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TOS Agreements Require Giving Up First Born -- and Users Gladly Consent
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: A recent study concludes what everybody already knows: nobody reads the lengthy terms of service and privacy policies that bombard Internet users every day. Nobody understands them. They're too long, and they often don't make sense. A study out this month made the point all too clear. Most of the 543 university students involved in the analysis didn't bother to read the terms of service before signing up for a fake social networking site called "NameDrop" that the students believed was real. Those who did glossed over important clauses. The terms of service required them to give up their first born, and if they don't yet have one, they get until 2050 to do so. The privacy policy said that their data would be given to the NSA and employers. Of the few participants who read those clauses, they signed up for the service anyway. "This brings us to the biggest lie on the Internet, which anecdotally, is known as 'I agree to these terms and conditions,'" the study found. The paper is called "The biggest lie on the Internet: Ignoring the privacy policies and terms of service policies of social networking services".This reminds me of a similar thing F-Secure security firm did in 2014. It asked London residents to give them their first child in exchange of free Wi-Fi access. The company, for the record, didn't collect any children.
I regularly say this to co-workers when I install software as small talk, even the paralegals agree they are completely ridiculous.
You just assume that everyone wants to keep their first born and not give their data to the NSA...
I am sure some people would love to take a kid off their hands. As for the NSA... well, we already give them all our data so why does it matter if that is or isn't in the TOS.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
My firstborn is already fully grown and moved out. Now, where was this 'NameDrop' thing when I was, say, in my 20's?
Sure, my first born... *laugh* then click "suuuuuuuure I accept", if they made some plausible sounding but ominous legalese they might have had some people refuse.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
i already have a contract with the devil...
I really liked the south park episode where they Apple tried to teach people not to do that by putting in permission for a human centipede.
The honest truth is those contracts are full of worthless lies intended to trick the unwary that are not aware that contracts can't make you give up certain rights.
We need to change the system to discourage/eliminate the TOS bullshit. I think that all TOS should be illegal unless they were fully negotiated by lawyers on BOTH sides - or approved by a federal agency as something that a citizen can understand and agree to without a lawyer.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Like they'd take my first-born.
Oh, they might put up with him for a day or so but then they'd want to give him back, and that's when they'd find out about my "no returns" policy.
I might waive the policy provision for a suitable amount of cash, plus handling fees, restocking costs, etc etc. A cool million or two ought to cover it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
A contract requiring you to give you your first-born is not legally binding (in the United States), so that's no reason not to click "accept".
Be careful - that is a pre-birth surrogacy agreement. Surrogacy agreements are valid in some states, all of Canada except Quebec, all of Australia, New Zealand, and of course Russia.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
under the CFAA you can less time for raping some to for fill the 2050 part then being found guilty of hacking under the CFAA for not compiling with the EULA rules.
Now that would make for a odd court case on both sides saying I did the rape to not get a longer time in lock up for being an hacker or in a hacking case say I could of raped some one and be looking at a less time in lockup.
any contract has to be in accordance with the law. no law can make you give up your kids. and data given to employers is subject to numerous laws as well
What folks don't realize is that US courts consider "law and equity". That is, the court rules both on the fine legal points established by precedence AND also on what is fair. Most courts would say that the users did NOT consent to giving up their first born because they were not aware the term was there. And you can't consent to what you don't know. This would certainly be the case here because the offending clause was hidden in the fine print. And that is not "fair". So a ruling in equity would be in favor of the users.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I mean ... raising children is a chore and costs a lot of money. Think of it as free board and tuition for the first brat so that you can safely experiment a little on the first and get it right with the second and the third. I call that a public service!
In addition ... the NSA has all my data already and just in case ... why would I want object to them collecting more on me? That would be un-patriottic, no?
In addition I'm not doing anything on the site that would upset my employer.
So err ... where's the problem? I find the honesty of the TOS rather refreshing actually.
Such a license would never hold up in court anyway. There has already been cases where these licenses were ruled not legally binding.
