6 ms·

Court says Uber can’t hold users to terms they probably didn’t read

76 points by alexrustic 6y ago

Felony_Fred 6y ago
> On Monday, the highest state court in Massachusetts accepted Kauders' argument, holding that merely mentioning terms and conditions on a registration page wasn't sufficient to create a binding contract between Kauders and Uber. That sounds like a pretty big deal.
vnchr 6y ago
Does that set any precedents?
- dehrmann 6y ago
  IANAL, only in Massachusetts, and it's somewhat narrow: > We also conclude that Uber's terms and conditions did not constitute a contract with the plaintiffs. The app's registration process did not provide users with reasonable notice of the terms and conditions and did not obtain a clear manifestation of assent to the terms, both of which could have been easily achieved. Indeed, a review of the case law reveals that Uber has no trouble providing such reasonable notice and requiring express affirmation from it sown drivers.Here,in remarkable contrast,both the notice and the assent are obscured in the registration process.As a result, Uber cannot enforce the terms and conditions against the plaintiffs, including the arbitration agreement at issue here.
jolmg 6y ago
> But the broader impact of the ruling is to put companies on notice that they can't bind users to restrictive terms merely by linking to those terms somewhere in a site or app's registration process. In order to create a legally binding contract, a tech company has actually put the terms in front of the user and get them to affirmatively agree to them. Does anyone believe that'd make any difference? Even if you showed the agreement and forced them to scroll down to activate the "I agree" button, I'm pretty sure nearly everyone that wouldn't click the links to read the agreements would also just scroll down and hit "I agree" without reading.
mchusma 6y ago
While I am a bit sympathetic with this ruling, I think it's a net negative result for rule of law. There should be some terms under which you are interacting. The terms as listed are pretty easy to find. The link pretty clearly says that if you proceed you agree to the terms. They have a link to the terms. You don't have to proceed. It's not really that hidden or misleading. Adding a check box doesn't make it that much more likely for someone to read it, not enough to materially change the facts here. Every piece of software has terms and conditions, so seeking those out seems like a low bar. If the standard is "well nobody reads those things anyway", then a lot of mortgages and credit card agreements could be invalid. Frankly most propositions on the ballot should be invalid, as those aren't even linked in any way to the ballot where you vote. This December's bill in the US congress that was like 5,000 pages long and they only had 2 hours until the vote to read it, that should be invalid. If there was a plausible alternative agreement they might have agreed to, then I could understand the ruling. But as a matter of law, this seems like a bad call.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- TheCoelacanth 6y ago
  The terms should be what a reasonable person actually reads when going through their registration process. When I signed a mortgage contract, I had to separately initial every single page and the closing attorney summarized the contents of each section of the contract. That should be the experience they replicate if they want their TOS to be legally binding. "You agree that you cannot sue Uber but must instead take any disputes through arbitration" A bit of boilerplate describing the exact nature of the arbitration, but nothing unrelated to arbitration... ... ... ... | Agree | | Disagree | Followed by another similar dialog for every major term.
  - daniel-cussen 6y ago
    They should also announce how long it takes to read their whole TOS. And really, what if you switched the marketing copy and the terms of service? The marketing says how the app works, the terms of service does too, why not pay to advertise the terms of service, and when you sign up, you get to read their beautiful marketing copy.
Proven 6y ago
Morons. Who ever reads any terms? Did you read your credit card or GNU GPL v3.0 license end to end? 99% of users did not. Does that mean you can violate license terms or decline to pay interest? No. You don't have to read the terms in order to agree to them - it's your choice whether you want to read the contract or not, but if you do sign it you are bound by it if the contract or license was otherwise valid. But hey, we're entering a golden age of nanny-state collectivism so there's nothing wrong with that: if the masses decide common sense doesn't apply to their situation, then it doesn't. If any business has a problem with that, they can ask the government to print money or issue debt and find a way make them whole. Or just sit back, relax and let the Fed-backed hedge funds buy their stocks. Everyone's happy. Now I'll call my bank to check if I still have to pay back my house loan.
ulucs 6y ago
EULA's and T&C's should have stricter restrictions on them, as they are written unilaterally and the consumers have no chance of objecting to any clauses - especially with digitally offered contracts where you can't cross over anything. This is a nice step in the right direction, and I hope this ruling applies even when users are forced to "read" a twenty page contract just to call a cab.
- dusted 6y ago
  I agree, the core problem is not if there's some "I read and agree" checkbox or not.. The problem is that we as a society has accepted EULAs, the first time a private customer encountered this, there should have been a backlash strong enough that no-one ever dared try it again. If a legally binding agreement is required, we should expect a formal meeting with the parties involved, lawyers from both sides discussing and clarifying the terms in the contract, before solemnly signing it. For all cases where this is overkill, it's overkill, and so is any EULA.
  - ehvatum 6y ago
    The argument goes: “we can be prosecuted if people find out that their kids are mail ordering zero-g hydroponic kush from dudes they met in our online software, unless they have already agreed that it’s not our fault.” Unless you want to do time for pushing kush to kindergartners, you have to make your users agree to all kinds of shit. You make an average of $2.38/yr per user, so you can neither patrol their kush buys nor spend much lawyer time per user.
    - netizen-9748 6y ago
      Maybe if kush was readily accessible to the adults who want it, there wouldn't be an unregulated black market where it can be "easily" purchased by children.
  - ulucs 6y ago
    No, you as Americans have accepted EULA's as-is. This is a solved problem, and you just need to import the related laws from Germany.
Sutanreyu 6y ago
Can we do the same thing with gyms?
davidhyde 6y ago
> “In order to create a legally binding contract, a tech company has actually put the terms in front of the user and get them to affirmatively agree to them.” This is effectively “legal theatre” from the perspective of the user. Companies can and do hide whatever they want in lengthy legalese which can have no limit in size. There should be the equivalent of a plain English abstract which is customised for the use case and target audience. What we have now is a small percentage people who actually read those terms and conditions and of those people a handful of them write about it and that’s how we learn about dodgy terms and conditions. It’s very haphazard.
- canofbars 6y ago
  There should be a quiz on the accept screen that you are only likely to pass if you read the tos. In order to keep users you would have to make the document as short as possible. There could even be a short bullet point summary that gives the information in short english and then a longer version that covers all the edge cases and defining common sense.
  - bigwavedave 6y ago
    Interesting idea! Who audits the quizzes to make sure they actually use information relevant to the ToS? I could easily see a company providing their standard insane ToS, several bullet points at the end that simplify things but don't cover everything in the ToS, and then the quiz merely asking about the limited information in the bullet points.

