Consumer Campaigners Read T&C Of Their Mobile Phone Apps To Prove a Point (bbc.com)

From a BBC report: Norwegians have spent more than 30 hours reading out terms and conditions from smartphone apps in a campaign by the country's consumer agency. The average Norwegian has 33 apps, the Norwegian Consumer Council says, whose terms and conditions together run longer than the New Testament. To prove the "absurd" length, the council got Norwegians to read each of them out in real time on their website. The reading finished on Wednesday, clocking in at 31:49:11. Some of the world's most popular apps were chosen, including Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, Skype, Instagram and Angry Birds. Finn Myrstad from the Norwegian Consumer Council, said: "The current state of terms and conditions for digital services is bordering on the absurd."

Comments

Terms and conditions are generally obnoxious

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone read Slashdot's T&C? There are some onerous things in there, too. It's not exactly short or easy to understand. This is pretty common, unfortunately. And Slashdot is no better.

Trust

[captaindomon]

So what is interesting is that 100 years ago, most business was transacted on trust. Shaking someone's hand and trusting them to be honest. Then we got into a lot of legalese. But now we've gone back - there is *so much* legalese around *everything* that we are back to doing business based on trust again. We buy apps from companies that we generally trust. We do business online based on reputations of companies. So the legalese has peaked and now we don't even pay attention to it anymore. It's interesting how we have gone full circle.

We need standard TOS

[gurps_npc]

A government agency should right up a generic TOS, with appropriate safeguards for consumer rights as well as for the corporation. Even include a reasonable requirement for arbitration (one that works both ways - they can't sue you if you can't sue them).

Then we could say that you can only get consent by click if the TOS was approved by the agency. Otherwise, you would need a real, actual ink on paper signature to get consent for TOS.

Nice compromise - corps can still create bullshit TOS, but they need to get you to sign paper to use that.

Re:Who is to blame?

[Kjella]

This has nothing to do with a litigious society. T&C's are this way because nobody in their right mind would accept them if they weren't obfuscated beyond comprehension.

Like that BSD license an AC quoted?:

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Every word of that blob has come because some lawyer somewhere has managed to twist contract law, liability law, tort law or some other crazy law to say you're on the hook. Really all you needed to say is:

This software is provided "as-is" without any warranty.

That's it really. You're not promising it does anything now, you're not promising it will do anything in the future. The rest is just crap, if you tell me you're going to do something stupid with it I shouldn't have the burden of convincing you otherwise.

Terms & conditions are the product of decades of such crap piling up, every time a lawyer goes for a crazy loophole you clam it up with more legalese because hey, who cares? Nobody reads it anyway. In fact, maybe it's not even your product but you read about someone else's case and preemptively add it to your T&C. Be honest, despite all the legalese how often has any company actually used it? For the most part I pay, they deliver. If they don't deliver, I don't pay. That seems to work with 90% of the companies and resolve 90% of the conflicts with the reminder and the last 1% I just dispute the bill and see if they'll take me to court. No takers yet.