Terms of Service; Didn't Read

by Nition • 9 years ago

197 62 9 years ago

jackmott2• 9 years ago

I actually quite enjoy lying about having read them.

I actually enjoy writing ridiculous things inside my app's terms of service. Stories, making fun of the possible users of said apps, quips about when the Undertaker threw Mankind off of cage

Its fun.

Also, Penny Stock newsletters also have similarly funny things in their disclaimers, check them out, its a by product of the regulators strong-arming and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. It was my inspiration.

leggomylibro3• 9 years ago

I actually don't really support these movements. I would prefer that we entirely deligitimize the notion of 'terms of service' having any measure of enforceability or weight.

No, I have not read your terms and I do not agree with them. I do, however, reject the legitimacy of their use and will happily check a box that lets me proceed unmolested.

And by continuing to provide your service to me, you agree that that my implicit rejection of your TOS' legitimacy is correct. That attitude from a customer towards every business is just as reasonable as a business expecting every customer to read and implicitly accept their specific and lengthy legal stipulations.

Clubber2• 9 years ago

Unfortunately, I believe a count of law would side with the company with the TOS.

jackmott2• 9 years ago

Yes, OP is aware of the current state of the universe, and proposing a new state.

leggomylibro3• 9 years ago

Maybe, maybe not - it depends on how enforceable the courts consider the TOS, and I'm pretty sure they can't override actual laws or legislation.

Anyways, I mostly don't think about it. Time is a scarce resource, and it's fastest (as well as perfectly reasonable) just to pretend they don't exist. Issues are unlikely to arise, and I consider anything that isn't data under my control to be at the mercy of these providers anyways. If they have a problem with how I use their service or something, they can let me know and stop serving me.

PeterisP• 9 years ago

It depends on the jurisdiction. You'd be right for USA, but in many other places click-through agreements (and shrinkwrap agreements for e.g. physically sold software) aren't worth the paper they're (not) written on, they're not considered binding.

jaredklewis• 9 years ago

It depends. See MEYER V. KALANICK where the court held some provisions of uber's adhesive terms of service unenforceable since a small hyperlink to a TOS was not considered sufficient notice to the user that they were waiving their right to a trial by jury.

https://casetext.com/case/meyer-v-travis-kalanick-uber-techs...

jopsen• 9 years ago

I'm with you on that boat... let's hope we never get sued :)

I'm not lawyer, but generally providers can't hold us to a contract if the provider didn't think we would read (bad faith contract). However, we can't void a contract by choosing not to read it. hehe...

You can't outsmart the law -- so unknowingly being stupid might be the best defense :)

QAPereo• 9 years ago

Very much on your side I think would be the fact that virtually no one reads them and millions of them are clicked/signed per day. This isn't just a just a case of you not reading a contract you knew you wanted to violate, but you engaging in a very standard practice, known to the companies themselves and everyone else.

The fiction of terms of services only exists so long as they go unchallenged in any major sense.

lisper2• 9 years ago

No, I have not read your terms and I do not agree with them.

Then don't use the service. No one is holding a gun to your head.

asp_hornet• 9 years ago

How many terms of service have you read? If you haven't read it and understood it for every service you use how do you even know if you are within their terms?

quadrangle• 9 years ago

http://mimiandeunice.com/2011/03/31/the-social-kool-aid/

rhapsodic2• 9 years ago

I actually don't really support these movements. I would prefer that we entirely deligitimize the notion of 'terms of service' having any measure of enforceability or weight.
No, I have not read your terms and I do not agree with them. I do, however, reject the legitimacy of their use and will happily check a box that lets me proceed unmolested.

Do you feel the GPL should be enforceable based on the header comments in GPLed source code?

gpm4• 9 years ago

The GPL isn't a contract (in the FSF's opinion anyways), it doesn't restrict any of your rights, it simply grants you a few more. (E.g. to make copies as long as you follow certain rules)

If the GPL was a contract that tried to restrict your rights, then putting in header comments should not make it enforceable.

mortehu• 9 years ago

This question is actually covered by GPL itself, in section 9, "Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.":

You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.

leggomylibro3• 9 years ago

Well yes, but mostly because things that are licensed under the GPL are generally done so to allow someone to read and learn from them while still acknowledging their commercial value. Also, software licenses are often standardized and available in common language.

If I use a GPL-licensed library, I'm going to be reading it pretty thoroughly. I need to deeply understand how to work with it. It's fair to expect that a developer look at 'LICENSE.md' as well as 'README.md,' when the license generally falls into one of about a half-dozen easy-to-understand categories.

But hey, that's me. 'People' as big as fucking Qualcomm ignore the GPL in the same way that I ignore a TOS, and nobody's cut off their service yet. I'd appreciate if they did, because following the metaphor they are abusing the service in a way that impacts other users, but c'est la vie.

lightedman• 9 years ago

"I would prefer that we entirely deligitimize the notion of 'terms of service' having any measure of enforceability or weight."

You're going to have to change copyright law, then, because one of the biggest things in any competent site's ToS is "You grant us unlimited, perpetual permission to modify/redistribute/host/etc. your content." Without that contractual agreement, most websites and forums and image hosting services could not exist as we know them today.

