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The Web's Longest Disclaimer
An anonymous reader writes "American Airlines are nominated for the 'longest website enduser agreement' category with customers requiring to accept this mammoth 'I accept' dialog before using their site. The tale of the tape includes: 181 paragraphs; 3482 words; and
22411 characters. However even mentioning this is probably in violation of the text."
Funny - it's quicker to NOT ACCEPT as accepting takes you to the AAdvantage enrollment while NOT accepting drops you right into making a reservation.
However even mentioning this is probably in violation of the text
:)
taken from the disclaimer:
American Airlines specifically denies you permission to hyperlink or provide references to the Site, unless you are allowed to do so under a separate written agreement with American Airlines
so yes, you did violate a portion of it
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
"You may not copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit, use to create a derivative work, or otherwise use the content of the Site for public or commercial purposes. Nothing on the Site shall be construed to confer any grant or license of any intellectual property rights, whether by estoppel, by implication, or otherwise."
:D
If you cant even display it, how is it legal to even review the agreement?
I think it's up to us to get organized and publish the main points of the various EULAs/disclaimers out there. That'd be a useful website.
- American Airlines specifically denies you permission to hyperlink or provide references to the Site, unless you are allowed to do so under a separate written agreement with American Airlines.
I hope timothy didn't accept the license before posting the story.It does appear that most of it has been stolen from any other terms and conditions page and hacked around to fit American Airlines... Especially all those bits about using their website to distribute files that shouldn't be distributed (who's going to use AA to distribute mp3's?!?!?)
Hiding the meat and potatoes of a legal argument behind a layer of fluff and doublespeak is incredibly common. In a "CYA" society, you've got to expect that they're going to say everything and anything they can to protect themselves from any sort of liability. What they don't realize however, is that these agreements probably wouldn't stand up under any light.
:)
For example, one clause "By using the Site, you represent and warrant that you are 18 years of age or older and possess the legal right and ability to enter into this Agreement and to use the Site in accordance with all of the terms and conditions of this Agreement" could cause more than a number of problems. Say someone under the age of 18 purchases a ticket from them online...now what? are they legally obligated to actually provide a service to this person, even though said customer is technically not allowed to use the site?
The rest of the agreement seems to be pretty standard web-related agreements. Agreeing not to upload/download files (1) to a national or resident of or into any country the U.S. has embargoed, including without limitation, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, or Yugoslavia; (2) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department's Specially Designated Nationals list, or (3) to anyone on the U.S. Commerce Department's Table of Denial Orders.
And then at the end of it all, there's the biggest CYA: You may not: S. Engage in any other conduct that is, or that American Airlines deems to be, in conflict with this Agreement.
Moreover, then there's the liability agreement for the agreement at the end:
American Airlines may alter, change or improve the Content at any time and without notice.
Then their privacy policy regarding information they take from you. Although this is a bit of a mind-puzzler:
American Airlines will not treat as confidential any communications you send to us by electronic mail or otherwise. American Airlines has no obligation to refrain from publishing, reproducing, or otherwise using your communications in any way and for any purpose.
First company I've seen doing that...Wonder why.
And then, the final straw: You agree that Texas law governs this Agreement's interpretation and/or any dispute arising from your access to, dealings with, or use of the Site, without regard to conflicts of law principles.
Ouch.
The last paragraph, however, is the greatest laugh-inducer:
If any provision of this Agreement is found to be invalid or unenforceable, then the invalid or unenforceable provision will be stricken from this Agreement without affecting the validity or enforceability of any other provision.
So, they could essentially put "You must name your first child after American Airlines", have it be struck down as idiotic, but the rest of the agreement still stands...nice
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
I think the key line in that agreement is
Likewise, [...] this agreement will be considered broadened to the extent needed to permit [...] third parties to operate within the terms of a written agreement they have entered into with us.
In other words, this policy you have to agree to is only valid as long as it doesn't interfere with agreements AA has and will make with 3rd parties. Which basically means, you're agreeing to anything that AA and its partners agree to.
It reminds me of a lot of EULAs/policies where there is a long list of who the company might and might not share information with and may seem very stringent, but at the very end of the list is a short give away line to the effect that they can share the information with anybody.
Also, it would be illegal according to the terms of the agreement to post this policy here, as in their policy you agree not to "copy, display, distribute, download, license, modify, publish, re-post, reproduce, reuse, sell, transmit" any of their HTML code or "the content of the Site" for public or commercial purposes.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
Something similar has been posted here before: Longest email disclaimer awards. The longest disclaimer was apparently 7K large and the unlucky "winner" was UBS Warburg.
