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Most Online 'Terms of Service' Are Incomprehensible To Adults, Study Finds (vice.com)
Two law professors analyzed the sign-in terms and conditions of 500 popular US websites, including Google and Facebook, and found that more than 99 percent of them were "unreadable," far exceeding the level most American adults read at, but are still enforced. From a report: According to a new paper published on SSRN (Social Science Research Network), the average readability level of the agreements reviewed by the researchers was comparable to articles in academic journals. "While consumers are legally expected or presumed to read their contracts, businesses are not required to write readable ones. This asymmetry -- and its potential consequences -- puzzled us," wrote co-author Samuel Becher, a law professor at Victoria University of Wellington, in an email to Motherboard.
I know myself many of the agreement are so filled with legal interpretation that unless your a lawyer or are familiar with some of its terminology. You probably do skip over some of the stuff that's important. I would guess that is not by accident that its worded as such to confuse the average user.
Exactly.
unenforceable.
AC comments get piped to
For any contract to be enforceable, it has to have real and valuable consideration. Basically, I give you X and you give me Y. Lets say you sign a contract that says you give me your car. Not enforceable. Or, you give me your car, I give you a penny. Also not enforceable - not valuable consideration. Or, you give me your car and I give you $500. Now that's enforceable.
What does "enforceable" mean? Anybody can break a contract. Lets say you change your mind and you won't give me your car for $500 after you said you would. I'll never get your car (that's called "specific performance" and is pretty rare) but I can sue you for damages. What are damages?
Lets say I passed up a deal on a similar car for $600 so I could buy yours. Prices went up and now I have to pay $800 to get one. Damages are the difference, $200, and I'd win that in court.
A law professor told me that this is the basis for all contract law. You give me X, I give you Y. If you change your mind, you're liable for whatever extra your breach of contract cost me.
Sooooo.... A website's TOS is bullshit. Unless it's giving you a service valuable enough to bother going to court over. And they can't just pull a number out of their asses.
write things in such a way as you can't get held responsible for anything, yet hold your customers to any standard, charge, demand, etc you wish to make.
;)
Lawyers write everything in Legalese, Un Comprehensible, goobbly gook!
Just my 2 cents
"You agree to sign your soul away under the condi......."
DONE!!!
Whew, now I have access. Let's get on with it!
Life is not for the lazy.
This is the same thing the finance industry did with loans and credit cards. They wrote up 20 pages of tiny, tiny print, written at a college graduate level, and got away with stealing from people for years.
Then Elizabeth Warren got the CFPB created and the government required credit forms to be clear, with details about what you owe and how much it costs you.
We need this with tech.
Government isn't always the answer, but government is our protection from corporations who only care about shareholder value and not you, your family, or in some cases, your life.
It isn't unique to web sites.
Go to any medical procedure from a dental filling to major surgery and you'll be required to sign away a host of rights, usually with mandatory binding arbitration and forbid a wide swath of malpractice lawsuits against everybody involved. Go buy an item and look at the legal text often shown on the receipt, or the text on a receipt directing you to the web site for the conditions of sale. Look at the 10+ pages of employment contracts usually needed to get a job, which these days nearly eliminate the ability to sue employers for things like unpaid wages or wrongful termination.
Trying to shop around doesn't help because every business incorporates them.
Go ahead and tell your doctor that you won't sign away the rights until you've negotiated a new agreement that is fair. See how well that works.
What really needs to happen is an overhaul of contract law. Currently every imaginable service has been wrapped inside contract law, and thanks to many court rulings lawyers can remove all legal protections by crafting a contract. Most protections afforded in law can be wiped away with a service contract. Nothing short of a new SCOTUS ruling or major law change could correct the issue, and there is almost no chance of those happening in the foreseeable future.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Back in the 1990s, I got my first credit card. The first few times I had to sign the slip, I noticed it said I agreed to some cardholder agreement and then some other agreement. I thought "What's in that agreement?" Everybody thought I was crazy for even caring.
We failed to stop this train long ago. You implicitly agree to contracts when you buy a pack of bubble gum from a store, open an app, or make a phone call. It's too much.
We recently saw an article about a reported who tried to go without Amazon, Google, or Facebook for a week. How about trying to go a week without implicitly signing a contract? You would probably starve to death.