Comment by SomeHacker44
3 days ago
I am not a lawyer, but I can't see how any court would enforce this unconscionable term in a clickwrap license.
3 days ago
I am not a lawyer, but I can't see how any court would enforce this unconscionable term in a clickwrap license.
It's really a miracle that any judicial system considers "clicking accept without reading" to be a valid form of binding contract in the first place.
And that they let businesses change the license at any time, with just an email notification, and the only way to opt out of the new terms is to stop using the service.
How else would you "opt out"? You want to have your cake and eat it too?
Most people don't care about the Terms of Service. Would you have a more positive assessment of the judicial system if it infantilized its citizens? If someone doesn't read it the first time or ignores an email what is the system supposed to do? Stand over your shoulder and make you read it? Do you want citizens to be prosecuted for signing things on the theory they didn't actually read them?
What number of people actually read the terms, actually read the new terms, decide they don't like the new terms, but after caring this much decide they don't want to "opt out" (I'm still not clear what remedy you want to invent for this)? Do you think this number is so high that you should be shocked that for some reason this is not a priority? I'm not even sure you've actually articulated a problem.
Is there a Terms of Service change you find particularly offensive that might better explain your concerns here? If so, I would be interested to hear you describe it with greater specificity.
5 replies →
In Canada at least it currently has the same level of legal binding as signing a paper contract with a pen.
It’s not really different from paper contracts. Nobody reads them, they just sign where they’re told to.
I regularly fully read and try to understand paper contracts before signing them. Every time, it's clear that no time was set aside for me to read the contract, and the other party expected me to sign the contract within a few seconds of first receiving it. Often, I get the sense that the other party is annoyed or frustrated that I take time to read the contract before agreeing to it.
I've read that contracts fundamentally require a "meeting of the minds", where two parties come to a mutual understanding of an agreement. At the same time, overwhelming people are expected to not read and understand contracts they agree to. I don't understand how these two facts don't combine to mean the vast majority of written contracts are not legally binding, but apparently judges don't share my confusion.
This is an agreement between two businesses, not a clickwrap license being forced upon consumers. Businesses have plenty of alternatives to Meta; they can just close their accounts if they don't like the terms.
Is it illegal to scrape websites? Idk, feels like consenting to being filmed in public, it's already legal.
I don't know about the USA, but it seems that generally filming in public where you catch sight of passerbys and filming a specific person in public spaces are wildly different things.
If I stand outside your house and follow you all day recording your every moment in a public space, is that legal or has that turned into harassment? Certainly in many countries, filming an incidental person may be legal but filming them in detail and from every angle is not (eg upskirting)