Also, an analysis of stupid e-mail disclaimers.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
I think it's IBM that when you are downloading a new BIOS for your ThinkPad or whatever, you actually have to type "agree" for the installer to make the boot floppy with the new BIOS image on it.
What I'm not understanding is why don't we DOS their lawyers, by asking a LOT of technical questions about this "agreement." Like call the 800 number and tell them you have a question about para. 14, line 8 in the online agreement, and you'd like some clarification. Then send certified mail asking the same thing.
It wouldn't acomplish much, but it would make some poor schmuck's day at the office more miserable. Schadenfeude or whatever you call it. It would also be cool to know if there could be such thing of a write-in slashdot effect.
By the way, did you know that when you call AA to book a flight, you could be talking to a prison inmate? I feel warm and fuzzy just thinking about telling convicted felons the exact dates I won't be in my home.
[You shall not] Monitor or copy any Content by using any manual process, or any robot, spider, or other automatic device, without first obtaining American Airlines' prior written consent.
However:
$ wget http://www.aa.com/robots.txt
--10:23:00-- http://www.aa.com:80/robots.txt
=> `robots.txt' Connecting to www.aa.com:80... connected!
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not found
10:23:01 ERROR 404: Not found.
So they've not got a robots.txt file. Do they expect web crawlers to read and understand this also??
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
While an undergrad, one course (taught in Prolog) required all the students to take a given program, amend it and provide hardcopy traces of the output after each of the 5 stages to show that the program "still worked." Leaving aside the inherent flaws (which I could argue mean the original program could never "work!") I stumbled upon the documentary requirement placed on students. Two of us produced the first phase of the first part's printed documentation and a projection that a complete answer would cost tens of thousands of pounds in paper and ink and take several years to print even given exclusive use of the university's fastest printers. When challenged, the lecturer (who set this dastardly task) explained that all he really wanted was a 'heavy' submission from each student - in order to dissuade moderators from questioning the grades he deemed appropriate as they would have no desire to wade through a few hundred pages of output before making their case!
The sooner people realise that documentary complexity and volume doesn't gain advantages the better. It would be great to see a shift in opinion about such treatise requiring that the document be taken as a whole - and considered void in it's entirety should it contain anything redundant, unnecessarily convoluted or not legally binding. If this doesn't happen, I can only envisage licenses plummet further towards their own obsolescence.
Sorry, but as a translator I have had quite a few major web sites to translate and this EULA (read "charter" in most other languages) is neither shorter nor longer in any significant way than most others I've seen. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to say what these other sites are (professional ethics...), but I will say that since words are my billing units, meaning I have to count them every time, I know what I'm talking about. 3000 to 4000 words is commonplace -- and believe me, translating them is boring!
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Shame their 9/11 security wasn't as tight as their web site T's and C's.
Ooof! Don't I know it! Yeah I missed that part of the IUMA EULA once.
But now my son Iuma is 2 years old and doesn't seem to mind it so much.
that's not malicious--that is AWESOME. the point of kazaa is to download movies, software, and mp3s. the point is NOT legal file sharing. kazaa writes the software for dowloading illegal material (thank you Kazaa). so anything confusing about the applications of the EULA due to what the user missed in paraphrase is a blessing. anything to compound the situation.
oh my god please don't mod me down because i admitted to file sharing.
I clicked on the "I do not accept" button and it took me right to a page to book reservations or check the status of my frequent flyer miles (I have none with AA). Many web sites stop you dead in your tracks for refusing a EULA, but apparently, American is more concerned with getting your paid business than your behavior. I guess their lawyers have a lot of time on their hands.
Everybody does know that this is an enduser agreement for their frequent flier program, and not for their website, right?
It's clearly marked there, and if you click on "I Do Not Agree" you are taken to the main page of their website to place your order--no fuss, no muss.
I'm not arguing that some of their terms aren't ridiculous--but this agreement's length is not to block people from the main site, but probably to keep people from abusing their frequent flier program.
Did everyone just tear into the legalese immediately, w/o reading anything else?
They tried to hold me to the terms of this agreement even though I never saw it or agreed to it.
I was selling Kellogg's AAdvantage coupons that I had cut off cereal boxes on ebay. Somebody from American sent me a threatening letter telling me I was in violation of the terms of use of the AAdvantage program. They also sent a letter to my bidders who backed out of the auction on threat of having their AAdvantage accounts terminated.
