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Woman Wins $10,000 For Reading Fine Print of Terms and Conditions of Travel Insurance Policy (npr.org)
Georgia high school teacher Donelan Andrews won a $10,000 reward after she closely read the terms and conditions that came with a travel insurance policy she purchased for a trip to England. Squaremouth, a Florida insurance company, had inserted language promising a reward to the first person who emailed the company. NPR reports: "We understand most customers don't actually read contracts or documentation when buying something, but we know the importance of doing so," the company said. "We created the top-secret Pays to Read campaign in an effort to highlight the importance of reading policy documentation from start to finish." Not every company is so generous. To demonstrate the importance of reading the fine print, many companies don't give; they take. The mischievous clauses tend to pop up from time to time, usually in cheeky England. The report continues to highlight a number of different cases where companies have intentionally inserted unusual clauses into their terms of service, knowing people wouldn't read them. Here's one such case: A few years earlier, several Londoners agreed (presumably inadvertently) to give away their oldest child in exchange for Wi-Fi access. Before they could get on the Internet, users had to check a box agreeing to "assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity." According to the Guardian, six people signed up, but the company providing the Wi-Fi said the clause likely wouldn't be enforceable in a court of law. "It is contrary to public policy to sell children in return for free services," the company explained.
The human centipede episode. Enough said.
that reward went unclaimed? How long was it our there before someone noticed?
Services like Facebook and printing services need to make copies of your photo to provide their service. As such, you have to grant them a limited license under copyright to make those copies. They have to "own" those copies to be able to process / compress / move / store the photos.
The thing you have to watch out for is services which try to slip in language granting themselves an unrestricted, unlimited license to reproduce and relicense your work. A new free photo hosting service came up recently, and when I read the terms and conditions it said exactly that. Granting them such a license would allow them to sell your photos without your permission nor giving you any royalties. Most services like Google Photos make clear they're not doing this, by including the phrase "for the purpose of operating this service" somewhere. That intentionally limits their right to make copies of your photo to only what's necessary to provide their service.
A few years earlier, several Londoners agreed (presumably inadvertently) to give away their oldest child in exchange for Wi-Fi access. Before they could get on the Internet, users had to check a box agreeing to "assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity." According to the Guardian, six people signed up, but the company providing the Wi-Fi said the clause likely wouldn't be enforceable in a court of law. "It is contrary to public policy to sell children in return for free services," the company explained.
Haha... Dear company, thank you for assuming the responsibility of raising my offspring, please make child support checks payable to John Smith and send them to 123 Easy St, Anytown, Anystate 12345 USA.
But that's the problem - they can't accurately summarize the legalese to the extent that it would hold up in court. If they could, we wouldn't have the legalese in the first place.
Plan language is generally used where it can be. The issue is that when lawyers start tearing at plain language, they tend to rip it apart. The only solution is to make it tough enough that they can't do that. Thus the legalese.
You could flail and attempt to translate, but that would probably need to come with it's own disclaimer that it's not legally binding, and that you should retain your own lawyer to make sure that the translation generally says what the legalese says. But you'd probably need to wrap that statement in enough legalese to cover your ass, and then it's just legalese all the way down.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor