Slashdot Mirror
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."
attorneys making bank
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.
Reading them online for hours is equally stupid. At least it go some attention.
A good start.
Is that thirty-one hours or thirty-one days?
We should sue whoever is responsible.
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.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
No, it means we need standardized T&C for software, without the ability for vendors to drop onerous changes on us with minimal notice.
It's time to commodify software to the benefit of users rather than to the benefit of the vendor.
Make useful software and charge whatever you want, but tricks should be forbidden.
If you wouldn't try abusing the contract we wouldn't sue.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
T&C? T&C? Hell, I won't even read TFA. Sometimes I can't be bothered to read the entire TFS. Hell with any T&C.
Make that "bordering on the absurd" for cargo pant values of "bordering".
In the new world, the "explorers" were attempting to trade with the natives, and they offered up an iPhone or Android app "just as soon as we complete a mandatory oral ceremony around the camp fire" they'd be saying "just give us the fucking glass beads already!" long before this obligatory oratory concluded.
Not so different from today's youth.
is there a gold standard EULA that isn't so bad for the user? I envision creating one, and marketing it as a magic icon next to a service's EULA that means the equivalent of "we're not going to totally screw you" that leave the user feeling better about the service. does anyone know of such a thing? a quick search didn't reveal anything
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.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Law firm scuba team building retreat?
I hate to be the one to inform you of this, but we passed that landmark 15 years ago between Sony, EA, and Microsoft.
The attorneys make bank for navigating the over 60,000 pages of codified federal statues and regulations, plus the uncodified ones (just the LIST of uncodified laws is 1,400 pages), plus an equal amount of state law. Of course those are just a tiny fraction of the total law. With my eyes closed, I clicked a random bit of the Slashdot Terms & Conditions; this is what came up:
The Sites may contain links to other web sites operated by third parties, other than affiliates of the Company (âoeLinked Sitesâ). We neither control nor endorse such other web sites, nor have we reviewed or approved any content that appears on the Linked Sites.
Why do you figure that's in there? Because sometimes sue a site for linking to another site that was bad in some way. Plaintiff says "it's your fault Slashdot, you linked to them (thereby endorsing them), and I trusted your endorsement. Case law is another several hundred thousand pages of crap that the T&C is meant to protect against.
Something like http://creativecommons.org/cho... ?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
TL;DR
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
3 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
4 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
5 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
6 “You shall not murder.
7 “You shall not commit adultery.
8 “You shall not steal.
9 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10 “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.”
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I have been avoiding any product or web site with long, required TOS for a long time. One of the great things about Free software is that whey it says "BSD" or "GPL" or such, you know what you're getting and that's nice. When my doctor's office wants me to update my symptoms online, I remind them that the terms contained promises I knew I might not keep, so I strongly prefer not to use that site (they're very good about it, fortunately!).
And I talk to people about it. I was going to comment online on an letter published by a local newspaper, but wrote the editors instead saying why I didn't: because not even the lawyers who wrote the terms would actually read such things in most sites they use, and it's not honest to expect people to agree to things almost no one reads, and they don't really expect anyone to read.
Now if the rest of you would do what I'm doing, maybe after a while they would pay more attention...? It's a request.
(Most sites don't actually require you to agree first. There are a couple of sites I use anyway, where I had to agree. But I read and saved those terms with a date, and they're the exceptions that were really worth it to me. If anyone asks in the next day or so I can share the letter I sent to those newspaper editors and you can do similarly. I read some years ago that some of those terms -- the ones that say you agree to any changes without notice by continuing to use the site -- were struck down in the USA's 9th circuit court, but I don't know the latest on that.)
If we all quietly accept a status of making laws no one follows, and agreeing to terms no one reads, we move farther on a fast slippery slope toward the rule of men, instead of the rule of law, because now everyone is a lawbreaker and can be manipulated by people. Students of history know it's been done. Right??
I imagine I read slashdot's terms once, but it's been a long time and I don't remember. It's hard to be perfect at this. Sigh.
A Free, fast personal organizer for touch typists: onemodel
FTA: "The current state of terms and conditions for digital services is bordering on the absurd."
No, the state of terms and conditions for all kinds of "intellectual property" passed "absurd" at break-neck speed more than a decade ago. The current state of IP laws and terms is chewing-LSD-infused-magic-mushrooms-while-watching-Eraserhead-and-reading-Kafka-batshit-fucking-crazy. Absurd isn't even a tiny speck in the rear-view mirror.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
No T&C are this way because early on software publishers thought the law was an effective form of DRM.
Not strictly correct. The amount of time it would take to read the T&C for F-Droid apps is zero, because the GPL is not an end-user license. It's a distribution license, and only comes in to play if you plan on making and distributing copies of the software.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Interesting, I'm certain the T&C state that "by using, or continuing to use, this software, you agree to these terms and conditions", or something similar.
I suppose one could argue that, since they don't agree with the T&C, they don't agree with the stipulation set forth in said T&C that use of the software or service constitutes agreement with the T&C. It'd be interesting to see how that'd play out in court.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
But just that, but our regulatory society. Most of the terms and conditions are to protect themselves from government. This is why for example the terms and conditions for itunes says you can't use iTunes to commit thermonuclear war or terrorism.
Personally I prefer the language in the WTFPL
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
That is all very nice if you do not charge for it. If you do charge for it (smurfberries?), that implies the is useful. T&Cs cannot override consumer rights in most sane legal systems.
What it should have to say is nothing. Since the vast majority of software is going to be provided with these terms - i.e. "as is and without warranty"; then the law should be changed to say that unless otherwise specified all software is provided as is and without warranty etc. That should be the default. (or whatever we as society decide is a reasonable default for the majority of cases). Then only software that requires something else, such as that used to run critical systems will need more than the default terms and conditions or license - and the purchasers of that software will ask for such license terms.
We need to get to the point where the default covers the vast majority of cases. It's no longer the 70s where software was expensive and employing lawyers to draft licenses was a small proportion of the cost.
Really, these sorts of "gun to the head" agreements should simply be made unenforceable. No, you can't actually get people to "agree" to handing over a spare kidney to you by slipping that requirement into paragraph 2,532 on page 845 of a 9,000 page document, and companies shouldn't be able to slip other onerous language in there either. The simplest solution is for courts to require actually-informed consent when asked to enforce a contract, and refuse to enforce "click-through" contracts, because those contracts do not involve informed consent.
Because a contract without informed consent isn't really a contract. And, no, presenting a 10,000 paragraphs document of legalese to a consumer isn't "informed" consent. Those agreements are written so as to confound understanding by anyone BUT a lawyer, and even then, lawyers will often haggle over the meaning of phrases based on the positions of punctuation. By definition, then, there can be no informed consent.
Who did what now?
If you have to sign a contract after you buy a product, then you have the right to return that product. It may not mean much for downloaded software, but returning a product means a lot to hardware distributors, like cell phones themselves and computers and gaming machines. I returned multiple laptops because the Microsoft license was too long and I disagreed with the "Kill switch" option they put in their among other things. I have returned an XBOX because they only let you read 4 or 5 lines of the agreement at a time and it took me about 10 minutes to scroll down through it at full speed (not the speed at which I could read it). So I returned it. The store doesn't like it, but it certainly isn't my fault. So buy products and return them. I expect if more people did this, the contracts would become more reasonable to understand.