7 ms·

Terms and conditions word by word

151 points by jonespen 10y ago

egjerlow 10y ago
This seems like a nice resource for swashing through the terms and conditions jungle: https://tosdr.org/ https://tosdr.org/
- INTPenis 10y ago
  Came here to say that tosdr is much simpler because that video stream is like listening to a text2speech version of a large and complex legal text. Combined with a crackly norwegian accent that's even hard for me as a swede to accept.
  - gremy0 10y ago
    I really don't think the point of the stream is to provide simple way consume T&Cs, more the opposite really.
  - egjerlow 10y ago
    The way it is titled on the Norwegian version of the page ("We read app terms and conditions minute by minute") they're probably partly spoofing the successful NRK 'slow TV shows'[1] that were all titled thus. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7VYVjR_nwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7VYVjR_nwE [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_television#Norwegian_Broadcasting_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_television#Norwegian_Broa...
    - yxlx 10y ago
      This is correct, as can be seen from the following tweet retweeted by Forbrukerrådet and therefore currently on display on the OP link: https://mobile.twitter.com/PRlinjen/status/735072936474890240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://mobile.twitter.com/PRlinjen/status/73507293647489024...
- vijayr 10y ago
  Wow, some of these are scary. "No Right to leave the service" - Delicious "The Android app can record sound & video from your phone, at any time, without your consent" - Facebook The sweetest of them all seems to be DDG
  - at-fates-hands 10y ago
    Scary, but apparently not enough to keep people from using said services. I can't tell if people are simply indifferent to it no matter what you had them agree to, or just ignorant of what some of these apps do.
barkbro 10y ago
>1. Cut back on the obvious Would this work when there are different laws for different jurisdictions and there is no way to tell for sure where the user acutally is located? I thought the reason behind the obviousness was to cover everything. >2. Write so that people understand >3. Keep it short and concise That probably wouldn't be beneficial for all the companies using the user-as-the-product model. "Terms of Service: We retain the right to track your location, read your text messages, listen to the microphone and read your thoughts"
- angusb 10y ago
  But that's exactly what it should say!
- ajdlinux 10y ago
  > Would this work when there are different laws for different jurisdictions and there is no way to tell for sure where the user acutally is located? I thought the reason behind the obviousness was to cover everything. This is an obvious difficulty, though it could perhaps be alleviated somewhat by #5 (Adopt an industry standard) - some kind of "base" set of T&Cs and standardised vocabulary for each jurisdiction.
- belorn 10y ago
  The problem with trying to cover everything, is that it has eroded the definition of informed consent. Expecting a person to do a informed decision on everything is difficult for even a certified expert on law, and much of "everything" is only relevant in context of local law and local contract law which dictate what is and isn't acceptable in a contract. We are thus in a rather odd situation where most contracts and agreements are signed without the signer having a clue what they agree to.
  - rlpb 10y ago
    Various jurisdictions have consumer protection laws that try to help here. What I think would help is if, for consumer contracts: 1. The weight of individual terms diminished in law as the contract length increases. A reasonable length would be judged by the nature of the contract (a reasonable length for the simple sale of goods would be short, a complex arrangement like a mortgage would be expected to be longer). 2. If for a particular term in favour of party A, party A cannot reasonably believe that party B read and understood it at the time of forming the contract, then the term is void. For example, if a contract is presented to me as a consumer, I clearly have never seen it before and sign it immediately without reading it, the signature should mean nothing and the only contract that exists should be an implied contract around what we are doing.
chirau 10y ago
I'd really love to see an app which monitors changes in terms and conditions for different apps and services so that I am notified whenever something changes.
- switch007 10y ago
  https://www.docracy.com/tos/changes https://www.docracy.com/tos/changes There's an RSS feed for all changes, haven't looked to see if there's per-site feeds.
- bballer 10y ago
  Wouldn't it be pretty easy to create a git repo that you seed with the a bunch of ToS, have a cron fetch them everyday or so, run `git diff` to see if there are changes, push them, tag a new release and boom anyone subscribed will be notified.
  - philippnagel 10y ago
    Sounds good. Another way could be to feed the ToS URL into a visual web scraper (e.g https://github.com/scrapinghub/portia https://github.com/scrapinghub/portia, scrape, then compare and notify via email.
    - bballer 10y ago
      Yeah but then you need infrastructure to send all the emails etc. Hooking into git would allow complete version history diffs, emails, a platform to discuss the changes on and so on. Idea was to just keep it as light as possible while off loading all the heavy lifting.
- k_sze 10y ago
  And the app would notify you about changes of its own T&C. Oh so meta.
- x1798DE 10y ago
  Apparently the EFF has a site that does that: https://tosback.org/ https://tosback.org/ There seems to be a related browser extension (which is recommended elsewhere in this thread by egjerlow), https://tosdr.org https://tosdr.org, but I'm not quite sure if it will tell you when something has changed.
sakri 10y ago
This is so much more fun than watching paint dry
macintux 10y ago
Speaking as someone who used to read newspapers and books on air for people with reading difficulties: if you think it's boring to listen to this, you should try being on the other end!
danso 10y ago
Given that there's often a lot of boilerplate for TOS, would it be fairly easy to come up with a few heuristics for a tool that when fed the text of a TOS, could deemphasize the boilerplate and perhaps flag known problematic (or, at least, esoteric) language? Not a sophisticated AI thing, mind you, just something that cuts a little more to the chase. edit: I mean that the tool should be a dumb high-pass filter that would work in addition to what tosdr provides through user reviews and manual classification via its plugin: https://tosdr.org/classification.html https://tosdr.org/classification.html
- nihonde 10y ago
  I'm a lawyer, and not an expert in AI. I once gathered a ton of Terms of Service, cleaned them up as text files, and began training a classifier. By the time I was done, it was pretty good at telling me which section heading in the typical ToS table of contents any random text belonged to. It was an interesting thought experiment, so I expanded it to my large body of private contracts that I've collected after many years of law practice. The results were less accurate (because ToS tend to follow a pretty rigid pattern, mostly), but still pretty good. The big question is: does anyone really care about it? For example, I never look at tosdr.org because what are you going to do? negotiate a ToS? It's not as if there's any meaningful freedom of choice in this space. My personal view (not legal advice!) is that most browse-wrap ToS aren't enforceable as contracts.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    Not a lawyer but used to read EULAs etc carefully. At some point I gave in and decided a better approach would be to just point out that no sane consumer can read all that.
    - nihonde 10y ago
      The good news is that if you wait long enough, they'll incorporate terms from URIs that are dead. I can't tell you how many commercial contracts I review from the 2000's that are governed by 404 pages.
    - 10y ago
TorKlingberg 10y ago
It's ridiculous that I have to constantly lie and say that I have read and agreed to long legal texts unless I want to go live in cave.
- xufi 10y ago
  Thats ok about 99 percent of us do that as well. Youre not alone freind.
mordechai9000 10y ago
Anytime I install software or sign up for a service on my work laptop, I am entering my company into a (perhaps) binding legal agreement that I haven't done more than skim at best, and has not been reviewed by our corporate legal team. It's fairly common to see clauses that state the terms may change at any time without notice, and continued use of the service means you agree to any changes made. That seems completely unenforceable to me, but I am not a lawyer. I've often fantasized about a legal framework similar to Creative Commons, but for TOS, that would protect the interests of both users and service providers.
tobr 10y ago
My Norwegian isn't great, does the scrolling text at the bottom of the video say that iTunes asks you to read the TOS together with your children? That seems crazy.
- maaaats 10y ago
  Yeah, that's what it said.
TerryADavis 10y ago
TempleOS TOS

