Robolawyer to Handle Clickwraps?

adelord writes "Recently Wired published an essay by Mark D. Rasch describing the need for a 'browser-based automaton that could be adjusted to match your tolerance for legal mumbo jumbo' to help the user navigate the torrent of user agreements most of us click through without reading. Is this a job for Google Labs, and if not, who else would write the software for it? Do you think it is a good idea? While the legal exposure from writing software that partially fills the role of a lawyer could be enormous, I sure that it would have an ironclad user agreement that I would simply click through in my excitement to use it."

Comments

Settings

[mfh]

I would like a prefs setting that goes something like:

• Idiot proof : no EULAs needed. I only want freely available stuff.
  
• Some legal crap allowed : we will allow some EULAs if they validate to XYZ standards
• Most legal crap allowed : pretty much anything goes, as long as it validates to some standard or another
• Nearly Wide Open : I will pretend that I only speak pig latin if they catch me on some bogus contractual agreement or copyright infringement. Iay eekspay igpay atinlay!
• Spyware bait : I have "I'm a sucker" tatooed on my forehead. All Nigerians are my friends and I must help them save their fortunes from the evil tyrany of Nigeria!

Proper Response

[Cajunator]

Just as long as Robolawyer started his response with : "IANAL, but...."

so will I need another robolawyer

[deathcloset]

to expain the first robolawyer's EULA?

Re:Do you think it is a good idea?

[WormholeFiend]

I don't think that lawyers themselves understand legalese properly.

Why? In the past, I've been asked to translate various contracts and agreements from English to French, and more often than not, when I talked to the alleged writer, s/he was not able to answer the question(s) I had about weird syntax/grammar that made the text basically nonsensical.

And a lot of them asked me to "keep the nonsensical part" in the resulting translation.

Incompetence or deliberate and dishonest obfuscation?

Natrual language parsing is hard enough for humans

[RealAlaskan]

I don't see a browser plugin doing a good job of it.

I could imagine EULAs having a ``metafield'' which would have values like: GPL, BSD, Unknown Proprietary, Not Specified. You could set your browser to click through known, approved licenses. I'm not sure that would be valuable, though; those that are generally known and widely regarded as innocuous are the ones that don't usually hassle you in the first place.

I'd rather see some effort put into enforcing the first sale doctrine, and invalidating EULAs and clickthroughs in court, myself.