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FSFE Interview With 'Terms of Service: Didn't Read' Founder
An anonymous reader writes with an interesting interview "Hugo's project Terms of Service: Didn't Read has recently won international attention in publications such as TIME, Le Monde, and ZEIT, in its campaign to simplify the legal terms of web services. He is FSFE's French Team coordinator, co-founder of the Digital Freedoms association, and in 2009 did extensive work on the impact of Europe's Interoperability Framework (EIF) on Free Software users."
Boooooring.
I almost didn't click the link, but tos-dr.info contains some ridiculously convenient roll ups of all those Terms of Service I never read.
It's nice to see at a quick glance which services are being shady a-holes in which ways.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
They plan on summarising ToS, so that we have a simple and quick guide to what we are agreeing to. Personally I cannot see how a simple rating system would work, I think they would have to copy the games ESRB rating system. Giving a grade, the tell us a summary of why it is bad (or possibly good).
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Please take notice, this is a legal declaration.
You or a computer operating on your behalf's actions has chosen to accept this users data displayed here,
in so doing you explicitly agree that all terms, conditions and and limitations imposed by yourselves are hereby declared void for all of this users communications, furthermore you agree this policy is binding and final resolute, any further changes to this users policy will be available to you at the users discretion in writing only (administration fees will apply, allow 180 days for processing).
Please note this does not affect your statuary rights as applicable by law.
Basically it doesn't scale to spend 30 minutes analysing multiple page privacy policies/ToS/EULA, then possibly several hours or days cross-referencing them with applicable legislation. So I think the approach should be to make any lopsided legal document unenforceable, to speed up trade. Imagine if you had to sign a multiple page contract every time you bought something from a shop.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Once I was a coop software engineer and the agreement they made me sign was clearly written simply to be signed and not read.
It clearly make it nearly impossible to continue being a coop software engineer after signing it, but I was told that they would not use it unless it was an extreme case and I should just sign it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
In the Netherlands, any contract that makes explicit claims about rights, especially terms of service, make them default against the party drawing up the explicit terms. That means, as soon as they define something, anything not in that definition, is automatically excluded. This works great for consumer rights, but tends to make terms of service incredibly TL;DR. I'm fairly certain that this the case in most western countries. Not putting something like this in your law, makes terms of service and contracts worse, so it's a catch 22.
What would help, is legislation that would make any contract or legal document not drawn up to be comprehensible by the "target audience" null and void. Any legalese or obfuscation should automatically make that part of the contract not applicable. That should teach lawyers and companies to keep things clear, simple and understandable. Also, a lot less court cases should appear, since people would know what they were dealing with and would be able to settle their differences without a court.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
TOS/EULA terms are completely out of control, and the idea that most people are in any way cognizant of what they are agreeing to is a complete fiction. Everyone knows this, especially the people who draft them, but almost no one seems to care. It's easier just to click "I agree" and get on with your life.