Yes: the Uniform Commercial Code which is the standard contract that governs virtually all commercial transactions in the United States.
When you buy something at Wal-Mart, your sales contract is the UCC. When you order something online or by phone, and neither of you specify details of things like form of payment, warranties, shipping... those details are filled in by the UCC. And it's called "uniform" because all of the states have individually codified the same default contract into their state laws.
This uniform contract is also where several warranties arise that people take as a given precisely because the UCC inserts them into every sale that doesn't disclaim them: the warranties of merchantability and fitness for a purpose. Those are your guarantees that when you buy something from someone, the goods will do the thing they're supposed to do and there's nothing significantly wrong with them. It's why you have a right to a refund/return when the thing you bought is broken, or doesn't do what it says it does.
Thanks for the reminder. UCC recently introduced Article 12 which covers digital assets like CBDC and cryptocurrency via the category of CER (controllable electronic records). Article 12 says that custody/control of a private key plays a prominent role in seniority of claims against digital assets, including scenarios involving the purchase of possibly-stolen digital assets.
> Article 12 – dealing directly with the acquisition and disposition of interests (including security interests) in “controllable electronic records,” which would include Bitcoin, Ether, and a variety of other digital assets. Under Article 12 and associated amendments to Article 9, a party may perfect a security interest in certain controllable electronic records by obtaining “control” of such records. In addition, Article 12 confers an attribute of negotiability on controllable electronic records – a good faith purchaser for value who obtains control (a “qualifying purchaser”) takes its interest free of conflicting property claims.
This is also why releasing code without a license is dangerous. Without a license your code defaults to the UGC and thus you become liable for "fit for purpose". Instead even basic open source licenses must disclaim the default clauses if the UGC like warranty and fit for purpose.
I'm not sure about software that is given away for free, but "fit for purpose" liability certainly sounds like a sensible idea for any software that is sold, whether or not it includes free or open source components.
This makes even more sense as software becomes a key component of more products.
At this point the whole thing feels perverse. Almost no software guarantees "fit for purpose". It really should be other way around at this point. The license would have to say it establishes warranty if it doesn't there is no such warranty or fit for purpose.
This also implies the drawback of doing it this way: The UCC is created by private entities and then legislatures are pressured to adopt it as-is "for uniformity" even though they were the ones elected to set government policy and not the drafters of the UCC.
> This also implies the drawback of doing it this way: The UCC is created by private entities and then legislatures are pressured to adopt it as-is "for uniformity" even though they were the ones elected to set government policy and not the drafters of the UCC.
The schoolhouse rock version of how a bill becomes law is basically pure fiction at this point. Certainly at the federal level I'm not sure a single so-called legislator is competent to draft a bill. Occasionally they will have their staff draft some showboat bill that will likely never even pass committee, but almost all the bills that become law are drafted by some interest group or other, who then hire lobbyists to find a "legislator" willing to rubber stamp it.
It's surprising that it's not more of a well known fact that the USA isn't even remotely a real popularly representative democracy, given how completely obvious it is to all but the most casual observer. Princeton even published a study on the subject[1].
Yep, that’s how it works in Germany. There are laws that cover many cases for, i.e., lease contracts, online shopping, digital services. The terms of service just cover the specifics and cannot contain “surprising” or “unusual” things. The general idea is that a normal consumer neither have the knowledge nor the time to understand in depth legalese.
As one example, which is a quite similar case, the standard lease contract for apartments in Germany is 4 pages. In the USA I’ve had between 21 and 27 pages so far.
In the US: they are long, but in my experience they're also extremely usual. Every apartment I've rented (5 in my city) has used the exact same template; with some blank lines and checkboxes where they write in "You'll pay this much in rent" "for this long" "pets are allowed" "garage: n/a" "satellite dish: n/a" etc.
A lot of website privacy policies are just people filling out privacy policy generator sites. They might as well just directly show the boxes checked and fields filled out, instead of the output document.
> Every apartment I've rented (5 in my city) has used the exact same template.
Given the number of different templates floating around tailored to most individual states, that’s either an extreme coincidence, or there is shared ownership, management, or legal representation between the different apartment complexes.
When I lived in Chicago, there was a standard residential apartment lease that to my understanding was written by the city. If you were leasing residential property in the city, you had to use that lease, and you could not change it.
I won't swear that this is correct, or that it still works that way, but that was my impression.
I'm also sure that a lot of people still rented apartments on handshake, unwritten, or under-the-table deals for a variety of reasons.
