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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.
Any truly competent lawyer should be able to demonstrate that they are badly designed from a human factors and effective communication perspective, as evidenced by the fact that they are almost always unread yet clicked on by almost everybody. It's not an effective contract, since there was no effective communication about it.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
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:
So, shouldn't they be calling attention to the ridiculous EULA ecosystem that companies have managed to create, where the agreements are so long and full of legal jargon that the average person can't possibly be expected to fully understand them? Shouldn't they be doing that instead of mocking those same people who either didn't read or didn't understand what they were agreeing to?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
UK wifi provider: LOL! jokes all around! we didnt really want you to paint snail shells!
US wifi provider: You will paint shells until your fucking hands drop off, and if so much as one of them chips, we will grind everyone you love into paint for the next batch.
Adjit Pai: sounds like fun! pick any of your favourite colours youre told to pick!
Good people go to bed earlier.
They should have used that exact language in the EULA.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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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!
To make people READ, set it up so blindly clicking 'next' just fails.
Plenty of sites already do that. They require people to load the text, scroll to the end, and then click. People still don't read it. I know I don't. Why should I? Click-through contracts are not enforceable other than the implied contract that would be just as enforceable without the clicking.
Do you really think the ISP in the summary would be able to use the courts to force people to clean sewers? Of course not. There are no legal repercussions for just blindly clicking, nor should there be.
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.
EULAs are toilet paper in EU. Microsoft and Oracle learned the hard way when ECJ approved resale of OEM software.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Most EULA's ask you to do business with a sewer.
Table-ized A.I.