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Like Comcast, Google Fiber now forces customers into arbitration
- the_watcher 10y agoThis isn't exactly rare. It's a very, very common clause in TOS's. It's also often a clause that isn't exactly enforceable (and I believe different venues have different rules about it).
- Dowwie 10y agoFor more information about arbitration courts, read this New York Times article:. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration-everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbit...
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoThe key quote in here, to save people fishing for what they know is in this article: "And the rules of arbitration largely favor companies, which can even steer cases to friendly arbitrators, interviews and records show." Also, you might want to use a non-mobile link.
- cerbasict12 10y agoHow is Google different anyway? They both support the TPP.
- zymhan 10y agoIs there really no other comparison between the two companies that you can think of?
- cerbasict12 10y agoNope!
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoThey also both line politicians' pockets to ensure laws get passed in their favor? (Google has donated to over half of Congress according to OpenSecrets.org, in actual cash donated I think Comcast might still be on top, but the gap's closing fast.) I'd also comment on their mutually horrible customer service, but at least Comcast HAS people you can call, even if they're lousy.
- rayiner 10y ago> (Google has donated to over half of Congress according to OpenSecrets.org, in actual cash donated I think Comcast might still be on top, but the gap's closing fast.) Corporations can't donate to political campaigns. What OpenSecrets.org misleadingly advertises as "corporate" donations to political campaigns are employee donations to campaigns.[1] Google has 57,000 employees. Unsurprisingly, many of them exercise their rights as members of a democracy and support their favorite political candidates. [1] Specifically, OpenSecrets lists donations from individual employees and company-sponsored PACs. Corporations are banned from contributing directly to political candidates, or from donating to regular PACs. Only Super PACs can accept money from corporations, but those are banned from donating to candidates.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoIt's not misleading. Many of the donations are from top ranking Googlers like Eric Schmidt who directly interact with these politicians in a business sense. Many of these donors have stock-based compensation with Google. Unsurprisingly, almost all pro-Google legislation is sponsored by the same Congresspeople who have received the largest donations from Googlers. So OpenSecrets' format is specifically designed to reveal corruption that would not be obvious with mere donor names alone.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- DannyBee 10y ago"It's not misleading. " Of course it is. People are not the companies they work for. Period. " Many of the donations are from top ranking Googlers like Eric Schmidt who directly interact with these politicians in a business sense." "many". Opensecrets lists 503 unique people identified as googlers donating. I don't believe you have any reasonable argument that there are 503 top ranking googlers who interact directly with these politicians in a business sense. I think you can argue maybe 1-2% of them are. So 98% of them somehow don't fall into what you consider "many of the donations". That doesn't seem like many to me. "Unsurprisingly, almost all pro-Google legislation is sponsored by the same Congresspeople who have received the largest donations from Googlers." What is "pro-google"? Who are "the same congresspeople"? Can you give specific examples of pro-google legislation and congresspeople who have repeatedly passed them, where there largest donations were from google? I see a tremendous amount of handwaving in your comment, but pretty much no real data.
- zymhan 10y agoWhat scenario is Google worried about where they will face a massive, costly class action lawsuit over their internet service?
- Cuuugi 10y agoData collection is my guess.
- mikeash 10y agoMaybe there are no specific scenarios, and it's just to be safe. If you were Google, why wouldn't you add such a clause? It's not like it's going to scare customers away.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoShouldn't it scare away customers that a company will only do business with them if they cannot be held in court for misdeeds regarding that business? I sadly understand that consumers don't read the fine print. But really, this clause should be treated as a dealbreaker.
- fgonzag 10y agoIt won't because usually your options are 50 Mbit line (maybe 100 if you're really lucky) or a 1Gb line for the same price. I'd happily take the arbitration clause for 10x and probably 20x the speedup.
- heroprotagonist 10y agoBeyond that, your other options will also usually include arbitration clauses. If it's a deal-breaker for choosing Google, it'll be a deal-breaker for choosing anyone else.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoThat's a fair point. As the article's title points out, Comcast does the same.
- lucb1e 10y agoSerious question: how is this legal? I can't imagine I could make someone sign a form that he waives his right to sue me and then shoot him, right? Assuming he doesn't die and it's him, not the government, that prosecutes/sues me.
- mmanfrin 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_LLC_v._Concepcion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_LLC_v._Concepc... 5 to 4 decision, along the same lines as you'd assume.
- pdabbadabba 10y agoNot exactly. This opinion only decided that an arbitration clause can disallow class-wide arbitration. The real answer to GP's question is the Federal Arbitration Act (which, by the way, was also the statutory basis for Concepcion): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act
- EpicEng 10y agoWell that would be a criminal act and the state would be pressing charges, not the victim. Bad analogy.
- the_watcher 10y ago> I can't imagine I could make someone sign a form that he waives his right to sue me and then shoot him, right? To answer your question - yes, you could legally have someone sign a contract waiving his right to sue you for shooting him. However, the contract would be unenforceable, and he could sue you (for both shooting him and potentially for the contract - IIRC, that depends on the state). One of the things that became abundantly clear in contract law is that you can put essentially anything into a contract, legally. It's enforcement of said contract that the legal system gets involved in.
- spriggan3 10y agoIt's difficult to understand how such clause is even legal to begin with. It basically sets up a "private" justice system for non criminal cases. That's insane. I get it, there are difference sort of tribunals. But it shouldn't be up to the corporations to decide where justice is supposed to be served.
- mmanfrin 10y agoIt's legal because the five justices who decided that money is speech decided that money now gets its own courts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_LLC_v._Concepcion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_LLC_v._Concepc...
