5 ms·

I feel this is one of the major problems with most TOSs... You generally don't have a lawyer around to explain every TOS you come across, so people ignore them

I feel this is one of the major problems with most TOSs... You generally don't have a lawyer around to explain every TOS you come across, so people ignore them and hope for the best. Hmm - I wonder if there would be a niche for a website that explains specific, common TOSs in easy to understand terms?

CodeGlitch 6y ago
We've all been hearing about machine learning algorithms that can parse legalese and pull out the important bits given parameters of interest. So certainly a possibility. HN make it so!
- mech422 6y ago
  Does that mean we'll sprout a generation of "Legal SEO" lawyers that try to game the algorithms ? :-P
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
Tbh I don't find tos very hard to understand. They are akin to programming for the law. And generally speaking they just tell you what you should already know about the terms under which you use the service, so that you can't sue the service for absurd things. For the sake of demonstration, I just went and read the first seven sections of Personal Capital's TOU. Not a single surprise in there, so far. To give one example, section 5 just says that for the sake of displaying the information you are agreeing that personal capital can retrieve on your behalf, personal capital has your authorization to act legally on your behalf. This is to prevent some idiot from suing them for fetching account info that said idiot inputted into personal capital. Another section says, hey, we aren't responsible for mistakes you make with your investments, even if you base your decisions on the information we show to you. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing as well -- you literally could not run a service like this otherwise.
lcall 6y ago
https://tosdr.org/en/frontpage https://tosdr.org/en/frontpage https://www.thewindowsclub.com/summary-of-terms-and-conditions https://www.thewindowsclub.com/summary-of-terms-and-conditio... And elsewhere in this discussion is a list of prior such discussions that might mention others (you could Ctrl+F for my username here to find it, I replied to the list).
lcall 6y ago
Also possibly of interest, though I haven't even read their site carefully: https://stonecutters.law/ https://stonecutters.law/ They say "Stonecutters publishes legal forms and clauses for other legal craftsmen to incorporate by reference."

CodeGlitch 6y ago

We've all been hearing about machine learning algorithms that can parse legalese and pull out the important bits given parameters of interest. So certainly a possibility. HN make it so!

mech422 6y ago
Does that mean we'll sprout a generation of "Legal SEO" lawyers that try to game the algorithms ? :-P

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

Tbh I don't find tos very hard to understand. They are akin to programming for the law. And generally speaking they just tell you what you should already know about the terms under which you use the service, so that you can't sue the service for absurd things. For the sake of demonstration, I just went and read the first seven sections of Personal Capital's TOU. Not a single surprise in there, so far. To give one example, section 5 just says that for the sake of displaying the information you are agreeing that personal capital can retrieve on your behalf, personal capital has your authorization to act legally on your behalf. This is to prevent some idiot from suing them for fetching account info that said idiot inputted into personal capital. Another section says, hey, we aren't responsible for mistakes you make with your investments, even if you base your decisions on the information we show to you. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing as well -- you literally could not run a service like this otherwise.

lcall 6y ago

https://tosdr.org/en/frontpage https://tosdr.org/en/frontpage https://www.thewindowsclub.com/summary-of-terms-and-conditions https://www.thewindowsclub.com/summary-of-terms-and-conditio... And elsewhere in this discussion is a list of prior such discussions that might mention others (you could Ctrl+F for my username here to find it, I replied to the list).

lcall 6y ago

Also possibly of interest, though I haven't even read their site carefully: https://stonecutters.law/ https://stonecutters.law/ They say "Stonecutters publishes legal forms and clauses for other legal craftsmen to incorporate by reference."