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UK Wifi Provider Tricks Customers Into Agreeing To Clean Sewers (upi.com)
An anonymous reader quotes UPI:
Unwitting customers in the United Kingdom who didn't read the terms and conditions for use of a public WiFi hotspot agreed to perform 1,000 hours of community service, including unclogging sewers and scraping gum off the street. The gag was conceived by WiFi provider Purple. The company inserted the clause into its terms and conditions -- the technically legally binding agreement consumers approve in exchange for use of free Internet, though virtually few actually read the terms. The company said it did so to call attention to the fact consumers are regularly agreeing to terms that they may not actually like, including granting access to private information and data about their web browsing habits.
Other community service tasks agreed to by users included "providing hugs to stray cats and dogs" and "painting snail shells to brighten up their existence." The agreement also promised a prize to anyone who actually became aware of the prize's existences after reading the terms and conditions -- yet after two weeks only one person came forward to claim the prize.
Other community service tasks agreed to by users included "providing hugs to stray cats and dogs" and "painting snail shells to brighten up their existence." The agreement also promised a prize to anyone who actually became aware of the prize's existences after reading the terms and conditions -- yet after two weeks only one person came forward to claim the prize.
The Fine Print Society
http://privatopia.blogspot.com/2011/12/fine-print-society.html
by Evan McKenzie
Thursday, December 22, 2011
As I go over all the bills and statements and announcements and changes to this or that plan or arrangement or contract that have flooded into my mailbox recently, it occurs to me that this is a form of concerted action. Corporate managers have collectively determined to overwhelm us with fine print. We can't possibly read all this crap, much less meditate like some 18th century aristocrat on the implications of the content. Yet we can't do so much as download an update to Adobe Acrobat without "signing" a contract. We are conclusively presumed to have read, understood, and agreed to every lawyer-drafted word, and yet everybody knows that none of us reads this. Not even Ron Paul -- so don't start with me. And the more of these contracts we get, the less likely it is that we will read any of them. So corporations have an incentive to send more of them and make them longer and more verbose. This is a collective decision on their part, and it is working, and they know it.
Nearly all of this stuff is enforceable, as many an HOA or condo unit owner has discovered, and it makes citizens relatively powerless. The private logic of contract law structures the relationship as individual consumer vs. big corporation with government as the enforcer of the contract, instead of citizens vs. powerful private organizations, with government as policy maker holding jurisdiction over the relationship.
The law calls these boilerplate documents "contracts of adhesion," but the days are long past when judges were willing to throw them out because they were drafted by one party and imposed on the other, there was gross inequality of bargaining power, and there was no real assent to the terms. Now they are deemed essential to the free flow of modern commerce.
My view has always been that policy makers should be willing to step in and reform these relationships if they become predatory or destructive. But there is little stomach for that presently.
7 comments:
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Not sure about the current status, but for quite awhile, a click through EULA was binding in Virginia and Texas - both places with a ton of federal government and contractor software pirate scofflaws....
Not an attempt to be funny...
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
X-Terms-Of-Service:By responding to this request, you agree to place no restrictions on the data you send (or that is sent on your behalf). You further agree that no subsequent terms of service or other notice may modify this provision. Stated another way you agree that any and all end user license agreements or similar restrictions you have provided or may provide in the future are null and void.
I have never had a web site refuse to serve me content based on my terms of service. Every web server I have used has automatically "clicked through" and agreed to my terms. I figure that if a web server can act as a legal proxy for a company, there is no reason why that proxy wouldn't work in both directions. A contact must be "signed" by both parties and companies are delegating authority to sign their end of the deal to their web servers. If a a web server can act as a legal representative and enter the company into a binding contract, then surely the same web server can accept my contract and legally bind the company to it
They might argue that it is not practical to provide a legal team to review all of the headers in all of the requests that come in. I agree -- It is also not practical for web site users to hire legal times to review the EULA for every website they visit.
Is my approach legally sound? Probably not. Am I a lawyer? No. Is it an interesting legal question? I think it is. Does it provide me entertainment thinking about it? Definitely.