This brings out a question I have for a while and discussed several times before: Can ToS even have such powers? I mean, of course the research went an extra length to make things clear and exaggerated, but afaik, ToSs are not above the law, and they cannot force people who sign it to do stuff considered illegal, or just put too much burden into whoever signed it. I'm not sure where US law stands on this matter, but I think there are provisions for abusive/unfair/unconscionable contracts. Of course, people still have to be careful on what they are signing, and the study still makes it's point on how no one really reads or care about ToSs... but this particular ToS among some others would never be able to be enforced, right?
The problem is not with users being lazy or stupid as it is suggested in the article, but with TOS. For example Apple's TOS is 56 pages long and reading it won't you much good since without lawyer translating from legalese to English you are probably going to miss quite a lot of legal traps anyway. The 'fix' is to stop treating TOS as if it was a law - at best it is a list of company's wishes and hopes.
Their ULA has a clause you agree to wash the developers cars. Retracted at the end with a warning "You really should read these things!". Still never do more than skim them.
And sooner or later, a sensible judge will throw the terms of such a "click here" agreement out in an important case, with a ruling that states "everybody knows that nobody reads that shit" therefore it's invalid because it was not effectively communicated. This is valid legal reasoning because the context is that people are bombarded by impractically large numbers of these things in their everyday use of internet services. It is reasonable to infer that people will routinely start ignoring the fine print.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of fine print, I'm hoping for the first ruling that says along the lines of "The biggest demographic; people over 50, can't read that shit. It's too small. Therefore it is invalid. Bam. Case closed."
I Am Not A Lawyer But I Play One On The Internet
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
....I've read the TOS.
I am someone who does actually read the TOS for websites. I rarely like what I see and as a result, Slashdot is one of the very sites to which I subscribe.
However, the plain fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people don't read them and (here is the vital fact) almost always they don't subsequently feel that they have been disadvantaged as a result. For some strange reason, criminals and the generally dishonest are not setting up web sites, getting users to subscribe and then legally fleecing them. I am not suggesting silly things like First Born, but simple strategies like firstly including a clause saying you can unilaterally change the terms later (practically everyone does this) and then when you have a good few users change the rules to impose huge retrospective fees. Would this not work? I presume many people would challenge the bills in court and I have no idea what the courts would rule. Anyone know any case law?
It is clear to me that governments aren't interested either. Here in the UK, when you go into a shop you might often see a sign describing such things as their returns policy. At the bottom it will invariably say "Your statutory rights are not affected". This is because here consumers can't contract out of their basic consumer rights (e.g. if the product is faulty you are entitled to your money back and don't have to accept a voucher instead). There are some similar protections for buying things online (distance selling regulations) but none so far as I know that govern the contracts on web sites.
I strongly suspect that most smaller organisations don't even read their own TOS and simply copy them from someone else. I have often felt that with the vast majority of websites for which one might need to sign up being basically the same, it would be a good idea for the government to create three or four boilerplate TOSs to cover say 90% of cases. Web sites could then simply have a sign saying "Our web site is governed by UK Gov TOS 3" (I am sure a catchier title could be invented). Consumers wouldn't need to read the TOS because they were all the same and had been carefully checked, but web site owners would also benefit by knowing that their TOS had been well written (at someone else's expense) and would therefore be more likely to stand up in court than one they copied from another similar site and then got their nephew doing law at high school to tweak.
I was recently installing some software, and the actual, official documentation from the vendor had you skipping the EULA and typing Y to agree (Linux CLI install, so you could either space through it or "q" to skip it). My team and I wondered a bit at the legal implications of what would happen if a vendor telling you to skip their EULA ended up in court.
YEAH! Skewel is fer looosers!
That really depends both on their university and their major(s). There are still good universities out there.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
I have to applaud these forward thinking few. Understanding at this young age the potential and impending cost of childcare?
Let me find my time machine. I'll need to find 3 such agreements.
YEAH! Bachelor degrees are for everything! Get in line, citizen, the job your parents had with a high school degree and could sustain a family are now artificially restrained to university students and pay less than before and you have (private) student loans!