When I responded to their original email asking how they can enforce a penalty against me if I never signed up for AAdvantage, they never responded.
Since then, I have continued to sell AAdvantage coupons on ebay in private auctions so American Airlines can't hassle my buyers.
Actually, I read about one big ERP ( IIRC ) company having to choose some specific place as their corporate HQ -- they'd run a hierarchy-on-demand system with no HQ, but that wasn't acceptable to the IRS.
'read that in "Corps Business: the 30 Management Principles of the US Marines" ( David H Freedman, and it's an excellent book )
Messages to/for me ( in me journal )
Actually, this is one of those things that will require the government to step in and set a standard. In the same way that the FDA has mandated ingredient lables - some gov't entity needs to step in and set a standard.
Before the Food Labelling Act it was a nightmare for people that had allergies - just a simple substance like tomatoes can be found even in small quantities of some very "un-tomato-like" products.
You know, the more I think about this, the more I like it. Economic theory states that the capitalist system breaks down if there is asymmetry of information. For example, if a car dealer knows he's selling you a lemon, which is why we have anti-fraud laws and the like. Lawyers create an asymmetry of information too, though, because a corporation can afford to have lawyers look at every document they draft or sign, but the average citizen cannot. Often the result is the creation of the onerous "agreements" which essentially state, if you'll pardon the old joke, "all your base are belong to us." People agree anyway, because they don't have the time or ability to check other companies to compare agreements, and see which is the least restrictive. So, if this reduced the ability of corporations to abuse this superior information, I think it'd be great.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
IANANAL (I am not anal) but I'm pretty sure it already invalidates a contract to include illegal requirements. All that remains to do is declare that the statement "Illegal parts of this contract are removed" illegal, and the whole thing collapses.
And yes, I agree about the asymmetry of information destroying the free market. That, along with the lack of consideration of those born into a disadvantaged family by no fault of their own, is why I am *not* a libertarian. The libertarian system would require a more informed consumer than is feasible, particularly when information would be more easily concealed with the suggested greater freedom.
Just type this URL into your address bar while viewing the disclaimer:
javascript:for (i=0; t=document.getElementsByTagName ("textarea")[i]; ++i) void(t.readOnly=false)
Then you can delete all the text, change all the vowels to o's, or do whatever you do with annoying contracts in real life.
You can even keep this URL as a "bookmarklet" on your personal toolbar and click it whenever you need to edit a read-only textarea.
The shareholder is always right.
The Yahoo Instant Messenger agreement is presented to you in a 2-inch-square window, with no option to print the agreement. If you copy the text out, you find that the agreement is 14 pages long, 7,219 words, 44,847 characters in length. Reading this agreement in the original window would require about 1,000 page-down clicks and probably take the average person a significant fraction of an hour to complete (and would not be a pleasant experience).
How can this be enforcable?
G.
Actually, I think the original poster got it right, but the important thing, at least here in England, would be that if any reasonable person couldn't understand it [and I'll say that several reasonable people seem to be having difficulty understanding it's meaning] then (IANAL) the meaning upheld shall be that which is most favourable to the consumer.
Of course the whole thing is based on the entirely unresonable belief that any reasonable or average consumer would a) read it all and b) read it all and understand it, before clicking "I accept."
IMHO, these EULAs are lawyer power-trip wet-dreams; they're what people would give themselves if they could give themselves indemnity from any risk whatsoever, and make everyone else carry the buck, responsibility etc.
It's all "kids saying what they would do if they were God/King/Ruler of The World.
In the UK the Office of Fair Trading would strike out about half this eula, if you ask me. They have on their website a pdf of stuff they made companies change in their on-line contracts, some of it is hilarious.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Try MSN Hotmail, too. Look for the _linked_ EULA's nested inside the main EULA.
It didn't take me long to find longer T&Cs. I just went to Google and searched for "Terms and Conditions", which of course is not going to find those agreements that are called by a different name.
Anyway, the very first one I found was longer than American Airlines', and the second was WAY longer.
1) ICQ: 31,969 characters
2) Lycos 88,220 characters (dude!)
Anyway, here's a summary of about five minutes worth of work. I started to get sick to my stomach and quit after that:
This is `wc -c` output:
6991 tucows.txt
11292 dell.txt
11635 att.txt
13467 ge.txt
22585 american_airlines.txt
31969 icq.txt
88220 lycos.txt