76 points by alexrustic 6y ago

> On Monday, the highest state court in Massachusetts accepted Kauders' argument, holding that merely mentioning terms and conditions on a registration page wasn't sufficient to create a binding contract between Kauders and Uber. That sounds like a pretty big deal.

vnchr 6y ago

Does that set any precedents?

dehrmann 6y ago
IANAL, only in Massachusetts, and it's somewhat narrow: > We also conclude that Uber's terms and conditions did not constitute a contract with the plaintiffs. The app's registration process did not provide users with reasonable notice of the terms and conditions and did not obtain a clear manifestation of assent to the terms, both of which could have been easily achieved. Indeed, a review of the case law reveals that Uber has no trouble providing such reasonable notice and requiring express affirmation from it sown drivers.Here,in remarkable contrast,both the notice and the assent are obscured in the registration process.As a result, Uber cannot enforce the terms and conditions against the plaintiffs, including the arbitration agreement at issue here.

jolmg 6y ago

> But the broader impact of the ruling is to put companies on notice that they can't bind users to restrictive terms merely by linking to those terms somewhere in a site or app's registration process. In order to create a legally binding contract, a tech company has actually put the terms in front of the user and get them to affirmatively agree to them. Does anyone believe that'd make any difference? Even if you showed the agreement and forced them to scroll down to activate the "I agree" button, I'm pretty sure nearly everyone that wouldn't click the links to read the agreements would also just scroll down and hit "I agree" without reading.

