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It is spectacular how incompetent lawyers are providing service to the public that pays them eventually, they are only able to communicate to other lawyers, so

It is spectacular how incompetent lawyers are providing service to the public that pays them eventually, they are only able to communicate to other lawyers, so why should we use their services at all? We can get into trouble without them the same easy being cluless either way.

bandergirl 3y ago
Lawyers are not paid to provide a service to the public, you got that mixed up. They’re writing code to protect the company that hired them. The language used by the law is not the common language because the latter is prone to bugs.
- HeavyStorm 3y ago
  Their embellished way of writing also is. But being cryptic to the general population has its benefits - to them, of course.
- davorak 3y ago
  I think the spirt of the statement still works if you move the incompetence up when level so something along the lines of ~"It is spectacular how incompetent that the law allows confused/convoluted communication to act as protection to the company hired the lawyers to produce said communication." It seems like society would be better off if the law were set up to where only when clear communication has happened that the lawyer would bring benefit to their employer.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    It wouldn’t be much better if the language were plain and simple. “We can do what we want with your data and you can’t sue us under any circumstances resulting from your use of the service, and you disclaim all rights to the maximum extent permissible by your local consumer laws” wouldn’t be any better for you. The problem is contracts of adhesion are inherently unconscionable, as are contracts that require signing away rights without consideration (above and beyond the use of the service). If you’re doing something with the data beyond providing the service (in a GDPR sense) then there needs to be an actual consideration to the customer for the resulting profit above and beyond the use of the service.
    - davorak 3y ago
      I agree there would still be problems, but it would be obvious what is going on and would allow services to compete on those terms. Right now there is no competition on those terms and no real reason to try since the general consumer assume that TOS and similar are pointless hard to read and probably powerless anyway so why bother.
      - paulmd 3y ago
        Making companies put it in plain terms that they’re forcing you to abdicate any right they can make you abdicate doesn’t automatically make competition appear. The market doesn’t work like that. People primarily buy on cost, they’ll buy whatever is $10 cheaper. And in a truly efficient market this would be passed along to the consumer and people would buy the one that’s cheaper with worse tos - just like people buy ad-loaded smart tvs instead of a premium one with no telemetry or smarts or a tos attached. Regulation is the only thing that’s gonna get you there. Contracts of adhesion are not gonna go away on their own unless you outlaw them. The market isn’t efficient like that, even if it were the efficient scenario is likely there one favoring cheapness and contracts of adhesion over consumer friendly behavior, and the behavior is unconscionable anyway. Just outlaw it. The libertarian take on regulation is wrong, there’s a reason the EU does its consumer regulation with regulations and not with labeling. And in this case it’s actually contract law that is being warped by anticompetitive participants so you’d really think even the libertarians would be on board. A contract without consideration is not a contract, literally. And “we’re not going to let you use the good/service that you already paid for” is not a consideration, it’s blackmail and strongarm robbery.
unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
I've tried reading unannotated C and C++ and it's really hard. The problem with reading code is you're anticipating all kinds of input that doesn't necessarily exist at the time of review, and the code communicates not with a person but a code interpreter that reads in a hyper-precise and idiosyncratic way. Annotations don't work with legal code because there is a real risk the interpreter might use the escaped comments unexpectedly as production code(!). Imagine your C and C++ comments could generate production errors. You probably wouldn't use them much. There's an argument for giving people a sheet of hypothetical inputs and projected code outputs when we're talking contracts. Biz gives you the 'code' and then in a separate sheet say: hypothetically, a shady backwater adtech company asks for your mother's maiden name; are we allowed to sell it without further consent? And then they give the code output: "Yes, we can do whatever we want." And they go through a list of these hypothetical. The counterargument is such a sheet could be even more mind-numbing and unwieldy than the original code if not written in an entirely new spirit. And FWIW, my personal view is that these 70-page contracts of adhesion are a travesty, an evolutionary step, and a weak fiction at this point. The industry does not have a right to force 3 months of mandatory bedtime reading for their userbase every few months, the whole thing is broken and we're all just waiting for courts to coalesce around a better model.

bandergirl 3y ago

Lawyers are not paid to provide a service to the public, you got that mixed up. They’re writing code to protect the company that hired them. The language used by the law is not the common language because the latter is prone to bugs.

