Slashdot Mirror
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?
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!
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.