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Paying a random consumer $20 does not make them a contractor. Do you think they all got 1099s?

gojomo 8y ago
1099s are only required if more than $600 is paid in a year. You are a "contractor" if you are providing services under a contract. A contract exists whenever there is a definitive agreement to exchange valuable considerations – even in the absence of a written, signed contract. But the sign-up for these apps might have included an explicit "signing" phase! (It's even possible that FB/Google asked for participants' SSNs, just in case any payments went over $600.)
- josho 8y ago
  Apply some common sense here. A contractor charges money for their time. $20/mth is what I’ve read they were paid. That means anything more than 2 hours of work is breaking minimum wage laws.
  - eganist 8y ago
    They're not even doing work for hire. They're selling rights to data, likely non-exclusive.
  - gojomo 8y ago
    And it could easily be less than 2 hours of effort per month to install/update the app and answer occasional questionnaires. But even if, outlandishly, a minimum wage violation, if they’re being paid under a contract, they’re ‘contractors’. (And if they’re under any sort of confidentiality agreement or other conditions on their app usage, they fit under the Apple terms’ concepts of “Permitted Users” and “Internal Use” even better.)
    - eganist 8y ago
      They're selling rights to data. They're not producing work or materials for hire. Anywhere I or anyone else has made this point you haven't responded.
      - gojomo 8y ago
        Because that's a contrived interpretation, especially when the data wouldn't even exist unless the monitoring software was there to create it. The panelists are selling their effort in installing/maintaining the software, and renting out their devices' processor-time/memory/bandwidth to run the monitoring app, and being compensated for any risks/delays such monitoring introduces. In some cases, they're also spending time answering questionnaires! That is, being paid to provide a service – where the delivery of the end-product of that service happens to be data. But even if they were selling rights to data that they normally generate in private, they're still doing it under the terms of a contract, in return for payment, which makes them a contractor for the duration of the time they're delivering the data. For comparison, consider a services company which installs phone-trackers & cameras in a retail location, then provides the resulting data about customer paths/visits to the retailer. That company isn't primarily "selling rights to data". They're selling a service, requiring their equipment and time, where that data is created and delivered. And they're doing it under a contract, and they too are a contractor, not a mere "data vendor". And it's the same with natural persons who enter a legal agreement with FB/Google to run FB/Google's software on their own devices, occasionally answer questions & update that software, obey the other terms of the legal agreement, and report back the resulting data to the corporate contractee.
        eganist 8y ago
        > especially when the data wouldn't even exist unless the monitoring software was there to create it. The data does exist, in transit. It's google's own code which creates new metadata from it; that's not anything each individual vendor/user is doing other than providing access to the data for google to collect. You're a developer; this should be apparent to you. I'm not really here to debate the legal merits with someone when neither of us are qualified to do so (you're not a lawyer, I'm not a lawyer, and existing lawyers have already commented on this to no end and disputed endlessly the idea that anyone in this arena would be considered a contractor). I'm just seeing how much you're willing to flesh out your novel legal theory in association with your public name on the internet.

1099s are only required if more than $600 is paid in a year. You are a "contractor" if you are providing services under a contract. A contract exists whenever there is a definitive agreement to exchange valuable considerations – even in the absence of a written, signed contract. But the sign-up for these apps might have included an explicit "signing" phase! (It's even possible that FB/Google asked for participants' SSNs, just in case any payments went over $600.)

josho 8y ago
Apply some common sense here. A contractor charges money for their time. $20/mth is what I’ve read they were paid. That means anything more than 2 hours of work is breaking minimum wage laws.
- eganist 8y ago
  They're not even doing work for hire. They're selling rights to data, likely non-exclusive.
- gojomo 8y ago
  And it could easily be less than 2 hours of effort per month to install/update the app and answer occasional questionnaires. But even if, outlandishly, a minimum wage violation, if they’re being paid under a contract, they’re ‘contractors’. (And if they’re under any sort of confidentiality agreement or other conditions on their app usage, they fit under the Apple terms’ concepts of “Permitted Users” and “Internal Use” even better.)
  - eganist 8y ago
    They're selling rights to data. They're not producing work or materials for hire. Anywhere I or anyone else has made this point you haven't responded.
    - gojomo 8y ago
      Because that's a contrived interpretation, especially when the data wouldn't even exist unless the monitoring software was there to create it. The panelists are selling their effort in installing/maintaining the software, and renting out their devices' processor-time/memory/bandwidth to run the monitoring app, and being compensated for any risks/delays such monitoring introduces. In some cases, they're also spending time answering questionnaires! That is, being paid to provide a service – where the delivery of the end-product of that service happens to be data. But even if they were selling rights to data that they normally generate in private, they're still doing it under the terms of a contract, in return for payment, which makes them a contractor for the duration of the time they're delivering the data. For comparison, consider a services company which installs phone-trackers & cameras in a retail location, then provides the resulting data about customer paths/visits to the retailer. That company isn't primarily "selling rights to data". They're selling a service, requiring their equipment and time, where that data is created and delivered. And they're doing it under a contract, and they too are a contractor, not a mere "data vendor". And it's the same with natural persons who enter a legal agreement with FB/Google to run FB/Google's software on their own devices, occasionally answer questions & update that software, obey the other terms of the legal agreement, and report back the resulting data to the corporate contractee.
      - eganist 8y ago
        > especially when the data wouldn't even exist unless the monitoring software was there to create it. The data does exist, in transit. It's google's own code which creates new metadata from it; that's not anything each individual vendor/user is doing other than providing access to the data for google to collect. You're a developer; this should be apparent to you. I'm not really here to debate the legal merits with someone when neither of us are qualified to do so (you're not a lawyer, I'm not a lawyer, and existing lawyers have already commented on this to no end and disputed endlessly the idea that anyone in this arena would be considered a contractor). I'm just seeing how much you're willing to flesh out your novel legal theory in association with your public name on the internet.