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The 'Terms and Conditions' Reckoning Is Coming (bloomberg.com)
Everyone from Uber to PayPal is facing a backlash against their impenetrable legalese. From a report: Personal finance forums online are brimming with complaints from hundreds of PayPal customers who say they've been suspended because they signed up before age 18. PayPal declined to comment on any specific cases, but says it's appropriate to close accounts created by underage people "to ensure our customers have full legal capacity to accept our user agreement." While that may seem "heavy-handed," says Sarah Kenshall, a technology attorney with law firm Burges Salmon, the company is within its rights because the users clicked to agree to the rules -- however difficult the language might be to understand.
Websites have long required users to plow through pages of dense legalese to use their services, knowing that few ever give the documents more than a cursory glance. In 2005 security-software provider PC Pitstop LLC promised a $1,000 prize to the first user to spot the offer deep in its terms and conditions; it took four months before the reward was claimed. The incomprehensibility of user agreements is poised to change as tech giants such as Uber Technologies and Facebook confront pushback for mishandling user information, and the European Union prepares to implement new privacy rules called the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The measure underscores "the requirement for clear and plain language when explaining consent," British Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham wrote on her blog last year.
Websites have long required users to plow through pages of dense legalese to use their services, knowing that few ever give the documents more than a cursory glance. In 2005 security-software provider PC Pitstop LLC promised a $1,000 prize to the first user to spot the offer deep in its terms and conditions; it took four months before the reward was claimed. The incomprehensibility of user agreements is poised to change as tech giants such as Uber Technologies and Facebook confront pushback for mishandling user information, and the European Union prepares to implement new privacy rules called the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The measure underscores "the requirement for clear and plain language when explaining consent," British Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham wrote on her blog last year.
PayPal has always struck me as one of the more slimy online companies. Guess who was one of the founders?
I just ask my 4 year old to do it.
there was a "Fuck your T&C but I'd like to use your service without them" button.
A crude measure of whether a piece of text is easy to read is something like the Flesch-Kinkaid reading ease metric which does simple measurements of average sentence length and average word length, assuming that longer words in longer sentences are more difficult to read. It kind-a-sort-a works.
A better idea would be to require users to pass a reading test made from the EULA text itself. The two most accurate I know of are the Open Cloze test, where every 7th word is left blank and users have to write/type in the correct word, or the C-Test, which is a little more complicated to explain but more valid and reliable and more fun to do (students really enjoy doing this type of test!)
Requiring users to pass a reading comprehension test, using the EULA text, would ensure that whoever clicks on "Accept" understands what they're agreeing to.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
suspended is better then in jail/prison form the CFAA law. As braking that TOS / EULA make you be an user without authorization
South Park parodied this back in 2011
I Agreed by Accident
There is even an article about HumancentiPad
reading test?? what about an BAR test?
As some of the stuff in the EULA you need to be an lawyer to under stand what they are talking about.
In most cases there is a specific need for that one tool or service
Not really. You need food, water and a place to sleep. Everything else is optional.
Have gnu, will travel.
Maybe we need to start creating boiler plate or set of common named terms & conditions? While there would still be the usual legal jargon, at least there is a community built around understanding what the contract is trying to achieve, since it is reused in other places. Think Creative Commons, GPL and MIT licenses for example.
Maybe a checkbox system, where you specify what you want from the contract and then the legalese would be generated, but at least there would be a similar high level view to the user?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
So long as that arbitration clause remains valid. The rules and laws are set up to support the terms and conditions that the more powerful player requires, and the arbitrator almost always sides with the bigger, more powerful player.
I'm banned for life by Paypal. About a year ago they suspended my account, held onto all funds for 6 months and told me they'll never accept me as a customer ever again (they track SSN and CC numbers). I've no idea why because the customer support rep never said anything except that I should take my business elsewhere. I can only guess that they rate users / merchants by risk and are heavily culling any that blip above their line (which is pretty low). I sold software through a web site for $3.99 a pop and had a few customers claim their money back via Paypal (maybe 4 out of hundreds). Only one was ever valid, but there was absolutely no way to dispute a dispute with Paypal, so I just returned the money via the button they provided on the website. Now, Paypal can do what they like because they are a business, but I recommend no one ever use them for anything ever. If you are using them, go elsewhere and never rely on them to have your back.
Limit it to one Eula per entire product line and limit it to 6000 characters. If anyone complains, limit it to 3000.
The measure underscores "the requirement for clear and plain language when explaining consent,"
Won't help. You could put a copy of Game of Thrones novels in those end-user license agreements and people still would not read them. No one reads that stuff. It's not going to matter if it's comprehensible to the layman or not.
Obviously, we need something entirely different to fill this void. It's obviously a problem, but how do you re-train the enitre population to start reading that stuff? Tall order there. Good luck!
Buy why suspend them? Why not just ask them to re-click?
I suppose you could do like some of the game copy protections of old used to do.
"Please enter the 4th word on the 6th paragraph to agree."
Probably still won't help.
