As a non-technical person from a completely different industry, my take on TOS is this: I don't care.
Why would anyone care? Is it a legal binding contract between me and the comany? No. It might be taken into account if we go into court, but if they have it in their TOS that I bought an elephant from them - it will not hold.
If they grant me any rights in their TOS - do I trust them? No. I would never keep data in the cloud without backups. Or have the assumption that my data will be held private.
> Is it a legal binding contract between me and the comany? No.
In the U.S., Web site terms of service / terms of use can indeed be a legal, binding contract:
+ If you click on "I agree" or something like it, then it's very likely to be binding, as more than one user has discovered to his chagrin. [1]
+ If you continue to use the Web site, and the site has a sufficiently-prominent notice that terms apply, then those terms are likely to be binding. [2]
I wonder if you can click on "I agree", and lie. Then you wouldn't be bound by the terms, because you didn't consent to them, but your wrongdoing would have been to access the service without permission.
It's a bit like violating the GPL: If you modify a GPL program and distribute it without source, you violate the license between you and the person you obtained the program from. But one could also argue you "stole" the program in the first place and used it without license. In both cases I wonder which "crime" would have the lesser consequences.
There is however a reasonable chance the person clicking I agree is not the end user. Setup a Facebook account for your grandparents who never click agree. Are they then bound by the TOS?
In the end TOS are generally weakly enforceable. If facebook adds a 10,000$ annual fee in the fine print and there unlikely to be able to collect.
> Setup a Facebook account for your grandparents who never click agree. Are they then bound by the TOS?
My guess is that a court would ask: Can you reasonably be said to be the "agent" [1] for your grandparents --- that is, would a reasonable person, taking an objective look at the facts, conclude that your grandparents had authorized you to make binding agreements on their behalf --- for the kinds of transactions specified in the TOS?
If that's the question, then:
-- You probably are your grandparents' agent when it comes to agreeing, on their behalf, to the "customary" terms in TOS, such as (for example) a statement that the Web site owner owns all content;
-- You probably are not your grandparents' agent for purposes of agreeing to pay a $10K annual fee, and therefore they wouldn't be bound. (You might be bound, though ....)
Adding a fee would be a material change, and would require further consent... also, the clauses about deleting content and restricting access are all made with future cash charges as a possibility.
Said another way: these are set up with the ability to charge you later in mind.
Most companies maintain pretty extensive analytics data - would a court consider whether or not a given user ever even actually looked at the ToS as some kind of objective proof that they couldn't have possibly agreed with it? Or say the user visited the ToS page, but only for 30 seconds - that is, not long enough that reading the entire ToS is within the realm of human possibility?
But contract terms can be pretty damn severe before they're "unconscionable."
One to watch out for is "you agree not to participate in a class action" against the website. If a website screws over thousands of users for $100 each, they can't do much individually. And if they've all agreed not to participate in a class action, there isn't much they can do collectively either.
Your comment is unclear. Your main argument is that you don’t care, but why don’t you care?
I see two hypotheses.
1. Because you don’t care about your rights at all > Then this project is not for you, move on.
2. Because you think the terms and privacy policies of services you use online are not “binding”? > Then you’re very naive and a bit ignorant about the law.
It’s alright to not know how the law and how contract works exactly, that’s why you need this project even more; because that’s what it does: it makes things simpler to understand for you.
You really should read your TOS, if not at least skim it. Most have language like this in it:
THIS IS A CONTRACT. PLEASE READ THESE TERMS CAREFULLY. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THESE TERMS DO NOT USE THE SERVICE AND CONTACT US IMMEDIATELY TO TERMINATE IT.
By specifically stating what you are agreeing to is a contract, you're legally bound by the terms set forth therein. Whether a court of law and judge agrees with that is a separate matter. However, for simplicity, it is a binding, legal contract.
> Why would anyone care? Is it a legal binding contract between me and the comany? No. It might be taken into account if we go into court, but if they have it in their TOS that I bought an elephant from them - it will not hold.
That's interesting. Do you have any sources on that? Why do these services even bother having ToS?
When I read the EULA of softwares sold in France, they often contain restrictions on reverse engineering. In France, reverse engineering is a protected right for interoperability purpose. If some parts of the EULA are illegal, how can it be a legal binding contract.
If France(as is in pretty much everywhere in the EU) any EULA that is accepted by default by opening a product(think MS Windows packaging) is void by default, because courts ruled that opening a package does not constitute entering a legally binding contract,no matter what the packaging says.
Because in France, a judge may very well decide that some part of the contract is illegal but consider that the remaining still holds. That happens all the time.
In the EU pretty much any of the online T&Cs as well as EULAs are completely invalid. They can say literally whatever, if you haven't signed an actual piece of paper it's not going through in any court.
One of my favorite ToS items is from LinkedIn: You aren't allowed to "deep-link to our sites for any purpose, (i.e. creating or posting a link to a LinkedIn web page other than LinkedIn’s home page)".[1] The act of linking to a publicly available website is against that website's terms.
