6 ms·

It is crazy how unreasonable the world of law is. Just some days ago, I installed some game (Assassins Creed I think?) and it had 3 agreements to read, each one

It is crazy how unreasonable the world of law is. Just some days ago, I installed some game (Assassins Creed I think?) and it had 3 agreements to read, each one a kilometer long (just a figure of speech). Really? To play a game? Of course nobody reads them and just press Accept.

Hackbraten 3y ago
What I do is spot check, i.e. open an agreement, pick two or three spots at random, and do my best to read and understand those. My hope is if just 1000 people did that, they’d be able to collectively spot unexpected/unacceptable terms and make them public.
- nabogh 3y ago
  Good idea. I might start doing this
  - FranGro78 3y ago
    Sounds like building something simple that aids in tracking “coverage” of reviewing ToSs could be useful to increase that the odds of spotting something untoward? Iirc there was (is?) a site which gives a rating to the various license agreements of popular services and the like, so maybe it’s a solved problem?
    - Hasnep 3y ago
      I have the TOS;DR extension [1] and it gives a rating to each website's TOS and offers an explanation of the key points. [1] https://tosdr.org/ https://tosdr.org/
- __s 3y ago
  I remember seeing iTunes terms tell me I could not use the software to run a nuclear reactor
  - defrost 3y ago
    They're just Debbie Downers trying to stop you having the mother of all acid lights shows by bouncing control rods in a Ibisa swimming pool reactor. Cherenkov radiation for the masses I say.
- more_corn 3y ago
  I bet ChatGPT could summarize
  - brookst 3y ago
    What if one of the terms is that users may not use AI to summarize the TOS?
    - Daviey 3y ago
      Then my assumption would be they would require an agreement in place prior to disclosing the actual ToS, you can't be in a situation where you breach the ToS prior to digesting them.
- gardenhedge 3y ago
  and what if you find something? tweet into the void?
  - Hackbraten 3y ago
    If it’s an app from a walled garden, you can leave a critical review. People can filter for those before they buy or download. If it’s some other piece of software, you can go to a package repository such as the AUR [1] or Chocolatey [2], and leave a comment for the package even if it’s non-free. If it’s a pure SaaS, there’s little you can do though, apart from tweeting, word-of-mouth, or Google reviews. [1]: https://aur.archlinux.org https://aur.archlinux.org [2]: https://community.chocolatey.org/packages https://community.chocolatey.org/packages
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mindvirus 3y ago
Part of me wishes there was a law that companies had to implement checks that their customers read and understood the agreement. Timers, making sure people had each line of text on the screen for a sufficient amount of time, and line by line video explainers. Just to expose the ridiculousness of it all.
- smsm42 3y ago
  I've seen timers on ToS screen. Of course, it just makes one wait a bit and take another sip of the drink before clicking OK without reading, because nobody can understand that shit anyway, time or no time.
- saalweachter 3y ago
  In one "inside a video game" LitRPG the main character gains an achievement for being the first person to read the ToS to the end before clicking "accept".
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    Years ago the installer for some pirated game would display the game's EULA... only to show you 'Wow! Did you really read that in less than 10 seconds?!' pop-up after you click 'Agree'.
- prepend 3y ago
  It seems corporate training is testing this out. This there seems to be more video only, nonskippable training that make sure you spend an hour watching. For now, running them in a vm in the background works.
  - kaashif 3y ago
    Even for the ones with quizzes at the end and lots interactive elements throughout (not a video), oftentimes the most time-efficient strategy is to speed click through and just guess the quiz answers using common sense. Hasn't failed me yet.
  - 3y ago
NGRhodes 3y ago
These are most likely not legally binding in the UK as consumer contracts and notices as a whole have to be fair (transparent, in good faith and intelligible) to consumers under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
- hnbad 3y ago
  Same in Germany. There was an interesting case against WhatsApp banning a user for using a third-party app, which WhatsApp argued was against the ToS but the court ruled that the user could not have expected this to result in account termination as using third-party clients was perfectly acceptable practice for similar apps and the user was not explicitly warned this would happen. Basically you can't sneak gotchas into a ToS, you have to make sure users know they're violating a rule. Ironically this is unlike actual laws where ignorance is not an excuse even if the law is weird and unexpected.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    Interesting case, I didn't know of that one. Thanks for posting! > Ironically this is unlike actual laws where ignorance is not an excuse I think it's similar to real laws. Unacceptable rules: sneaking in terms such as that your firstborn child will belong to me is not enforceable: nobody could expect or would agree to that. In law, similarly, you can't just upend someone's life for a minor infraction, or indeed take a child in exchange for your use of an ordinary government service. If this were to pass, a court would strike it down based on human rights or constitution, so you'd have to change/disavow those also as a country. Acceptable rules: sneaking in terms that are fair are enforceable. Your third party client ban is an example where the rule is acceptable, but the consequences deemed disproportionate and so a warning is in order before cutting one off. This is similar to many laws, for example mildly dangerous driving gets you a fine or few days/weeks of driving ban. It takes repeat offences to get banned outright. Failure to pay taxes doesn't result in them showing up to auction your TV off, but they send a nice letter first, even if they'll eventually show up with a writ and after you're been warned that this is the next step, because indeed, we don't expect everyone to know everything. I'm not a lawyer and can't cite relevant cases or anything, but this is my impression of law as a lay person. It's rarely perfectly fair towards everyone in all situations, and I think we should pay even more heed to "but how was I supposed to know"s whenever a situation is legitimately complex and good intent was shown (to avoid that people avoid doing good things because they don't know what legal risk it puts them in, such as what good samaritan laws are aimed to avoid), but it does try to find balances between what people can reasonably know and follow, at least in northwestern Europe which I'm most familiar with.
RecycledEle 3y ago
What kind of person agrees to 3 long contracts to play a game? I would not do that. I think the problem is with the consumer, not the producer.
- cloverich 3y ago
  It does not matter what one personally does in this scenario. It matters what most people do. If most people accept unethical or dangerous contracts as normal, then (some) corporate behavior that is unethical or dangerous becomes allowed, or worse (normalized). So it matters instead whether you are pro or against that, and what political action you take to steer that in a more desirable direction. We all (arguably) have an obligation to help steer society in healthy directions whether we want to participate or not,.
- smsm42 3y ago
  Virtually every kind. The risk is low (if game companies routinely extracted player's kidneys using little noticed section in TOS as legal basis, we'd likely know it already) and the reward is significant.
samsolomon 3y ago
Honestly, would be a cool to track and use GPT-4 to summarize changes in terms of service agreements.
- smsm42 3y ago
  That's like reading diffs instead of reading source code. If the code is clean and the change us simple, it's easy. If the code is dense and dirty and the change is complex, it's next to impossible to figure out what's up.