Iv• 9 years ago

You're going to have to change copyright law

It would be about damn time!

daxfohl• 9 years ago

I can't believe I can't downvote this more. Who provides services without terms to them? Moms, basically. Beyond moms, service providers have better things to do than provide those services unabated. While I can imagine that partaking of services without honoring those terms is the most awesome thing ever, who in their right mind will continue to offer services if this sympathy becomes the default?

justboxing• 9 years ago

Mildly amusing, tosdr.org itself doesn't have a TOS, just the following disclaimer which says that it's not a replacement for reading the full terms to which you are bound :)

Nothing here should be considered legal advice. We express our opinion with no guarantee and we do not endorse any service in any way. Please refer to a qualified attorney for legal advice. Reading ToS;DR is in no way a replacement for reading the full terms to which you are bound. Disclosure: a list of donors and supporters is published. All legal information and Imprint.

mikedilger• 9 years ago

I think the class numbering over-summarizes things to the point of having almost no meaning. It pretends too much that we all care about the same things.

Each of us is willing to accept different sets of terms. If standardized terms were available, matching up what I am will to accept (presuming a register such information somewhere) against a ToS could algorithmically show me whether or not the ToS is acceptable to me without me having to read it.

mcescalante• 9 years ago

I see this site pop up about once a year. It hasn't had a real discussion in the past year, or I believe it may be a dupe. Previous discussions (ordered by number of comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4350907

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5888393

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9678357

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8394144

roceasta• 9 years ago

The ToS box is a debasement of standards of public discourse. Not only do most individuals knowingly lie, everybody knows that they lie, and they know that everybody knows that they lie, et cetera. It makes me question the legitimacy of marriage vows and statements like 'How are you?'

dwyerm• 9 years ago

I'm pleased to see the forced arbitration and class action waivers get noticed, here.

I was going to recommend the EFF's "TOSBACK" program, but it turns out they're already linked to TOSDR. I'm pleased that TOSBACK is still running! I expected to find it dying from lack of support, like the EFF's printer tracking dots list.

sdrzyxr• 9 years ago

We should enforce software to pause on the term of service page for a period of time that is sufficient enough for a average human to read through (say 1 min per 500 words). Then it would be at software companies' interests to simplify their shit. No companies want their customers to stay on the TOS page for an hour

a012• 9 years ago

I minute reading ToS won't give you any worthy information.

Vinnl2• 9 years ago

GP didn't say they had to force users to read them for 1 minute, but that they had to force users to read them for a length of time appropriate for the length of the ToS. In effect, this would make it harder for companies with lengthy ToS to attract users.

cdibona• 9 years ago

I'm actually kind of proud of this one (I wrote, had our lawyer review, he added a stanza or two and said good to go.)

https://www.fracturedveil.com/terms-and-conditions

Our privacy policy is amazing, too.

Edit: It's a little swear filled...

whatsinaname22• 9 years ago

I think it's funny a company named Evernote doesn't let you delete your account.

nicwilson3• 9 years ago

What we really need is a set of standard (or at least de facto) ToS, like we have for OSS licences, so that companies can then list deviation from the standard ToS. That would reduce the body of text required to be read and might actually make people read it and they would be more likely to understand the requirements the ToS.

fiatjaf2• 9 years ago

Thanks, this is it. I've just posted the same thing before reading your comment.

Who should start that movement? Perhaps we could trigger it by having a public repository of (provisional) licenses and start linking to it from our side projects?

nicwilson3• 9 years ago

Well I dont have any projects (let alone side projects) that need a ToS. Ultimately those who start it will be those that benefit from having readable unambiguous ToS. Some benevolent company? A company that has been bitten my unenforceable ToS? A startup that doesn't want to complicate legal? ISO? EFF?

What stops me from contributing to that effort is at that I don't know (and dont really want to know) enough legal to know common variations of in ToS. Not to mention the wide range of fields that ToSes cover.

fineline• 9 years ago

That does seem like a better approach for helping people understand what their rights and obligations are. Whether that aligns with the interests of every system provider is another question.

nicwilson3• 9 years ago

Well hopefully spending less on legal is incentive enough. Knowing their ToS is enforceable is also a boon, unless they are deliberately trying to make the ToS in the grey, but then they probably wouldn't want to use a standard ToS anyway.

If if were to catch on hopefully user and social pressure would help to keep its adoption up.

aargh_aargh• 9 years ago

I think that standard is called the Commercial Code. It hasn't stopped companies from putting into ToS even things that are in CCs since they operate in many countries and CCs are, by their nature, national.

fiatjaf2• 9 years ago

Just like there are standardized open-source licenses we can just look at and recognize (MIT, GPL, Apache etc.) there should be standardized terms of service.

Or perhaps modular terms. COOKIES = We use cookies blablabla. NON-GUARANTEE = You are by yourself etc., I don't know, I've never read these things carefully.

Vinnl2• 9 years ago

I haven't been involved with this project for a while, but I am still following their mailinglist. Please note that there hasn't been a lot of development and hence the ratings are somewhat out-of-date. The main reason for this is that they need developers (preferably Ruby/RoR, but I guess they'd be open to others as well) to redevelop the rating system.

They've actually got funds, so if anyone is looking for a side job on a project they appreciate, hit them up on their mailinglist: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tosdr

jlengrand• 9 years ago

Not related to the article, but I was happy to see a Flattr link. I thought it was dead. Apparently not!

luckystarr• 9 years ago

Great service! Their browser plugin is sadly not compatible with Firefox Nightly as it exclusively uses WebExtensions[1].

I won't switch back from Nightly. The performance difference is just too great to ever go back to the "stable" versions. :) Not had any crashing issues yet.

1. https://developer.mozilla.org/de/Add-ons/WebExtensions

Terms of Service; Didn't Read

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