HeavyStorm 3y ago
Their embellished way of writing also is. But being cryptic to the general population has its benefits - to them, of course.
davorak 3y ago
I think the spirt of the statement still works if you move the incompetence up when level so something along the lines of ~"It is spectacular how incompetent that the law allows confused/convoluted communication to act as protection to the company hired the lawyers to produce said communication." It seems like society would be better off if the law were set up to where only when clear communication has happened that the lawyer would bring benefit to their employer.
- paulmd 3y ago
  It wouldn’t be much better if the language were plain and simple. “We can do what we want with your data and you can’t sue us under any circumstances resulting from your use of the service, and you disclaim all rights to the maximum extent permissible by your local consumer laws” wouldn’t be any better for you. The problem is contracts of adhesion are inherently unconscionable, as are contracts that require signing away rights without consideration (above and beyond the use of the service). If you’re doing something with the data beyond providing the service (in a GDPR sense) then there needs to be an actual consideration to the customer for the resulting profit above and beyond the use of the service.
  - davorak 3y ago
    I agree there would still be problems, but it would be obvious what is going on and would allow services to compete on those terms. Right now there is no competition on those terms and no real reason to try since the general consumer assume that TOS and similar are pointless hard to read and probably powerless anyway so why bother.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      Making companies put it in plain terms that they’re forcing you to abdicate any right they can make you abdicate doesn’t automatically make competition appear. The market doesn’t work like that. People primarily buy on cost, they’ll buy whatever is $10 cheaper. And in a truly efficient market this would be passed along to the consumer and people would buy the one that’s cheaper with worse tos - just like people buy ad-loaded smart tvs instead of a premium one with no telemetry or smarts or a tos attached. Regulation is the only thing that’s gonna get you there. Contracts of adhesion are not gonna go away on their own unless you outlaw them. The market isn’t efficient like that, even if it were the efficient scenario is likely there one favoring cheapness and contracts of adhesion over consumer friendly behavior, and the behavior is unconscionable anyway. Just outlaw it. The libertarian take on regulation is wrong, there’s a reason the EU does its consumer regulation with regulations and not with labeling. And in this case it’s actually contract law that is being warped by anticompetitive participants so you’d really think even the libertarians would be on board. A contract without consideration is not a contract, literally. And “we’re not going to let you use the good/service that you already paid for” is not a consideration, it’s blackmail and strongarm robbery.

unyttigfjelltol 3y ago

I've tried reading unannotated C and C++ and it's really hard. The problem with reading code is you're anticipating all kinds of input that doesn't necessarily exist at the time of review, and the code communicates not with a person but a code interpreter that reads in a hyper-precise and idiosyncratic way. Annotations don't work with legal code because there is a real risk the interpreter might use the escaped comments unexpectedly as production code(!). Imagine your C and C++ comments could generate production errors. You probably wouldn't use them much. There's an argument for giving people a sheet of hypothetical inputs and projected code outputs when we're talking contracts. Biz gives you the 'code' and then in a separate sheet say: hypothetically, a shady backwater adtech company asks for your mother's maiden name; are we allowed to sell it without further consent? And then they give the code output: "Yes, we can do whatever we want." And they go through a list of these hypothetical. The counterargument is such a sheet could be even more mind-numbing and unwieldy than the original code if not written in an entirely new spirit. And FWIW, my personal view is that these 70-page contracts of adhesion are a travesty, an evolutionary step, and a weak fiction at this point. The industry does not have a right to force 3 months of mandatory bedtime reading for their userbase every few months, the whole thing is broken and we're all just waiting for courts to coalesce around a better model.