because the landlord doesn't accept cash or checks. Maybe you've already paid for your vehicle registration, and after the cash is removed from your account you're presented with additional terms that need to be agreed to in order to receive your tags. Even if you've agreed to some specific contract, that kind of coercion can invalidate the additional terms, even though the party whose ToS you agreed to might not have known about the coercion.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#95

Post by hansvm »

aflag wrote: post #73
wolco5 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true at all. No one is coming for a visit ever. You could be known as Daffy Duck or Obama or call yourself that. There is no legal requirement to use a legal name. What sites do if a legal name is required is to require a credit card and get the info from there. Clicking,I do not agree is not borderline fraud. Turning off javascript and not getting a tos prompt is not fraud either.

I think disabling javascript could be considered hacking the software.

Intent might matter a little. I wouldn't be surprised if disabling JS for the purpose of bypassing an access control falls afoul of the CFAA but intentionally browsing the web without JS (e.g. via lynx) does not. If that were the case, they'd have to prove that you intentionally circumvented their access controls.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#96

Post by hundchenkatze »

gorgoiler wrote: post #6

If a website knows I didn't really read a contract, can they claim I am bound by it? I like to hope that the time-spent-reading is logged somewhere. Should it come up in court, Website.com would be required to disclose their logs which would show that I spent all of 1.35s reading their terms and conditions, most of which was spent scrolling. Another puerile hack of mine is to sign a document with the name "I do not a…

Here's a case between Uber and a blind person [0].

TLDR:

- Someone is suing Uber for discrimination because drivers didn't allow the person's guide dog in the car.

- Uber's terms state users can't sue Uber and must go through Uber's arbitration process

- Uber's terms were presented in the "By continuing you agree to these terms" fashion

- Person claimed they never agreed to arbitration and that they should be allowed to sue Uber, and a state court agreed

> But the broader impact of the ruling is to put companies on notice that they can't bind users to restrictive terms merely by linking to those terms somewhere in a site or app's registration process. In order to create a legally binding contract, a tech company has actually put the terms in front of the user and get them to affirmatively agree to them.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/court-says-uber-...

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#97

Post by novok »

I think the compromise to TOS type things is they can only be limited to a list of house rules that you can enforce with or without an agreement, kind of like booting off a rowdy customer off of the property of your retail store. Like, ‘here are the rules’ and that is about it.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#99

Post by de_nied »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #80
joekrill wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely astounding to me how many folks blindly sign legal documents. Especially employment related. Whenever I've pushed back on an employment contract, NDA, or similar it's always met with sudden confusion - as though this has never happened before. In fairness, it's almost never met with negatively. But it shows that no one else has ever bothered to question it. And when I talk to colleagues I definitely g…

The problem arises especially when the document is written in legalese. I also feel like I'm not really qualified to understand these documents - they are generally written for people who have the appropriate qualifications. For example when buying a property in the UK, the soliciter will be the one parses the legal documents. It's crazy to think that normal people are expected to fully understand these, and it doesn…

That's why documents written in legalese always define the words used before they start using them. At least in the U.S.

Re: Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

#100

Post by nikanj »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #27
gorgoiler wrote: post #6

If a website knows I didn't really read a contract, can they claim I am bound by it? I like to hope that the time-spent-reading is logged somewhere. Should it come up in court, Website.com would be required to disclose their logs which would show that I spent all of 1.35s reading their terms and conditions, most of which was spent scrolling. Another puerile hack of mine is to sign a document with the name "I do not a…

This is why they’re non enforceable in a real court. If I put the rights to your inheritance in a tos no judge is actually going to enforce that, because no one would reasonably sign that away for access to a website. In reality only things which you would reasonably expect to be in a tos or privacy policy could be enforced, given 99% of users don’t read them, or understand them.

Luckily they don't end up in real courts, because corporations go for mandatory arbitration nowadays.
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