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Terms of use: YOU EXPRESSLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT USE OF THE SERVICES IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK AND THAT THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO SATISFACTORY QUALITY, PERFORMANCE, ACCURAC

by dolmen 4y ago

Terms of use: YOU EXPRESSLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT USE OF THE SERVICES IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK AND THAT THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO SATISFACTORY QUALITY, PERFORMANCE, ACCURACY, AND EFFORT IS WITH YOU. ALL PARTS OFTHE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED BY WESTERN DIGITALON AN “AS IS,” “WITHALL FAULTS,” AND “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS ONLY, WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. WESTERNDIGITAL HEREBY EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL REPRESENTATIONS,WARRANTIES, AND CONDITIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICES (INCLUDING THE USE, PERFORMANCE, AND SUPPORT THEREOF), WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE,INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.WESTERN DIGITAL DOES NOT MAKE ANY ASSURANCES WITH REGARD TO THE ACCURACY OF THE RESULTS OR OUTPUT THAT DERIVES FROM THE SERVICES. Source: https://www.westerndigital.com/legal/terms-of-use https://www.westerndigital.com/legal/terms-of-use

KMnO4 4y ago
Random question; why are terms written in all caps?
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  To make them harder to read. Edit: In this case it appears they’re using it for emphasis, since the majority of the ToS is in normal caps, but it was definitely a deliberate dark pattern until very recently to make the ToS hard to read.
  - Closi 4y ago
    This isn’t true - caps are a legal standard in the USA to indicate that this section is higher-importance for the reader. It’s actually a legal obligation to make your terms “conspicuous”. So it’s actually supposed to be the opposite - to meet a legal obligation to highlight to users that they should pay particular notice to certain sections.
    - rationalist 4y ago
      PARAGRAPHS OF ALL CAPS is harder to read for some people.
      - Closi 4y ago
        It's not supposed to be easier to read, it's supposed to make it clear to the reader that it's important. (I'm not a fan of it anyway - I'm from the UK and think it's silly, but I've come across this plenty during contract negotiations with American lawyers that will insist on certain sections being in caps)
        rationalist 4y ago
        (this isn't necessarily directed at you) Does that mean the rest is not important? If so, why include it, or why not make it all caps, and if it's all caps, why make it caps at all. Unfortunately legal things are about rules and laws, not common sense.
        Closi 4y ago
        Yep, It's silly :) But let's say that WD doesn't capitalise some bits, that might come back to bite them if there is a class action lawsuit.
    - WindyLakeReturn 4y ago
      Something can be legally required but also have been originally made into a requirement as a dark pattern. The idea that something is legally defined as being 'conspicuous' in a way that makes it less conspicuous makes me consider that a dark pattern was the original intent. While I commonly hear to never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, I don't feel that is applicable to the legal system.
      - Closi 4y ago
        It's a legal document following precedent about contract law. Lawyers and the companies they represent are usually better served by following established legal precedent than veering off it. Let's say the lawyers decide to be 'creative' and then bold the text instead, and then it gets copied into a page and some CSS renders it without bold text - suddenly the contract might have legal challenges, and the lawyers will rightly be asked why they decided to not follow established industry and legal norms. I think it's a bit silly too, but if I was hiring an American lawyer I would want them to follow established norms rather than come up with their own unique and legally-untested interpretation of what is required.
- Villodre 4y ago
  READABILITY AND FRIGHTENING LEGALESE
- Closi 4y ago
  There are legal requirements in the USA to ensure certain parts of an agreement are “conspicuous” (ie should be made so that consumers/customers don’t miss them). Placing the terms in caps is a historical way to achieve the legal bar for this, so is a legal tradition in the USA. In other legal systems (eg the UK) you don’t get this, it’s a uniquely American phenomenon as far as I know.
  - lxgr 4y ago
    I've noticed that too. IRONICALLY IT MAKES THESE PARTS OF A CONTRACT QUITE HARD TO READ, IN MY EXPERIENCE.
Villodre 4y ago
I'm glad this is the first comment, because there's no way these terms of use would (should?) fly in the EU. I don't know about the USA, but it is plain deception to advertise a service along a product and then proclaim that you're in no way responsible of how it works or if it does at all.
- returningfory2 4y ago
  > there's no way these terms of use would (should?) fly in the EU Do you have an actual concrete reason to believe that, or is this just "the EU is morally superior to everywhere else" vibes?
  - germanier 4y ago
    Stuff like that is covered by the Sales of Goods Directive (2019/771)
    - fishywang 4y ago
      does that mean it could fly if it's free? (for example, a lot of OSS license has similar disclaimer) I don't know wd's case in particular, but just curious: 1. would it fly if the cloud service is also free (no additional subscription fee)? 2. or is it that even if the cloud service itself is "free", they only allow people with wd hardware products to use it, so it's considered part of those hardware products, so it's not really free and is still covered by that directive?
      - lukeschlather 4y ago
        As I understand it you can legally create a "sale" without money changing hands.
        CydeWeys 4y ago
        How is it a sale if no money has changed hands? It's not even a barter. It's nothing.
ferminaut 4y ago
I asked chatGPT to summarize this like I was a child: > Imagine you have a toy that you're not sure will work perfectly or not. The people who made the toy say that they're not sure either and that you have to take the risk of using it. They also say that if the toy doesn't work well or isn't accurate, it's not their fault, and they won't promise to fix it or make it better. They also can't promise that the results you get from using the toy will be correct. So, you have to be careful and use it at your own risk!
- seanw444 4y ago
  Warning: this product might be the polar opposite of what you want.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    But we'll take your money anyway.
- j1elo 4y ago
  If ChatGPT is just a glorified autocomplete engine, which doesn't know the context or the meaning of what is being said (as I've read in random discussions here on HN), then how come it is able to process the license text and summarize it in those terms? I would think that it would be needed to "understand" the license text in order to produce that easier to understand version. So, does chatGPT really know what it's writing about, or not?
  - api 4y ago
    A lot of these questions hinge on words like “think” and “understand” for which we do not have precise definitions. It’s really kind of calling bullshit on a lot of the terminology we use to talk about thinking, revealing that most of it is hand wavey anthropocentrism. It does what it does. We do not know what that means. We do not really know how close what it is doing is to what we do. It’s also possible that it’s doing similar things to what we do but in some very different way. “Neural network” has always been a term to make biologists cringe as they’re really only the loosest of analogies to how brains work.
kneebonian 4y ago
Everytime I see something like this I always think of the dilbert where the PHB says "It's better than legal we are using the law to keep justice away!"
AlexDragusin 4y ago
I checked on the live version, if WD cannot afford proofreaders, imagine how well they can take care of your data, oh well...
SoftTalker 4y ago
So pretty much exactly the same protections as just storing the data locally on your own computer....
jkaptur 4y ago
I love that the typos ("OFTHE", "WESTERN DIGITALON") are in the original too.
- fathyb 4y ago
  I've seen this happen after copy pasting text from PDF files lacking proper text data. The reader needs to infer where spaces are based on the distance between characters, which might not be very reliable with some fonts.
aidenn0 4y ago
Had multi day outage at my ISP and checked the TOS. IT had similar language including indemnifying them from secondary/indirect damages caused by negligence or malice on their part.

