Comment by giobox
12 days ago
Ha out of curiosity I loaded that same consumer terms URL on both a USA and a UK VPN exit node - sure enough, the UK terms inject that extra clause you quoted banning commercial usage that is not present for USA users.
diff of the changes between US and UK:
https://www.diffchecker.com/BtqVrR9p/
There's the usual expected legal boilerplate differences. However, the UK version injects the additional clause at line 134 that has no analog in the US version.
Wow, if you brought a paper contract to court that mutated itself depending which way you look at the paper, I wonder what a judge would think of that?
Personally I would crumple it up and pitch it out the window. I don't know why they can't simply be clear about what clauses apply to which geographies. An IP address should not be assumed as a reliable indicator of the jurisdiction in which an end-user resides. (Eg. In addition of VPNs's and unexpected routing, what happens if you travel?)
I once wrote a contract document in PostScript that changed the wording based on the date. Two parties could cryptographically sign an agreement in the document, which would change when printed on a later date.
One of the reasons we don’t use PostScript so much any more.
Isn't PDF also programmable? I think it supports javascript and even a subset of PostScript if I'm not mistaken.
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It's perfectly normal for contracts in different jurisdictions to use different wording and include different clauses.
Even within the US, employment contracts with the same organisation may contain different wording depending on the state in which the employment is occurring.
> It's perfectly normal for contracts in different jurisdictions to use different wording and include different clauses.
Before signing, yes, but once signed the contract stays constant. Mutating terms of service are weird - I would expect them to be locked to a canonical URL at least, like "https://.../tos?region=eu" or ideally something that locks the version too, like "https://.../tos?version=eu-002".
Let me pose a question from a different angle - these are legal contracts we are talking about, and the version they present to the user apparently changes based only on the client IP address. So if the terms in the EU ToS are better than in the US ToS, what would prevent me from signing up with an EU IP Address the first time? I would expect to be bound to the contract I actually agree to, not just the one they "intended" to show me.
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My issue isn't with them having different verbiage for different jurisdictions. It's with the way they sneakily change the verbiage in a manner nobody would expect.
The correct way to do this is to clearly distinguish them e.g. two different contracts, one titled "US Terms of Service" and another "European Terms of Service". Both with static content. Preferably PDF's or some other fixed format which you can download to redline changes when they inevitably tweak it every couple years, and properly print in the event you need to embark on litigation.
Not some "Global Terms of Service that silently change depending on quasi-pseudorandom network stack effects"
How the hell are you supposed to have confidence you're even looking at the right document? Contracts are meant to be clear and unambiguous, this dark pattern works against consensus ad idem.
Having different contracts for different countries with different rules is a normal thing.
This is not it, though.
This is one contract that mutates.
Other websites have EU terms, us terms, etc and declare which one you are covered under.
In the Uk there seem to be separate commercial and consumer terms.
In the UK the consumer terms say its subject to English law and the courts of the UK jurisdiction you live in.
The commercial terms say that in the UK, Switzerland and the EEA there will be binding arbitration by an arbitrator in Ireland appointed by the President of the Law Society of Ireland.
The UK commercial terms explicitly do not apply to individual user plans. The US also has a separate terms sheet for commercial plans.
We are comparing like for like - an individual user using a Claude Pro subscription. A US user can use it for commercial use and be in compliance with the terms, the UK user cannot.
> A US user can use it for commercial use and be in compliance with the terms, the UK user cannot.
But why? My guess is the liability exposure is what they’re trying to control. So you probably can if you’re ok with no liability. It’s still noncompliant to how they wrote it but I would guess it’s the motivation. Unless they really just want to force the UK to pay for all commercial uses, which I suppose is possible.
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