mchusma 6y ago

While I am a bit sympathetic with this ruling, I think it's a net negative result for rule of law. There should be some terms under which you are interacting. The terms as listed are pretty easy to find. The link pretty clearly says that if you proceed you agree to the terms. They have a link to the terms. You don't have to proceed. It's not really that hidden or misleading. Adding a check box doesn't make it that much more likely for someone to read it, not enough to materially change the facts here. Every piece of software has terms and conditions, so seeking those out seems like a low bar. If the standard is "well nobody reads those things anyway", then a lot of mortgages and credit card agreements could be invalid. Frankly most propositions on the ballot should be invalid, as those aren't even linked in any way to the ballot where you vote. This December's bill in the US congress that was like 5,000 pages long and they only had 2 hours until the vote to read it, that should be invalid. If there was a plausible alternative agreement they might have agreed to, then I could understand the ruling. But as a matter of law, this seems like a bad call.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
TheCoelacanth 6y ago
The terms should be what a reasonable person actually reads when going through their registration process. When I signed a mortgage contract, I had to separately initial every single page and the closing attorney summarized the contents of each section of the contract. That should be the experience they replicate if they want their TOS to be legally binding. "You agree that you cannot sue Uber but must instead take any disputes through arbitration" A bit of boilerplate describing the exact nature of the arbitration, but nothing unrelated to arbitration... ... ... ... | Agree | | Disagree | Followed by another similar dialog for every major term.
- daniel-cussen 6y ago
  They should also announce how long it takes to read their whole TOS. And really, what if you switched the marketing copy and the terms of service? The marketing says how the app works, the terms of service does too, why not pay to advertise the terms of service, and when you sign up, you get to read their beautiful marketing copy.

Proven 6y ago

Morons. Who ever reads any terms? Did you read your credit card or GNU GPL v3.0 license end to end? 99% of users did not. Does that mean you can violate license terms or decline to pay interest? No. You don't have to read the terms in order to agree to them - it's your choice whether you want to read the contract or not, but if you do sign it you are bound by it if the contract or license was otherwise valid. But hey, we're entering a golden age of nanny-state collectivism so there's nothing wrong with that: if the masses decide common sense doesn't apply to their situation, then it doesn't. If any business has a problem with that, they can ask the government to print money or issue debt and find a way make them whole. Or just sit back, relax and let the Fed-backed hedge funds buy their stocks. Everyone's happy. Now I'll call my bank to check if I still have to pay back my house loan.

ulucs 6y ago

EULA's and T&C's should have stricter restrictions on them, as they are written unilaterally and the consumers have no chance of objecting to any clauses - especially with digitally offered contracts where you can't cross over anything. This is a nice step in the right direction, and I hope this ruling applies even when users are forced to "read" a twenty page contract just to call a cab.

dusted 6y ago
I agree, the core problem is not if there's some "I read and agree" checkbox or not.. The problem is that we as a society has accepted EULAs, the first time a private customer encountered this, there should have been a backlash strong enough that no-one ever dared try it again. If a legally binding agreement is required, we should expect a formal meeting with the parties involved, lawyers from both sides discussing and clarifying the terms in the contract, before solemnly signing it. For all cases where this is overkill, it's overkill, and so is any EULA.
- ehvatum 6y ago
  The argument goes: “we can be prosecuted if people find out that their kids are mail ordering zero-g hydroponic kush from dudes they met in our online software, unless they have already agreed that it’s not our fault.” Unless you want to do time for pushing kush to kindergartners, you have to make your users agree to all kinds of shit. You make an average of $2.38/yr per user, so you can neither patrol their kush buys nor spend much lawyer time per user.
  - netizen-9748 6y ago
    Maybe if kush was readily accessible to the adults who want it, there wouldn't be an unregulated black market where it can be "easily" purchased by children.
- ulucs 6y ago
  No, you as Americans have accepted EULA's as-is. This is a solved problem, and you just need to import the related laws from Germany.

Sutanreyu 6y ago

Can we do the same thing with gyms?

davidhyde 6y ago

> “In order to create a legally binding contract, a tech company has actually put the terms in front of the user and get them to affirmatively agree to them.” This is effectively “legal theatre” from the perspective of the user. Companies can and do hide whatever they want in lengthy legalese which can have no limit in size. There should be the equivalent of a plain English abstract which is customised for the use case and target audience. What we have now is a small percentage people who actually read those terms and conditions and of those people a handful of them write about it and that’s how we learn about dodgy terms and conditions. It’s very haphazard.

canofbars 6y ago
There should be a quiz on the accept screen that you are only likely to pass if you read the tos. In order to keep users you would have to make the document as short as possible. There could even be a short bullet point summary that gives the information in short english and then a longer version that covers all the edge cases and defining common sense.
- bigwavedave 6y ago
  Interesting idea! Who audits the quizzes to make sure they actually use information relevant to the ToS? I could easily see a company providing their standard insane ToS, several bullet points at the end that simplify things but don't cover everything in the ToS, and then the quiz merely asking about the limited information in the bullet points.