4 ms·

> The difference is that one is expected to consent and be beholden to something they could not reasonably understand without paying a large amount of money to

> The difference is that one is expected to consent and be beholden to something they could not reasonably understand without paying a large amount of money to a specialist. I've found that this is generally less true than I imagine it to be. A lot of law is not actually so difficult to understand. Legalese is still English, and Google is great for figuring out the odd meanings of certain terms of art. Most of the exceptions I've come across (e.g., buying a house) are IMO actually intrinsically complex transactions. I could undestand, but it'd take so long. And the time taken would happen even if we only had the laws we needed and all those laws were written in plain english. In software terms, lots of essential complexity. Going back to the article, the problem with Facebook's terms and conditions is definitely not understandability -- see https://www.facebook.com/policy.php https://www.facebook.com/policy.php. The average high schooler could understand. The problem is people caring enough to 1) find, 2) read, and 3) inconviencance themselves if they don't like the policies.

Digit-Al 8y ago
I beg to differ. > Waving a 2-inch-thick printed version of the social network’s user agreement, Senator Lindsey Graham quoted a line from the first page, then intoned: “I’m a lawyer, and I have no idea what that means.” 1) Two inch thick I've read some pretty long books in my time but that takes the cake. Most people these days don't even have enough attention span to read a complete internet article. How do you expect them to plough through hundreds of pages of legalese? 2) “I’m a lawyer, and I have no idea what that means.” Do I even need to say any more?
- x0x0 8y ago
  You can simultaneously believe that * FB is doing their absolute best to make sure no "user" understands what they have agreed to * writing the law in "plain english" is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in my life. See the multi million dollar lawsuit this year about whether a missing Oxford comma changed wage rules for a class of truck drivers. Any attempt to write law in plain english introduces giant ambiguities [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/oxford-comma-maine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/oxford-comma-maine.htm...
  - dhimes 8y ago
    That law you cited was not written in "plain English." It was Maine's legal code. And it was ambiguous.
    - x0x0 8y ago
      And plain english would have made that better?
      - dhimes 8y ago
        Easily.
        x0x0 8y ago
        In the sense of introducing far far more ambiguity and making the law incomprehensible, yes.
        dhimes 8y ago
        You obviously didn't look at the law you are speaking about.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    > FB is doing their absolute best to make sure no "user" understands what they have agreed to* But before making this argument, one should go read FB's ToS and data policy. Here they are: https://www.facebook.com/terms.php https://www.facebook.com/terms.php https://www.facebook.com/policy.php https://www.facebook.com/policy.php
    - x0x0 8y ago
      Where, precisely, is the bit where they steal data from my phone about sms and phone calls?
      - 8y ago
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  Facebook terms of service: https://www.facebook.com/terms.php https://www.facebook.com/terms.php Facebook data policy: https://www.facebook.com/policy.php https://www.facebook.com/policy.php I agree Lindsay Graham is a skilled orator and politician. But if he blew up the font size until those pages required two inches of 8x11 paper, he must have just terrible eyesight ;-) Also, neither of those documents is terribly difficult to understand. Like... where, specifically, is Graham getting horribly confused?! Point to the concrete line in one of those two links that requires something beyond a high school education! Now, I'm sure there's nuance I don't pick up on. But I definitely feel I can understand the ToS and privacy policy without consulting a lawyer. I don't think some of the terms are fair. But that's a consumer rights issue, not a "legalese" issue. More generally, on two occasions I've had to get in front of a real judge in a "real" courtroom and make an argument based upon some written piece of law I had to look up and interpret myself. In both cases, I was able to successfully convince a judge that I was on the right side of the law without the help of a lawyer. I'm certainly not saying that's always possible, but I do believe there is a lot of "learned helplessness" when it comes to digging through legeal code or contracts and reading legalese. It's a PITA sometimes, but in many many cases it doesn't require years of training.
hiccuphippo 8y ago
I wonder if it would be possible to create an AI that, given a legalese text, could output comments for each fragment explaining and showing examples of what it means. Now that I think about it, wasn't genius.com doing something like that but using crowdsourcing instead?
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  Privacy policies actually use this as a rhetorical trick to confuse users. E.g., they'll say stuff like "we may collect any device information you give permissions to access to do [reasonable thing A], [reasonable thing B], or for any other business purposes. Examples of device information include: [insert list of benign things]" Or, to put emphasis on the important things: "we may (read: WILL) collect ANY device information you give permissions to access to do [reasonable thing A], [reasonable thing B], or for ANY other business purposes. Examples of device information include: [insert list of benign things you should totally ignore]" But here's the problem with the "AI tell us all" approach. If you use ML to mine examples from existing policy texts, you'll end up showing the user all of the benign stuff that the companies put in to reassure users, because that's what the corpus contains. Therefore, your AI will emphasize exactly the wrong types of examples. Also, notice that this isn't even a legalese thing. There are no legal terms of art or long-winding difficult grammatical constructions. It's just plain old good rhetoric. And it's hard/impossible to legislate away persuasion.