- the_watcher 10y agoNot really. Arbitration has long been a path that judges recommend for non-criminal cases to reduce strain on the court system. I know that it can often seem nefarious, but a major part of the modern civil court system involves reducing the (frankly, unbelievable) strain on court resources, which are finite (and in many states, being reduced for budgetary reasons).
- pdabbadabba 10y agoIt's because Congress passed a law, called the Arbitration Act, allow explicitly allowing it. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/9/2 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/9/2
- benbenolson 10y agoDoes anybody care about the Constitution anymore? It seems like every day I read an article about someone either going against the Constitution, or getting very close to denying its importance in the United States.
- RileyKyeden 10y agoYou should be more specific if you want useful replies. Otherwise, people will chime in to soapbox on their pet constitutional issue.
- benbenolson 10y agoThis was in direct response to the article, in which Google Fiber's new policy strips users of their Constitutional rights.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hnbroseph 10y agowhat are you speaking of in particular?
- wl 10y agoThe throwaway line about the first amendment in the linked article is based on ignorance. The phrase they're alluding to in the first amendment is "petition the Government for a redress of grievances." As in, grievances against the government.
- koolba 10y agoHas any state attempted to ban arbitration clauses via popular vote/referendum? If so, would that even hold up in court and across state lines? Seems like the only way to deal with this crap as there's no incentive for corporations not to force customers into binding arbitration. If I was still running a large consumer focused corporation I'd insist on it as well.
- Natsu 10y agoWhy ban it? Just make it so that when it's person vs. company, the person can choose the arbiter. Then they can't shop for a biased arbiter.
- koolba 10y ago> Why ban it? Because it prevents creating a class action to group together impacted customers. Individually it may not be worth it for a customer to proceed with a claim. En masse, there is an economy of scale. Now I'm not in favor of frivolous lawsuits and these clauses are clearly intended as a defend against them, but if the response to that problem shouldn't be binding arbitration everywhere. It should be tort reform.
- Natsu 10y agoYes, it might prevent class action, but if that many people have truly been harmed, the company will have a massive number of arbitration suits to handle which could be more expensive. So they still can't just go around and piss off large numbers of customers. Half the things I've gotten pitiful $5 checks for were not at all in my interests and one, namely the Microsoft class-actions, I was tried but failed to figure out how to object to because of how badly the lawyers in this state sold the class out in what they settled for. So I'm not convinced that many of the class actions were actually in the interests of the class members to begin with. I'd honestly prefer to bring my own cases to court than have some self-appointed class representative sell me out.
- TheMagicHorsey 10y agoArbitration clauses are allowed because in contracts the tradition is that the parties are allowed to create private rules that will govern their future transaction. You can also nominate the venue and laws that will apply to the contract, even if you don't arbitrate. The reasoning is that the contract is a bargained document between the parties, and if a party does not like the contract, they are not forced to enter it. If what you get in return for the contract is not sufficient to join the contract, then you don't execute it. This is efficient so long as the bargaining power in the market is not highly asymmetrical. The US market is not ideal, but I'm not entirely certain arbitration provisions are a bad idea, regardless. One reason arbitration provisions might be good, is because its a way for companies to opt out of the hunting territory of the trial lawyers association. The lawyers are another powerful group that has created many kinds of nuisance lawsuits that act as a private tax on corporations in the US. If the private tax is unavoidable, the cost is passed on as a price increase to consumers. The lack of arbitration clause could manifest itself as increased cost of goods in the current climate, because of the huge cost of nuisance class actions, etc. Just a perspective.
- arca_vorago 10y agoThe problem with this perspective is that it doesnt match reality. Consumers have not been taught how to properly negotiate and enter contracts, and companies creating the arbitration clauses almost always have the power to push back on changes until the consumer relents. I wash shocked when I ordered a test Dell Ubuntu machine, took the time to read the EULA/TOS, and was appaled at their terms, which included waiving of constitutional right to a jury! The real problem, the dark discussion we need to be having, is about the inequality of access to redress of greivance via the law. We live in a society that has created a system in which you must have money to pursue legal recourse, and in a world of increasing inequality, the fact is the port and middle class are increasingly railroaded by arbitration clauses and similar legalese understood by only the people who wrote it. I'm not advocating for restriction of private terms of contract, but corporations are abusing their power in the equation to the detriment of the people, so lets not lose sight of the reality, as opposed to the theoritical situation lobbyists would have us believe. As a proposed solution, I think contract law should be taught in highschool as core cirriculum. I have even recently added a section in my documentation for sysadmins to address the reading of eulas/tos, and signing of contracts.
- NegativeK 10y agoSomeone gave non-specific legal advice that a hackerspace I'm a part of include an arbitration clause in its liability waiver. Comparing Google's to Comcast in this situation doesn't really feel right.
- effingwewt 10y agoI posted this on another article- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11850870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11850870 -but it went unanswered, I'm hoping maybe this time someone will see this. It was in regards to google being brought a CA by advertisers who'd felt cheated (and rightly so if I understand correctly). "Serious question- Would this(a class action suit for screwing customers) have been possible if Google had put in their contract that all parties waive their right to a class action? Many companies do this now- Microsoft's xbox live, for example not only forces you to forfeit any class action lawsuits, but at the time I stopped using their services, I believe they also required meditation with a mediator to be chosen by Microsoft. I sold my xbox 360 and never looked back. edit- I also remember specifically Microsoft releasing a TOU update just days after, if not the day of, the ruling allowing companies to do this came down."
- whamlastxmas 10y agoThe mediation part is a moot point from what I've heard. Mediators don't really do anything other than facilitate discussion. If they got to choose an arbitrator that would be a different story.