More like the opposite of what you asked, but a car park with a traditional pay machine didn't have much in the way of terms and conditions. Now that they have apps, suddenly there are pages and pages. But they managed before, so they should be able to manage now.
I mention this because it's sort of an example of it "having been achieved" in the past, albeit not in the lawmaking sense.
I am a landlord in France, and from what I've seen, rental contracts are essentially not worth the paper they are written on.
Either what you put in the contract is a law, so it is effective no matter if you write it or not, or it isn't and in this case, there is a high chance it is considered abusive and therefore not legally enforceable. In fact, you might as well not write anything at all! If someone lives on someone's property and pays money in exchange, there is an implicit contract with standard clauses between the two parties. I think the only additional right a written contract can give a landlord is to increase the rent, but by no more than the inflation rate.
I don't know if I like that or hate it. Having the simplicity that everything is equal is great. What about pet clauses, garage access, and such? Seems like those would need to be respected.
I'm in Germany not France but Pet Clauses aren't generally valid.
Garage access is only an issue if you pay for it. If you pay for a garage, the landlord has to ensure you have access and depending on the type of contract, ensure you are the only one with access (re; shared vs solo garages).
The Pet Clause thing only concerns big pets. Anything the size of a normal house cat or smaller (except actual house cats and exotic/unusual pets) requires no special permission. If larger pets are banned, this is only valid if there is a contract condition to allow the tenant to get special permission to have a cat or dog. A total and general ban of all pets is considered too disadvantageous for the tenant and thus not allowed. When asking for permission, the denial must have an explanation attached. "Pet can cause damage" isn't allowed for example, since the owner could just buy a pet insurance to cover any claims. Noise and dirt aren't either, since the landlord can require the owner to take care of that. Basically the explanation of why you deny a pet has to be something that the owner doesn't have the power to change easily, such as that the landlord is allergic and living in the flat above you or similar things.
This kinda stuff is usually added at the end of the template contract, there isn'T a lot to read so they tend to be obvious.
Yes: the Uniform Commercial Code which is the standard contract that governs virtually all commercial transactions in the United States.
When you buy something at Wal-Mart, your sales contract is the UCC. When you order something online or by phone, and neither of you specify details of things like form of payment, warranties, shipping... those details are filled in by the UCC. And it's called "uniform" because all of the states have individually codified the same default contract into their state laws.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/table_ucc
This uniform contract is also where several warranties arise that people take as a given precisely because the UCC inserts them into every sale that doesn't disclaim them: the warranties of merchantability and fitness for a purpose. Those are your guarantees that when you buy something from someone, the goods will do the thing they're supposed to do and there's nothing significantly wrong with them. It's why you have a right to a refund/return when the thing you bought is broken, or doesn't do what it says it does.
Thanks for the reminder. UCC recently introduced Article 12 which covers digital assets like CBDC and cryptocurrency via the category of CER (controllable electronic records). Article 12 says that custody/control of a private key plays a prominent role in seniority of claims against digital assets, including scenarios involving the purchase of possibly-stolen digital assets.
https://www.clearygottlieb.com//news-and-insights/publicatio...
> Article 12 – dealing directly with the acquisition and disposition of interests (including security interests) in “controllable electronic records,” which would include Bitcoin, Ether, and a variety of other digital assets. Under Article 12 and associated amendments to Article 9, a party may perfect a security interest in certain controllable electronic records by obtaining “control” of such records. In addition, Article 12 confers an attribute of negotiability on controllable electronic records – a good faith purchaser for value who obtains control (a “qualifying purchaser”) takes its interest free of conflicting property claims.
This is also why releasing code without a license is dangerous. Without a license your code defaults to the UGC and thus you become liable for "fit for purpose". Instead even basic open source licenses must disclaim the default clauses if the UGC like warranty and fit for purpose.
I'm not sure about software that is given away for free, but "fit for purpose" liability certainly sounds like a sensible idea for any software that is sold, whether or not it includes free or open source components.
This makes even more sense as software becomes a key component of more products.
If you don’t license your code then other people don’t default to getting the rights to use it.
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At this point the whole thing feels perverse. Almost no software guarantees "fit for purpose". It really should be other way around at this point. The license would have to say it establishes warranty if it doesn't there is no such warranty or fit for purpose.
This also implies the drawback of doing it this way: The UCC is created by private entities and then legislatures are pressured to adopt it as-is "for uniformity" even though they were the ones elected to set government policy and not the drafters of the UCC.
> This also implies the drawback of doing it this way: The UCC is created by private entities and then legislatures are pressured to adopt it as-is "for uniformity" even though they were the ones elected to set government policy and not the drafters of the UCC.