Digit-Al 8y ago

I beg to differ. > Waving a 2-inch-thick printed version of the social network’s user agreement, Senator Lindsey Graham quoted a line from the first page, then intoned: “I’m a lawyer, and I have no idea what that means.” 1) Two inch thick I've read some pretty long books in my time but that takes the cake. Most people these days don't even have enough attention span to read a complete internet article. How do you expect them to plough through hundreds of pages of legalese? 2) “I’m a lawyer, and I have no idea what that means.” Do I even need to say any more?

x0x0 8y ago
You can simultaneously believe that * FB is doing their absolute best to make sure no "user" understands what they have agreed to * writing the law in "plain english" is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in my life. See the multi million dollar lawsuit this year about whether a missing Oxford comma changed wage rules for a class of truck drivers. Any attempt to write law in plain english introduces giant ambiguities [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/oxford-comma-maine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/oxford-comma-maine.htm...
- dhimes 8y ago
  That law you cited was not written in "plain English." It was Maine's legal code. And it was ambiguous.
  - x0x0 8y ago
    And plain english would have made that better?
    - dhimes 8y ago
      Easily.
      - x0x0 8y ago
        In the sense of introducing far far more ambiguity and making the law incomprehensible, yes.
        dhimes 8y ago
        You obviously didn't look at the law you are speaking about.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  > FB is doing their absolute best to make sure no "user" understands what they have agreed to* But before making this argument, one should go read FB's ToS and data policy. Here they are: https://www.facebook.com/terms.php https://www.facebook.com/terms.php https://www.facebook.com/policy.php https://www.facebook.com/policy.php
  - x0x0 8y ago
    Where, precisely, is the bit where they steal data from my phone about sms and phone calls?
    - 8y ago
throwawayjava 8y ago
Facebook terms of service: https://www.facebook.com/terms.php https://www.facebook.com/terms.php Facebook data policy: https://www.facebook.com/policy.php https://www.facebook.com/policy.php I agree Lindsay Graham is a skilled orator and politician. But if he blew up the font size until those pages required two inches of 8x11 paper, he must have just terrible eyesight ;-) Also, neither of those documents is terribly difficult to understand. Like... where, specifically, is Graham getting horribly confused?! Point to the concrete line in one of those two links that requires something beyond a high school education! Now, I'm sure there's nuance I don't pick up on. But I definitely feel I can understand the ToS and privacy policy without consulting a lawyer. I don't think some of the terms are fair. But that's a consumer rights issue, not a "legalese" issue. More generally, on two occasions I've had to get in front of a real judge in a "real" courtroom and make an argument based upon some written piece of law I had to look up and interpret myself. In both cases, I was able to successfully convince a judge that I was on the right side of the law without the help of a lawyer. I'm certainly not saying that's always possible, but I do believe there is a lot of "learned helplessness" when it comes to digging through legeal code or contracts and reading legalese. It's a PITA sometimes, but in many many cases it doesn't require years of training.

hiccuphippo 8y ago

I wonder if it would be possible to create an AI that, given a legalese text, could output comments for each fragment explaining and showing examples of what it means. Now that I think about it, wasn't genius.com doing something like that but using crowdsourcing instead?

throwawayjava 8y ago
Privacy policies actually use this as a rhetorical trick to confuse users. E.g., they'll say stuff like "we may collect any device information you give permissions to access to do [reasonable thing A], [reasonable thing B], or for any other business purposes. Examples of device information include: [insert list of benign things]" Or, to put emphasis on the important things: "we may (read: WILL) collect ANY device information you give permissions to access to do [reasonable thing A], [reasonable thing B], or for ANY other business purposes. Examples of device information include: [insert list of benign things you should totally ignore]" But here's the problem with the "AI tell us all" approach. If you use ML to mine examples from existing policy texts, you'll end up showing the user all of the benign stuff that the companies put in to reassure users, because that's what the corpus contains. Therefore, your AI will emphasize exactly the wrong types of examples. Also, notice that this isn't even a legalese thing. There are no legal terms of art or long-winding difficult grammatical constructions. It's just plain old good rhetoric. And it's hard/impossible to legislate away persuasion.