Hackbraten 3y ago

What I do is spot check, i.e. open an agreement, pick two or three spots at random, and do my best to read and understand those. My hope is if just 1000 people did that, they’d be able to collectively spot unexpected/unacceptable terms and make them public.

nabogh 3y ago
Good idea. I might start doing this
- FranGro78 3y ago
  Sounds like building something simple that aids in tracking “coverage” of reviewing ToSs could be useful to increase that the odds of spotting something untoward? Iirc there was (is?) a site which gives a rating to the various license agreements of popular services and the like, so maybe it’s a solved problem?
  - Hasnep 3y ago
    I have the TOS;DR extension [1] and it gives a rating to each website's TOS and offers an explanation of the key points. [1] https://tosdr.org/ https://tosdr.org/
__s 3y ago
I remember seeing iTunes terms tell me I could not use the software to run a nuclear reactor
- defrost 3y ago
  They're just Debbie Downers trying to stop you having the mother of all acid lights shows by bouncing control rods in a Ibisa swimming pool reactor. Cherenkov radiation for the masses I say.
more_corn 3y ago
I bet ChatGPT could summarize
- brookst 3y ago
  What if one of the terms is that users may not use AI to summarize the TOS?
  - Daviey 3y ago
    Then my assumption would be they would require an agreement in place prior to disclosing the actual ToS, you can't be in a situation where you breach the ToS prior to digesting them.
gardenhedge 3y ago
and what if you find something? tweet into the void?
- Hackbraten 3y ago
  If it’s an app from a walled garden, you can leave a critical review. People can filter for those before they buy or download. If it’s some other piece of software, you can go to a package repository such as the AUR [1] or Chocolatey [2], and leave a comment for the package even if it’s non-free. If it’s a pure SaaS, there’s little you can do though, apart from tweeting, word-of-mouth, or Google reviews. [1]: https://aur.archlinux.org https://aur.archlinux.org [2]: https://community.chocolatey.org/packages https://community.chocolatey.org/packages
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

mindvirus 3y ago

Part of me wishes there was a law that companies had to implement checks that their customers read and understood the agreement. Timers, making sure people had each line of text on the screen for a sufficient amount of time, and line by line video explainers. Just to expose the ridiculousness of it all.