by dolmen 4y ago

KMnO4 4y ago

Random question; why are terms written in all caps?

rhaway84773 4y ago
To make them harder to read. Edit: In this case it appears they’re using it for emphasis, since the majority of the ToS is in normal caps, but it was definitely a deliberate dark pattern until very recently to make the ToS hard to read.
- Closi 4y ago
  This isn’t true - caps are a legal standard in the USA to indicate that this section is higher-importance for the reader. It’s actually a legal obligation to make your terms “conspicuous”. So it’s actually supposed to be the opposite - to meet a legal obligation to highlight to users that they should pay particular notice to certain sections.
  - rationalist 4y ago
    PARAGRAPHS OF ALL CAPS is harder to read for some people.
    - Closi 4y ago
      It's not supposed to be easier to read, it's supposed to make it clear to the reader that it's important. (I'm not a fan of it anyway - I'm from the UK and think it's silly, but I've come across this plenty during contract negotiations with American lawyers that will insist on certain sections being in caps)
      - rationalist 4y ago
        (this isn't necessarily directed at you) Does that mean the rest is not important? If so, why include it, or why not make it all caps, and if it's all caps, why make it caps at all. Unfortunately legal things are about rules and laws, not common sense.
        Closi 4y ago
        Yep, It's silly :) But let's say that WD doesn't capitalise some bits, that might come back to bite them if there is a class action lawsuit.
  - WindyLakeReturn 4y ago
    Something can be legally required but also have been originally made into a requirement as a dark pattern. The idea that something is legally defined as being 'conspicuous' in a way that makes it less conspicuous makes me consider that a dark pattern was the original intent. While I commonly hear to never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, I don't feel that is applicable to the legal system.
    - Closi 4y ago
      It's a legal document following precedent about contract law. Lawyers and the companies they represent are usually better served by following established legal precedent than veering off it. Let's say the lawyers decide to be 'creative' and then bold the text instead, and then it gets copied into a page and some CSS renders it without bold text - suddenly the contract might have legal challenges, and the lawyers will rightly be asked why they decided to not follow established industry and legal norms. I think it's a bit silly too, but if I was hiring an American lawyer I would want them to follow established norms rather than come up with their own unique and legally-untested interpretation of what is required.
Villodre 4y ago
READABILITY AND FRIGHTENING LEGALESE
Closi 4y ago
There are legal requirements in the USA to ensure certain parts of an agreement are “conspicuous” (ie should be made so that consumers/customers don’t miss them). Placing the terms in caps is a historical way to achieve the legal bar for this, so is a legal tradition in the USA. In other legal systems (eg the UK) you don’t get this, it’s a uniquely American phenomenon as far as I know.
- lxgr 4y ago
  I've noticed that too. IRONICALLY IT MAKES THESE PARTS OF A CONTRACT QUITE HARD TO READ, IN MY EXPERIENCE.