So far there is nothing in them that is enforced, that isn't also backed up by one law or another or that have become directly visible to users. The minute someone puts in "you will also buy us a car" and tries to enforce it, the ensuing shitstorm will at least invalidate the clause, if not (hopefully) undermine the entire broken system.
I'm a lawyer. I plow through these things regularly for clients to advise them whether certain objectionable things are present, or occasionally even to negotiate the fine details of the wording.
That being said, I don't read them at all when signing up for services for myself. Oh, I'll do better than most and actually read the closing documents for my house, or for the loan for my car, or an employment agreement, because there's real money involved there. But for "free" services, and even that $25/mo Netflix account, no, it's not worth the time or aggravation. You draw the line somewhere based upon how much you'd write off by saying "screw it, I'm out of here." Guess what -- to a surprising extent my business clients do the same thing.
The extreme example here is not relevant because there's no way on Earth that a court will permit them to collect. They're of course trying to highlight that people don't read even terms that can be enforced against them, like binding arbitration clauses. I applaud the effort in principle, but it's a losing cause because it ignores a more fundamental problem that people instinctually recognize:
For most individuals, the terms are essentially non-negotiable.
If you want to hire a programmer to do something for you, by all means, negotiate in detail and do it well. If you want to buy consumer software, take it or leave it. If you're signing up for some new cloud service, take it or leave it. Unless you are willing to put in a lot of effort, can generate enough outrage to create an ad-hoc negotiating group, or are confident that you can find an advocate within the business, reading the agreement changes nothing.
Also, very few ordinary people are deciding whether or not to enter into a contract based upon enforceable terms like an arbitration provision. That's a very high order effect in their personal utility function, if it would be considered at all.
Short summary: If the license says something that is enforceable in court, odds are super good that you can't get it removed with anything short of an activist campaign. If that's not your thing, you're still a decent human being for not caring. I understand that you have other priorities. If the license says something that is not enforceable in court, why should you care at the outset? Deal with it if the circumstance arises. Again, you have other priorities.
I call it pragmatism. I don't care whether you do or not.
How would you like to get a dead fetus in the mail?
Improper disposal of human remains (or medical waste depending on your state) is usually a felony.
"Why this makes any sense is beyond me but IANAL."
It certainly makes sense... for the lawyers that get payed hefty sums for such nonsenses.
One day I went into my kitchen, and was shocked. Bill Gates was eating my ice cream. I asked him why he was there. He said it is clearly stated in the Microsoft "Terms and Conditions" that anyone associated with Microsoft can do anything they like.
So, I asked Mr. Gates why he wanted to eat my ice cream. He could buy his own. He said he likes to have as much power as possible over everyone else.
Okay, that's not a true story, but it is similar to stories in the media. Microsoft can spy on anyone. Microsoft has tried to kill TrueCrypt. Microsoft can begin charging monthly for the Windows operating system. Microsoft can change the user interface of Windows and try to sell everyone "apps".
I changed "Legal Stuff" to "Legal Bullshit" in the resources for the French localisation of a site. It hasn't gone live yet, so there's a little surprise waiting in the wings for the company which treated me like shit after all I'd done for it.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
More over, if I recall correctly, Any part of a contract being illegal invalidates the whole thing. Some contracts or TOS agreements will have text in them to the effect that says in jurisdictions where clauses are null and void, that they are to be disregard those specific clauses to weasel past that.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
It would be nice if there was one, two or maybe three standardized, generic and reasonable TOS that everybody can stomach.
That way the user has only to read one sentence and click OK if they agree.
When I bought my house there were 40+ pages of documents that I had t sign at the end, for deed transfer I think.
I skimmed through them, noticed one term that looked wrong, pointed it out. They said "you're right! In our ten years of doing business no one has ever noticed this mistake before. I'll fix it up for you here and now."
On more than one occasion, student commons signing tables for petitions like "Ban dihydrogen monoxide" and "End women's suffrage" have polled oner thirty percent.