151 points by jonespen 10y ago

This seems like a nice resource for swashing through the terms and conditions jungle: https://tosdr.org/ https://tosdr.org/

INTPenis 10y ago
Came here to say that tosdr is much simpler because that video stream is like listening to a text2speech version of a large and complex legal text. Combined with a crackly norwegian accent that's even hard for me as a swede to accept.
- gremy0 10y ago
  I really don't think the point of the stream is to provide simple way consume T&Cs, more the opposite really.
- egjerlow 10y ago
  The way it is titled on the Norwegian version of the page ("We read app terms and conditions minute by minute") they're probably partly spoofing the successful NRK 'slow TV shows'[1] that were all titled thus. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7VYVjR_nwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7VYVjR_nwE [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_television#Norwegian_Broadcasting_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_television#Norwegian_Broa...
  - yxlx 10y ago
    This is correct, as can be seen from the following tweet retweeted by Forbrukerrådet and therefore currently on display on the OP link: https://mobile.twitter.com/PRlinjen/status/735072936474890240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://mobile.twitter.com/PRlinjen/status/73507293647489024...
vijayr 10y ago
Wow, some of these are scary. "No Right to leave the service" - Delicious "The Android app can record sound & video from your phone, at any time, without your consent" - Facebook The sweetest of them all seems to be DDG
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  Scary, but apparently not enough to keep people from using said services. I can't tell if people are simply indifferent to it no matter what you had them agree to, or just ignorant of what some of these apps do.

barkbro 10y ago

>1. Cut back on the obvious Would this work when there are different laws for different jurisdictions and there is no way to tell for sure where the user acutally is located? I thought the reason behind the obviousness was to cover everything. >2. Write so that people understand >3. Keep it short and concise That probably wouldn't be beneficial for all the companies using the user-as-the-product model. "Terms of Service: We retain the right to track your location, read your text messages, listen to the microphone and read your thoughts"