I understand that all softwares have their purpose and the owner want to control how users are interfacing with it to limit the potential for abuse, but having a multi-pages terms and condition agreement document is something that realistically no one will read. Maybe there could be some way of summarizing the terms and condition in a format that is easier to understand at a glance? I'm pretty some parts are common, so maybe establish a kind of symbology to quickly inform the user what they are allowed to do, or what they're getting into? Kind of like how the Creative Commons license uses some symbols to quickly identify the license type used. https://creativecommons.org/li...
So the GDPR forces companies to do what the Plain English Campaign has been trying to do for a long time now. That's nice.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
Not really. You need food, water and a place to sleep. Everything else is optional.
People go crazy without mental stimulation. Even rats do it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's just the problem. Those two requirements are mutually exclusive. You can have language that's clear (i.e. explains exactly and precisely what you're consenting to), or you can have language that's plain (simple to read and understand). Except for a few broad, general cases, you can't have both.
e.g. Consider the EULA terms for a photo sharing service. Your photos are protected by your copyright, but the service needs to be able to keep a copy.
But wait, it's not enough just to keep a copy of the photo. For the photo to be shared, another copy needs to be produced on the visitor's computer.
But wait, the service right now is a photo sharing service. What if they decide to change in the future into something more? So you can't just call it 'service', you have to define exactly what that service is.
But wait, what if one of those other users decides to keep a copy of said photo? The service doesn't want to be sued for such actions since that's out of its control.
But wait, what if some of those users are employed by the service? That creates a loophole where the service could hire third parties to sell and distribute unauthorized copies, free from fear of being sued for copyright infringement.
But wait, the service needs to keep backups of these photos in case they suffer a storage device failure. Such backups are prudent but not necessary to provide the service. And the clause you've just added makes the admin making the backups liable for copyright violation.
Hey, Stupid, had you actually been paying enough attention to know anything about the specific subject of PayPal and arbitration clauses, you'd know that PayPal was one of very very few companies that actually allowed people to OPT OUT of the arbitration clause when they introduced it.
How do I know this? I was actually paying attention and opted out. Sorry you weren't paying attention, there's likely no do-overs for that.
User agreements, terms and conditions and even staff contracts are all utter bullshit. Contracts are supposed to be negotiated by the 2 sides, none of these are negotiated in any meaningful way, they are dictated by big companies who have the upper hand and accepted by users who really have no choice in the matter because the services offered are unique or they don't have the option financially to say no.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Companies need MUCH less leeway to dictate rules in the first place. There should NEVER be mandatory arbitration allowed in the first place for any service rendered. One consumer is in an unacceptable situation when they need a service and every provider requires draconian rules that are non-negotiable. Congress and the states should set the rules for doing business and companies who want to do business should have to comply. If your business plan requires short circuiting the rights of every last one of your customers you should not exist.
I think a lot of the contracts that we agree to aren't really necessary. Do you really need all these special things from me, instead of me just handing over the money?
The terms should be simple. Just to be clear, I don't mean simple terms as in written to be understandable by laymen. I mean the actual give-and-take --- deviations from a normal sale -- shouldn't involve much. I can buy a loaf of bread (here's the money, gimme the bread) without a contract. Same for books (at least if they're paper rather htan files).
I even remember the 1980s when I could go to a store and buy a box that contained a floppy with proprietary software for my C64 without ever agreeing to any license. I had simply bought a copy of the software. That's right, this wasn't even Free software and yet it still didn't need a license, either. Copyright was enough to handle it. "Ah, but we need a contract these days, so they can install the software on their hard disk, which involves copying, which would be illegal without a license." No, that's fair use or it should be, and Congress long ago threw that into copyright anyway.
But perhaps there are types of business that do require a little more complexity in the transaction than here's-the-money-gimme-the-product. For example, everyone wants me to not blame them if the product explodes in my face. Ok, but if everyone demands that and we're all always agreeing to that anyway, then maybe the law can just say that and we can trim a page off of a hundred contracts.
I suspect there are patterns for whole industries, where every company in that industry basically wants the same things. (And deviations are either minor, or they're oversights because someone doesn't have good lawyers writing the contracts.)
And that leads me toward wondering if this is part of what civil law is about. Are a lot of what we in America would have in contract terms, simply the law in, say, France? Does civil law result in simpler contracts, perhaps at the expense of more complicated law? Teach this ignorant American a thing or two. Please? :-)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The public library is free.
Have gnu, will travel.
the company is within its rights because the users clicked to agree to the rules
So their justification for booting out users who legally cannot be held to agree to the T&C's is that they agreed to the T&C's.
That said, if they are refunding any money the users have in their accounts, this isn't really worth a story. If they are seizing funds from minors on the basis that they are in violation of the agreement, then that would be extra scummy.
Maybe there's a market here. Users can pay to have each contract analyzed. Your friendly cloud service will summarize the contract for you, compare it with other contracts in the same industry, and point out how your contract varies from the norm. Etc.
Fiat Lux.
Once you've agreed, how do you change agreement?
If you were under 18 when you clicked 'I Agree', that contract is voidable. Even years later. Nothing was changed. You just got caught.
Have gnu, will travel.