The law of the land still trumps agreements between people and companies so we are saved from such ridiculous terms of service.
People are used to illegal "no refunds" terms of service anyway and take wild attempted power grabs as being a worthless unenforcable tissue of lies anyway.
Libertarians take note - do you REALLY want a society where the law of the land does not protect people from abusive agreements between parties? Take a look at the parts of the world where parents sell their kids into sex slavery if it hasn't sunk in yet that such a thing is an incredibly bad idea.
And just how the fsck am I supposed to know which is which? Is litigation of every $(GOD)-damned term necessary to determine validity? And why is the onus on me to prove the term is bullshit? It seems to me that a "contract" that purports to absolve the vendor of any and all responsibility for defects in their product, and then further forces the consumer to give up their right to file suit in a state or Federal court, or be a member of a class action, and instead be compelled into neutral (ha ha) arbitration, would be unenforceable. But, lo and behold, they've been deemed valid. And all this comes into existence by merely clicking an on-screen button.
In other words, a vendor can impose an onerous, heavy-handed, one-sided contract on someone via little more than merest assertion.
...And you, as a professional working in this space, haven't got the slightest problem with this?
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Congress passed a law. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the law.
I'll pick my own hill to potentially die upon, thank you very much. You can choose differently, but you'll be choosing for yourself.
1: Kids are fucking EXPENSIVE!
2: It's a greater punishment to make them raise their OWN little bastards.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's an idiom, idiot. And, frankly, I cannot hear myself talk, because I don't mouth the words while I write.
Seriously, I wonder what ppl would do, if they were required to give up all rights to their eternal soul to the 'creator of document'? That might actually make some wonder what is going on. Nobody will believe that they have to give up their first born.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Seriously, I wonder how many would wonder about clicking if they had to give up their 'eternal soul' to the 'creator of this document'? Something that is nebulous going to some unknown. It might offer up interesting comments.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Everybody goes on about the firstborn thing, but the arstechnica article subtitle says "Study says participants also agreed to allow data sharing with NSA and employers." and nobody bats an eye about that.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
And why is the onus on me to prove the term is bullshit?
Because you agreed to the contract terms of a nonessential service which you've purchased. If you don't like it, don't agree. You don't need most of that shit anyway. Utilities are [theoretically] required to behave sensibly by your local PUC, so the necessities of life are somewhat protected.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
>children
As per the terms of the document - the parents had to deliver the children to the company at their own cost.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I strongly suspect that a good lawyer would have a field day with that one.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I'm clicking because I want to use the thing.
I don't agree, but if I click the button which says I do, then I can proceed. And that's all i really want, to proceed.
Sounds like you had a better experience than I did when I bought my lake property. The title company seemed about as incompetent as could be and the seller and I repeatedly found errors in the documents they provided. The worst one was that the lot description they had was not for the correct property but for the one next door. There was probably 4 or 5 revisions and neither I or the seller was very pleased with their quality of work. I just wish in cases like mine where they buyer and seller have known each other for years, it is a cash deal, and the title was free and clear that we could have instead showed up at the county offices with IDs, cash, and deed/title and done it there while paying for the nominal state and county recording fee. Instead we first had to get a purchase agreement from a real estate agent that we would then hand off to a title company who then does their "title work" and files the transfer with the county and state. For parties who don't know each other I can see the benefit of this but for parties who have known each other for 20 years it seems like there should be a simpler way.
Time to offend someone
First borns are usually over-indulged, spoiled brats anyways.
As long as I can keep my 2nd and 3rd, I'm good to agree with the terms.
"The terms of service required them to give up their first born, and if they don't yet have one, they get until 2050 to do so."
No one sees how this "joke" could come back and bite the company in the ass?
I'm waiting for someone to take them up on the terms and conditions, dropping off their first-born at the company's doorstep. I'd figure the parents are absolved of all responsibility for the child, having signed that responsibility away through the acceptance of the TOS. Let's get 1,000 other users onboard and drop their first-born off at the company. I bet you can do this up until the kid is 18.