The schoolhouse rock version of how a bill becomes law is basically pure fiction at this point. Certainly at the federal level I'm not sure a single so-called legislator is competent to draft a bill. Occasionally they will have their staff draft some showboat bill that will likely never even pass committee, but almost all the bills that become law are drafted by some interest group or other, who then hire lobbyists to find a "legislator" willing to rubber stamp it.
It's surprising that it's not more of a well known fact that the USA isn't even remotely a real popularly representative democracy, given how completely obvious it is to all but the most casual observer. Princeton even published a study on the subject[1].
[1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
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Yep, that’s how it works in Germany. There are laws that cover many cases for, i.e., lease contracts, online shopping, digital services. The terms of service just cover the specifics and cannot contain “surprising” or “unusual” things. The general idea is that a normal consumer neither have the knowledge nor the time to understand in depth legalese.
As one example, which is a quite similar case, the standard lease contract for apartments in Germany is 4 pages. In the USA I’ve had between 21 and 27 pages so far.
In the US: they are long, but in my experience they're also extremely usual. Every apartment I've rented (5 in my city) has used the exact same template; with some blank lines and checkboxes where they write in "You'll pay this much in rent" "for this long" "pets are allowed" "garage: n/a" "satellite dish: n/a" etc.
The point being: there are no consequences for a landlord slipping one extreme condition into that template. Maybe on page 17.
And, as long as it doesn't breach any explicit laws, that condition is equally enforceable.
The German system above appears to specifically address that issue with US law.
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A lot of website privacy policies are just people filling out privacy policy generator sites. They might as well just directly show the boxes checked and fields filled out, instead of the output document.
> Every apartment I've rented (5 in my city) has used the exact same template.
Given the number of different templates floating around tailored to most individual states, that’s either an extreme coincidence, or there is shared ownership, management, or legal representation between the different apartment complexes.
When I lived in Chicago, there was a standard residential apartment lease that to my understanding was written by the city. If you were leasing residential property in the city, you had to use that lease, and you could not change it.
I won't swear that this is correct, or that it still works that way, but that was my impression.
I'm also sure that a lot of people still rented apartments on handshake, unwritten, or under-the-table deals for a variety of reasons.
I believe Texas is like this as well [1].
https://eforms.com/rental/tx/texas-standard-residential-leas...
More like the opposite of what you asked, but a car park with a traditional pay machine didn't have much in the way of terms and conditions. Now that they have apps, suddenly there are pages and pages. But they managed before, so they should be able to manage now.
I mention this because it's sort of an example of it "having been achieved" in the past, albeit not in the lawmaking sense.
I am a landlord in France, and from what I've seen, rental contracts are essentially not worth the paper they are written on.
Either what you put in the contract is a law, so it is effective no matter if you write it or not, or it isn't and in this case, there is a high chance it is considered abusive and therefore not legally enforceable. In fact, you might as well not write anything at all! If someone lives on someone's property and pays money in exchange, there is an implicit contract with standard clauses between the two parties. I think the only additional right a written contract can give a landlord is to increase the rent, but by no more than the inflation rate.
I don't know if I like that or hate it. Having the simplicity that everything is equal is great. What about pet clauses, garage access, and such? Seems like those would need to be respected.
I'm in Germany not France but Pet Clauses aren't generally valid.
Garage access is only an issue if you pay for it. If you pay for a garage, the landlord has to ensure you have access and depending on the type of contract, ensure you are the only one with access (re; shared vs solo garages).
The Pet Clause thing only concerns big pets. Anything the size of a normal house cat or smaller (except actual house cats and exotic/unusual pets) requires no special permission. If larger pets are banned, this is only valid if there is a contract condition to allow the tenant to get special permission to have a cat or dog. A total and general ban of all pets is considered too disadvantageous for the tenant and thus not allowed. When asking for permission, the denial must have an explanation attached. "Pet can cause damage" isn't allowed for example, since the owner could just buy a pet insurance to cover any claims. Noise and dirt aren't either, since the landlord can require the owner to take care of that. Basically the explanation of why you deny a pet has to be something that the owner doesn't have the power to change easily, such as that the landlord is allergic and living in the flat above you or similar things.
This kinda stuff is usually added at the end of the template contract, there isn'T a lot to read so they tend to be obvious.
1 reply →
You never used to need a lease to rent an apartment. Also, purchasing is a form of implied standard contract
Medicare supplement policies. Those are rigidly standardized. Insurers hate that, because all they can do is compete on price.