You seemed to have cut off an important part of that clause.
10.2. Don’t undertake the following:
17 Deep-link to our sites for any purpose, (i.e. creating or
posting a link to a LinkedIn web page other than LinkedIn’s
home page) unless expressly authorized in writing by LinkedIn
or for the purpose of promoting your profile or a Group on
LinkedIn as set forth in the Brand Guidelines[0];
You can link to your own profile or group to promote it. While still silly, it is in no way as limiting as you made it out to be.
The idea that they're allowed to restrict it at all is inherently silly, though. I mean, as written, it seems to imply that I may not link to anyone else's profile...
I consider that kind of restriction inherently unconsionable, regardless of the nature of the parties involved.
EDIT: I should also note that you appear to be violating them in your post, as I did not see an exception for such pages as that, though "deep linking" is one of those vague things that means whatever they want it to mean. Anything but the home page can be argued to be "deep" but different people have very different ideas on the subject and there's no inherent or technological meaning behind how deep a link must be before being considered a "deep link." So they don't even give you proper notice of which links they do and do not forbid.
So not only is it dumb in general, it's vague enough to make every link not pre-approved by Linked-In suspect, which is something I would object to for that very reason.
What if they find out that you just linked to a "deep-link?"
Seriously though, is it made unenforceable when the usage by both parties (linkedin and users) actually encourage this? (Share this on facebook!) It sounds like a "catch-all" "don't like you" clause.
There is a lot of legal stuff that I don't understand but one thing in particular stands out: "Terms may be changed any time at their discretion, without notice to the user". Unless I am missing something, that basically says "we got your signature once, and we can now put it on whatever we like".
On the Information Sharing section it says:
Ello does not have any affiliated companies right now. But if we do in the future, we may share information with them, too.
But I guess everyone on HN already knew it was nothing but publicity.
Everything we make is Free Software (and open data) and we’re a not-for-profit.
We recently put online: https://tosdr.org/submit-point.html which is supposed to help increase contributions to the site so that we have more data and more relevant information. Please help us test, debug and contribute :-)
"Nothing here should be considered legal advice. We express our opinion with no guarantee and we do not endorse any service in any way. Please refer to a qualified attorney for legal advice. Reading ToS;DR is in no way a replacement for reading the full terms to which you are bound."
Also, we should clearly file a class action suit for breach of contract the next time HN goes down. Would be tough to show damages though. My productivity would probably go up.
The problem with click-on ToS is that they include heavy handed legalize designed to protect the service provider but for a casual service which is low cost or nearly free to you (they are monetizing you). You certainly would read it (or pay a lawyer to review it) if you were paying someone $100K for engineering work or something like that. It's not worth your time for something which is free.
A rating service like this actually sounds like a very good idea- even one worth paying a small amount for (they very well will need money to protect themselves from lawsuits due to bad ratings). You pay the rating service about what you pay the web service- almost nothing.
Anyway, how else can a class push back against ToS that are not worth reading?
The browser add-on is nice – it adds an icon to the location bar with the overall site rating and makes the info readily accessible by clicking on that icon. It is nice to have a quick assessment of the site's TOS as soon right as the page loads.
Up vote, this seems like a great idea to me. I'd love to see companies get beat up publicly when terms of service are obviously bad. Would also love to see some standardization of privacy/content/other sub polices.
If we're all supposed to push our data from an internet of things into the cloud the community needs to hold companies accountable as nobody else is going to. I shudder to think what facebook would be doing right now if it hadn't been for public outcry over things like their "Beacon" program.
I like this more for the fact that I get a better idea of what these companies are willing to say publicly about utilizing the data they have on you. TOSes are ultimately meaningless, but comparing sites with things like "your data remains yours" and "your data becomes ours" speaks a lot towards company policy.
I've heard proposals for standardized icons for TOSs. Kind of like the truth-in-lending statements with credit card offers that spell out everything up front.
Website's user design is bad- opening "more details" in a new tab, for example, just redirects to the homepage. It's also not very filled out- major services like DuckDuckGo and Instagram just have stub pages.
The problem with this website is that 99% of the users will never run into an issue with the TOS, and the 1% that do, will need a lawyer, not a TL;DR website. It's not very needed, nor does it do a good job at presenting the info it should.
You missed the (fairly obvious) point of the website, which is to advocate for better terms of service through public ratings and advocacy, not help people with individual legal issues.
And the reason why opening "more details" isn't doing what you want it to is that it's not another web page, it's a modal dialogue -- ie, part of the current web page. You can argue (reasonably) that modals aren't good design, but it's definitely doing what it's intended to do.
And what potential stub pages are you even talking about?
Why would anyone care? Is it a legal binding contract between me and the comany? No. It might be taken into account if we go into court, but if they have it in their TOS that I bought an elephant from them - it will not hold.
If they grant me any rights in their TOS - do I trust them? No. I would never keep data in the cloud without backups. Or have the assumption that my data will be held private.
It's all just occupational therapy for lawyers.