Sounds, to me, like an easy way to get rid of moody teenagers...
The GPL *forces* code to be free.
You trying to include it in a proprietary, closed-source product is an attempt to make the code *not* free.
Therefore the GPL stops you.
Remember, it's free from the perspective of the user, not the developer. If you want that, go use the BSD license.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
If they want their code to be used by people. Some will avoid using GPL'd code because it forces them to open the rest of the project.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
The clause will be invalidated, because it's (legalspeak ahead) an unconscionable provision of a contract of adhesion. This is old stuff in the courts, so it isn't going to cause a major kerfluffle.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Forcing someone who uses GPLed code to GPL the rest of the project is a feature that not all people want (they can use BSD-type licenses). Stallman's idea was to create a sufficiently attractive collection of GPL code to induce other people to make their projects GPLed so they could use the code. It worked reasonably well, at least for a while. The FSF web site claims that Gnat (Gnu Ada Translator) became Free/Open Source for that reason.
For some reason, the GPL seems to enrage some BSD-style license fans more than proprietary/closed source licenses do.
Stallman is a zealot with what I think some odd moral principles, and isn't up to my personal hygiene standards, but he's not dumb. The GPL was designed to make Free Software attractive, and he provided exceptions to encourage people into the GPL ecosystem.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
From reports RMS may be rather hard to get along with, but as time goes on he seems to have been spot-on about a number of things. It's no longer paranoia when 20 years later the things the guy was doomsaying about are actually happening :-/
For what it's worth, I can see both sides of the FLOSS argument. Some people want to take an ideological stand and make the ecosystem a better place; some people just want to code. Torvalds vs. Stallman.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
There have been court rulings saying that not complying with the EULA does not constitute unauthorized access in the sense the CFAA uses. There was a case recently mentioned on Slashdot in which the defendant had been fired from a company and his access revoked, and had acquired a former colleague's login and password, and the court opinion made a clear and deliberate distinction between things like not complying with the EULA and true unauthorized access.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Stallman is a zealot with what I think some odd moral principles
Yeah, it kind of seems like the world has moved on from the environment he developed his principles in.
The open biography of him does a pretty good job of explaining where he came from. The first 8 sections or so (not as long as it looks) that culminate with him running across the old mainframe in the basement were quite informative.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Imagine if every letter you opened or had to mail had at ToS attached to it? Like a full manila envelope full of legal bullshit, followed by a small post card that you actually wanted. Why is this acceptable for software? Something needs to happen with this.
I have done some software installs where the vendor is assisting via a shared desktop session and they just click through on the EULA agreement. I tell them that I didn't give them permission to agree on my behalf, but they just laugh it off. Joke's on them....
If you can prove that you did say that before they clicked-through. Which shouldn't be hard.
I don't know how well it would fly though - since the vendor is acting as an agent hired by your company. There are days when I'm glad to say "IANALawyer", and this is one of those days.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The reason for all that crap is some troll out there found a way to steal money from the company.
For the most part, pay us every month and we'll keep your service running.
Plagiarism may be a moral offense, but is it a legal offense? In your jurisdiction?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
>Plagiarism may be a moral offense, but is it a legal offense? In your jurisdiction?
If your jurisdiction is a signatory to the Berne Convention then yes, it's a legal offence there.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The Wikipedia page on the Berne Convention makes no mention of plagiarism at all, only of copyright.
The Wikipedia page on Plagiarism makes several significant points : "Plagiarism is the "wrongful appropriation" and "stealing and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions" and the representation of them as one's own original work." (My emphasis.), adding that "Plagiarism is not in itself a crime, but can constitute copyright infringement. [...] Plagiarism and copyright infringement overlap to a considerable extent, but they are not equivalent concepts, and many types of plagiarism do not constitute copyright infringement,"
So, here is a scenario : Doctor Strangeglove publishes some work on the flange ratio of sprockets. At a conference, Professor Ripper presents a poster display using Dr Strangeglove's data, but re-draws the artwork with inverted axes and cites no source for it ; when people talk to him at the poster, they assume it is his data and congratulate him on it. Professor Ripper does not correct them.