smsm42 3y ago
I've seen timers on ToS screen. Of course, it just makes one wait a bit and take another sip of the drink before clicking OK without reading, because nobody can understand that shit anyway, time or no time.
saalweachter 3y ago
In one "inside a video game" LitRPG the main character gains an achievement for being the first person to read the ToS to the end before clicking "accept".
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  Years ago the installer for some pirated game would display the game's EULA... only to show you 'Wow! Did you really read that in less than 10 seconds?!' pop-up after you click 'Agree'.
prepend 3y ago
It seems corporate training is testing this out. This there seems to be more video only, nonskippable training that make sure you spend an hour watching. For now, running them in a vm in the background works.
- kaashif 3y ago
  Even for the ones with quizzes at the end and lots interactive elements throughout (not a video), oftentimes the most time-efficient strategy is to speed click through and just guess the quiz answers using common sense. Hasn't failed me yet.
- 3y ago

NGRhodes 3y ago

These are most likely not legally binding in the UK as consumer contracts and notices as a whole have to be fair (transparent, in good faith and intelligible) to consumers under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

hnbad 3y ago
Same in Germany. There was an interesting case against WhatsApp banning a user for using a third-party app, which WhatsApp argued was against the ToS but the court ruled that the user could not have expected this to result in account termination as using third-party clients was perfectly acceptable practice for similar apps and the user was not explicitly warned this would happen. Basically you can't sneak gotchas into a ToS, you have to make sure users know they're violating a rule. Ironically this is unlike actual laws where ignorance is not an excuse even if the law is weird and unexpected.
- Aachen 3y ago
  Interesting case, I didn't know of that one. Thanks for posting! > Ironically this is unlike actual laws where ignorance is not an excuse I think it's similar to real laws. Unacceptable rules: sneaking in terms such as that your firstborn child will belong to me is not enforceable: nobody could expect or would agree to that. In law, similarly, you can't just upend someone's life for a minor infraction, or indeed take a child in exchange for your use of an ordinary government service. If this were to pass, a court would strike it down based on human rights or constitution, so you'd have to change/disavow those also as a country. Acceptable rules: sneaking in terms that are fair are enforceable. Your third party client ban is an example where the rule is acceptable, but the consequences deemed disproportionate and so a warning is in order before cutting one off. This is similar to many laws, for example mildly dangerous driving gets you a fine or few days/weeks of driving ban. It takes repeat offences to get banned outright. Failure to pay taxes doesn't result in them showing up to auction your TV off, but they send a nice letter first, even if they'll eventually show up with a writ and after you're been warned that this is the next step, because indeed, we don't expect everyone to know everything. I'm not a lawyer and can't cite relevant cases or anything, but this is my impression of law as a lay person. It's rarely perfectly fair towards everyone in all situations, and I think we should pay even more heed to "but how was I supposed to know"s whenever a situation is legitimately complex and good intent was shown (to avoid that people avoid doing good things because they don't know what legal risk it puts them in, such as what good samaritan laws are aimed to avoid), but it does try to find balances between what people can reasonably know and follow, at least in northwestern Europe which I'm most familiar with.

RecycledEle 3y ago

What kind of person agrees to 3 long contracts to play a game? I would not do that. I think the problem is with the consumer, not the producer.

cloverich 3y ago
It does not matter what one personally does in this scenario. It matters what most people do. If most people accept unethical or dangerous contracts as normal, then (some) corporate behavior that is unethical or dangerous becomes allowed, or worse (normalized). So it matters instead whether you are pro or against that, and what political action you take to steer that in a more desirable direction. We all (arguably) have an obligation to help steer society in healthy directions whether we want to participate or not,.
smsm42 3y ago
Virtually every kind. The risk is low (if game companies routinely extracted player's kidneys using little noticed section in TOS as legal basis, we'd likely know it already) and the reward is significant.

samsolomon 3y ago

Honestly, would be a cool to track and use GPT-4 to summarize changes in terms of service agreements.

smsm42 3y ago
That's like reading diffs instead of reading source code. If the code is clean and the change us simple, it's easy. If the code is dense and dirty and the change is complex, it's next to impossible to figure out what's up.