angusb 10y ago
But that's exactly what it should say!
ajdlinux 10y ago
> Would this work when there are different laws for different jurisdictions and there is no way to tell for sure where the user acutally is located? I thought the reason behind the obviousness was to cover everything. This is an obvious difficulty, though it could perhaps be alleviated somewhat by #5 (Adopt an industry standard) - some kind of "base" set of T&Cs and standardised vocabulary for each jurisdiction.
belorn 10y ago
The problem with trying to cover everything, is that it has eroded the definition of informed consent. Expecting a person to do a informed decision on everything is difficult for even a certified expert on law, and much of "everything" is only relevant in context of local law and local contract law which dictate what is and isn't acceptable in a contract. We are thus in a rather odd situation where most contracts and agreements are signed without the signer having a clue what they agree to.
- rlpb 10y ago
  Various jurisdictions have consumer protection laws that try to help here. What I think would help is if, for consumer contracts: 1. The weight of individual terms diminished in law as the contract length increases. A reasonable length would be judged by the nature of the contract (a reasonable length for the simple sale of goods would be short, a complex arrangement like a mortgage would be expected to be longer). 2. If for a particular term in favour of party A, party A cannot reasonably believe that party B read and understood it at the time of forming the contract, then the term is void. For example, if a contract is presented to me as a consumer, I clearly have never seen it before and sign it immediately without reading it, the signature should mean nothing and the only contract that exists should be an implied contract around what we are doing.

chirau 10y ago

I'd really love to see an app which monitors changes in terms and conditions for different apps and services so that I am notified whenever something changes.

switch007 10y ago
https://www.docracy.com/tos/changes https://www.docracy.com/tos/changes There's an RSS feed for all changes, haven't looked to see if there's per-site feeds.
bballer 10y ago
Wouldn't it be pretty easy to create a git repo that you seed with the a bunch of ToS, have a cron fetch them everyday or so, run `git diff` to see if there are changes, push them, tag a new release and boom anyone subscribed will be notified.
- philippnagel 10y ago
  Sounds good. Another way could be to feed the ToS URL into a visual web scraper (e.g https://github.com/scrapinghub/portia https://github.com/scrapinghub/portia, scrape, then compare and notify via email.
  - bballer 10y ago
    Yeah but then you need infrastructure to send all the emails etc. Hooking into git would allow complete version history diffs, emails, a platform to discuss the changes on and so on. Idea was to just keep it as light as possible while off loading all the heavy lifting.
k_sze 10y ago
And the app would notify you about changes of its own T&C. Oh so meta.
x1798DE 10y ago
Apparently the EFF has a site that does that: https://tosback.org/ https://tosback.org/ There seems to be a related browser extension (which is recommended elsewhere in this thread by egjerlow), https://tosdr.org https://tosdr.org, but I'm not quite sure if it will tell you when something has changed.

sakri 10y ago

This is so much more fun than watching paint dry

macintux 10y ago

Speaking as someone who used to read newspapers and books on air for people with reading difficulties: if you think it's boring to listen to this, you should try being on the other end!

danso 10y ago

Given that there's often a lot of boilerplate for TOS, would it be fairly easy to come up with a few heuristics for a tool that when fed the text of a TOS, could deemphasize the boilerplate and perhaps flag known problematic (or, at least, esoteric) language? Not a sophisticated AI thing, mind you, just something that cuts a little more to the chase. edit: I mean that the tool should be a dumb high-pass filter that would work in addition to what tosdr provides through user reviews and manual classification via its plugin: https://tosdr.org/classification.html https://tosdr.org/classification.html

nihonde 10y ago
I'm a lawyer, and not an expert in AI. I once gathered a ton of Terms of Service, cleaned them up as text files, and began training a classifier. By the time I was done, it was pretty good at telling me which section heading in the typical ToS table of contents any random text belonged to. It was an interesting thought experiment, so I expanded it to my large body of private contracts that I've collected after many years of law practice. The results were less accurate (because ToS tend to follow a pretty rigid pattern, mostly), but still pretty good. The big question is: does anyone really care about it? For example, I never look at tosdr.org because what are you going to do? negotiate a ToS? It's not as if there's any meaningful freedom of choice in this space. My personal view (not legal advice!) is that most browse-wrap ToS aren't enforceable as contracts.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  Not a lawyer but used to read EULAs etc carefully. At some point I gave in and decided a better approach would be to just point out that no sane consumer can read all that.
  - nihonde 10y ago
    The good news is that if you wait long enough, they'll incorporate terms from URIs that are dead. I can't tell you how many commercial contracts I review from the 2000's that are governed by 404 pages.
  - 10y ago

TorKlingberg 10y ago

It's ridiculous that I have to constantly lie and say that I have read and agreed to long legal texts unless I want to go live in cave.

xufi 10y ago
Thats ok about 99 percent of us do that as well. Youre not alone freind.

mordechai9000 10y ago

Anytime I install software or sign up for a service on my work laptop, I am entering my company into a (perhaps) binding legal agreement that I haven't done more than skim at best, and has not been reviewed by our corporate legal team. It's fairly common to see clauses that state the terms may change at any time without notice, and continued use of the service means you agree to any changes made. That seems completely unenforceable to me, but I am not a lawyer. I've often fantasized about a legal framework similar to Creative Commons, but for TOS, that would protect the interests of both users and service providers.

tobr 10y ago

My Norwegian isn't great, does the scrolling text at the bottom of the video say that iTunes asks you to read the TOS together with your children? That seems crazy.

maaaats 10y ago
Yeah, that's what it said.

TerryADavis 10y ago

TempleOS TOS