The re-publishing of the data is no offence under any copyright laws I've heard of - it's plain vanilla "fair use." However the failure to reveal the true source of the data (even more, the suspicious trivial modifications to it) constitute an offence of plagiarism. Which might get Professor Ripper black-balled at the next "Future of Flange Sprockets" conference, but is unlikely to be considered by the courts. It's not even clear that the libel courts would accept that there was a case to answer (Ripper has done nothing to denigrate Strangeglove).
In a way, the absence of criminal sanctions is what makes an offence of plagiarism the more serious a social offence.
It may sound like I'm making a excessively big deal out of this, but I'll be doing my weekly bout of MOOC over the weekend, which will involve me typing out their anti-plagiarism pledge.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
That's an interesting scenario - but it may not strictly violate either. A reimplementation is generally deemed not to violate copyright or constitute plagiarism. This is one reason why Stallman argues (and I agree) that we need more refined copyright laws that differentiates between different types of information and works. It doesn't make sense to apply the same rules to a novel, a painting, a technical manual, an engineering schematic and a software program. They all have entirely different economics, different ways in which copying and creating derivatives change the social-good and usefullness and commercial value.
There is no reasonable reason, for example, to allow derivative works of editorial articles - if anything such could be used to utterly misrepresent the original author's ideas and actually cause a social harm, on the other hand they are definitely something which SHOULD be subjected to satire.
It is entirely possible to commit plagiarism without copying anything - but it's not possible to violate copyright law without copying something. Using a source in your thesis is not copyright violation - especially if you don't quote it directly but merely restate what you learned as part of your new argument, but it can still be plagiarism if you fail to cite the source. You may or may not face criminal charges for that - but you sure as hell can expect to get kicked out of university if you're caught.
Then, on top of this, there is the fact that both copyright and plagiarism laws are extremely inconsistently enforced. If they weren't Rand Paul would have been charged - he was caught, and the evidence is easily visible, with multiple occasions of flagrantly copying other people's work and presenting it as his own for commercial and political gain, which is clearly both plagiarism and copyright violation.
I understand that most places do not have criminal sanctions for plagiarism - but that doesn't mean it's legal or not a crime, it just means it isn't punished. This is not unusual. Portugal has effectively legalized all drugs yet there isn't a single one of the drugs in the UN anti-drug treaty (of which Portugal is a signatory) which is not against the law - it's just that they do not punish you. If you're caught with any drug you are requested to attend an (entirely voluntary) counselling session. Should you choose to go - they will give you a questionaire and ultimately categorize you as 'addict', 'recreational' or 'one-time' user. Depending on the categorisation they will recommend a follow up - from excellent rehab programs to just saying 'be careful - it's better if you don't use it again'. But again - the follow ups are also voluntary. Rehab is free for addicts if you choose to go, nobody will force you. No jail sentence. No threats. It's even all done anonymously so your employment cannot be put at risk (interestingly it's been remarkably successful - since instituting the program Portugal cut heroine abuse by 90% - from one of the worst heroine problems on earth to one of the lowest).
Which is all a really elaborate example of how something can be a crime without carrying any criminal sanctions or penalties. If the aim of the law is to discourage some kind of behaviour - then punishment is not always the most effective way to do that. In the case of plagiarism actually jailing or fining people is probably not the most effective way to discourage it. Firstly universities will usually kick out students caught plagiarising, and publishers generally fire people who get caught doing that - so there's already a pretty strong disincentive in society, it's debateable if criminal sanctions would add anything significant to that. Laws can get even more complex - copyright is a criminal offense in some cases and in some jurisdictions and a purely civil offence in others, ditto plagiarism. In South Africa you can be criminally prosecuted and fined for plagiarism but non-commercial copyright violation is a purely civil offense. In some places plagiarism is part of the same law, in other places it's a separate law entirely.
But to the best of my knowledge - nowhere is it a legal activity.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *