"In the past, contracts and signed agreements have been used primarily to protect the individuals involved from legal action. They are now being used like a spider web."
Did I miss these 'good old days' when contracts were only used for everyones benefit ?
Contracts have always been written solely for the advantage of the company which created them.
The only difference is that 'Joe Public' is now being exposed to contracts (software, mobile phones, ISP's etc), in many cases for the first time - and people are getting burned more often.
Businesses have had this problem for years.
My personal favourite was a 4 year 'tech support / free upgrades' contract for some software we had. After year 2 the tool was upgraded significantly and our Unix box wasn't man enough to run the new version - but there was a clause preventing us from transferring the software to a new box.
So we paid out for two more years for useless upgrades and tech support which we couldn't use as we weren't at the latest version (another nice clause):)
What you need is the Proxomitron
It's a little web-proxy which allows you to place filters on all incoming HTML - so you can remove frames and block banners and counters etc.
This is a good thing in itself and helps to speed up your web access - but it also allows you to put filters on outgoing HTML too.
So you can set it to lie about who you are, what you're using and where you came from (no referral information). ... and it's free. Well not quite - it's 'ShonenWare'. If you like it, the author asks you to go out and buy a Shonen Knife album (his favourite band) !
Let's imagine for a moment that a US-based online gaming company decides to start paying its "volunteers" the minimum wage. What does this mean for the volunteers who are not US citizens or residents?
That gets even more difficult if the 'volunteers' are from the UK. We have a different minimum wage (£4/hr = $6.40/hr) - so which one are they entitled to ?
Slashdot Mirror
"In the past, contracts and signed agreements have been used primarily to protect the individuals involved from legal action. They are now being used like a spider web."
:)
Did I miss these 'good old days' when contracts were only used for everyones benefit ?
Contracts have always been written solely for the advantage of the company which created them.
The only difference is that 'Joe Public' is now being exposed to contracts (software, mobile phones, ISP's etc), in many cases for the first time - and people are getting burned more often.
Businesses have had this problem for years.
My personal favourite was a 4 year 'tech support / free upgrades' contract for some software we had. After year 2 the tool was upgraded significantly and our Unix box wasn't man enough to run the new version - but there was a clause preventing us from transferring the software to a new box.
So we paid out for two more years for useless upgrades and tech support which we couldn't use as we weren't at the latest version (another nice clause)
We were more careful after that.
What you need is the Proxomitron
... and it's free. Well not quite - it's 'ShonenWare'. If you like it, the author asks you to go out and buy a Shonen Knife album (his favourite band) !
It's a little web-proxy which allows you to place filters on all incoming HTML - so you can remove frames and block banners and counters etc.
This is a good thing in itself and helps to speed up your web access - but it also allows you to put filters on outgoing HTML too.
So you can set it to lie about who you are, what you're using and where you came from (no referral information).
That gets even more difficult if the 'volunteers' are from the UK. We have a different minimum wage (£4/hr = $6.40/hr) - so which one are they entitled to ?