Villodre 4y ago

I'm glad this is the first comment, because there's no way these terms of use would (should?) fly in the EU. I don't know about the USA, but it is plain deception to advertise a service along a product and then proclaim that you're in no way responsible of how it works or if it does at all.

returningfory2 4y ago
> there's no way these terms of use would (should?) fly in the EU Do you have an actual concrete reason to believe that, or is this just "the EU is morally superior to everywhere else" vibes?
- germanier 4y ago
  Stuff like that is covered by the Sales of Goods Directive (2019/771)
  - fishywang 4y ago
    does that mean it could fly if it's free? (for example, a lot of OSS license has similar disclaimer) I don't know wd's case in particular, but just curious: 1. would it fly if the cloud service is also free (no additional subscription fee)? 2. or is it that even if the cloud service itself is "free", they only allow people with wd hardware products to use it, so it's considered part of those hardware products, so it's not really free and is still covered by that directive?
    - lukeschlather 4y ago
      As I understand it you can legally create a "sale" without money changing hands.
      - CydeWeys 4y ago
        How is it a sale if no money has changed hands? It's not even a barter. It's nothing.

ferminaut 4y ago

I asked chatGPT to summarize this like I was a child: > Imagine you have a toy that you're not sure will work perfectly or not. The people who made the toy say that they're not sure either and that you have to take the risk of using it. They also say that if the toy doesn't work well or isn't accurate, it's not their fault, and they won't promise to fix it or make it better. They also can't promise that the results you get from using the toy will be correct. So, you have to be careful and use it at your own risk!

seanw444 4y ago
Warning: this product might be the polar opposite of what you want.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  But we'll take your money anyway.
j1elo 4y ago
If ChatGPT is just a glorified autocomplete engine, which doesn't know the context or the meaning of what is being said (as I've read in random discussions here on HN), then how come it is able to process the license text and summarize it in those terms? I would think that it would be needed to "understand" the license text in order to produce that easier to understand version. So, does chatGPT really know what it's writing about, or not?
- api 4y ago
  A lot of these questions hinge on words like “think” and “understand” for which we do not have precise definitions. It’s really kind of calling bullshit on a lot of the terminology we use to talk about thinking, revealing that most of it is hand wavey anthropocentrism. It does what it does. We do not know what that means. We do not really know how close what it is doing is to what we do. It’s also possible that it’s doing similar things to what we do but in some very different way. “Neural network” has always been a term to make biologists cringe as they’re really only the loosest of analogies to how brains work.

kneebonian 4y ago

Everytime I see something like this I always think of the dilbert where the PHB says "It's better than legal we are using the law to keep justice away!"

AlexDragusin 4y ago

I checked on the live version, if WD cannot afford proofreaders, imagine how well they can take care of your data, oh well...

SoftTalker 4y ago

So pretty much exactly the same protections as just storing the data locally on your own computer....

jkaptur 4y ago

I love that the typos ("OFTHE", "WESTERN DIGITALON") are in the original too.

fathyb 4y ago
I've seen this happen after copy pasting text from PDF files lacking proper text data. The reader needs to infer where spaces are based on the distance between characters, which might not be very reliable with some fonts.

aidenn0 4y ago

Had multi day outage at my ISP and checked the TOS. IT had similar language including indemnifying them from secondary/indirect damages caused by negligence or malice on their part.