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If you manage to renegotiate your contract/EULA with Apple or Facebook or Google because of your impressive ability to read and understand them, let me know. I
by wfo 10y ago
If you manage to renegotiate your contract/EULA with Apple or Facebook or Google because of your impressive ability to read and understand them, let me know.
In reality, the power these companies have means there is no negotiation. They are gatekeepers to nearly necessary tools to exist in society (especially for the non-tech-savvy) and they can put whatever rules they want on those gates. Your choices are to do whatever they want or walk away.
In fact, I'd posit it's a waste of time for someone who isn't a privacy attorney to read these take-it-or-leave-it-style "contracts" since you HAVE to accept them, and the only things you can argue about or discuss are provisions in the contract which are illegal or unenforceable, and that discussion happens much later in front of a judge.
The ONLY way we can protect ourselves from these abusive contracts (particularly the pervasive and rights-destroying mandatory binding arbitration clauses) is to use legislation to delete them from existence.
Nearly all tech companies try to use noncompetes to keep their employees in a brutal stranglehold and stop them from shopping around to try to earn the market value of their labor. California is where tech goes to flourish and startups abound, because noncompetes are banned there.
We need to ban mandatory binding arbitration altogether (there is no reason it should have ever been legal), and have very strict guidelines about what kinds of privacy/tech contracts are allowed -- with punishments for companies who violate, strict ones.
- pjlegato 10y agoI mostly agree, though I think that California's massive amount of readily available tech venture capital, as compared to anywhere else on Earth, is a far more important factor in its abundance of startups, rather than its obscure law banning non-compete agreements.
- wfo 10y agoThe law isn't obscure at all, it's a fundamental part of employment law that separates California from many other states. And saying it's due to tech VC is saying there's a lot of tech success due to the overabundance of tech success. People who work at a company can quit and start a startup, even in the same industry, carrying with them their hard-won expertise. Without a legal cloud over their heads which will scare away investment.
- pjlegato 10y ago"Obscure" does not mean "unimportant." It means few people know about it. I've lived in San Francisco and worked in the tech industry here for 10 years, during which time I've discussed this exact law with numerous people in many different roles. I can count on one hand the number of people who had heard of it before I told them. Since almost nobody (here or elsewhere) knows that this law even exists, it's reasonable to conclude that it is not a significant factor in the development of the local tech industry. Moreover, all of the large tech concerns whose profits fund those VC firms would be much better off without this law and are openly against it. See, for example, the anti-employee poaching ring that Steve Jobs set up.