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I have been too successful muting my sarcasm. You are correct! My impractical idea is, indeed, impractical. The point is that when we allow arbitrarily complex

I have been too successful muting my sarcasm. You are correct! My impractical idea is, indeed, impractical. The point is that when we allow arbitrarily complex language to be buried under a single agreement action, a user has no idea what they are actually agreeing to. And everybody knows it. So we should just make such agreements null and void until the technology community (us) and the lawyers can come up with a way of breaking these user agreements down into digestible, understandable units.

knome 13y ago
Null and void seems extreme to me. These sorts of agreements do serve a perfectly good purpose. While I would not agree that users should be held liable by terms as either criminal or civil infractions of any sort, they certainly work well to advise the user of what services they will be provided, under what circumstances the provider will be justified in removing service, whether or not the customer will be refunded in those situations, etc. As a declaration of intent of service, potentially usable defensively by the company should a user take umbrage against the service, they are excellent. As anything else, they're pretty worthless.
Silhouette 13y ago
So we should just make such agreements null and void until the technology community (us) and the lawyers can come up with a way of breaking these user agreements down into digestible, understandable units. Which unfortunately destroys the Internet until that happens. Businesses typically don't enjoy the benefit of the doubt and consumer protection laws that their customers usually do when those customers sign up with a standard form contract where they have little if any power to negotiate. If a business offering a product or service isn't able to define reasonable terms to clarify what the deal is then that business can't transact with customers without accepting an absurd amount of risk or without negotiating individually with each customer at prohibitive cost. When we did the terms for a UK business not so long ago, we were advised that things like hiding potentially unexpected terms away could weaken those terms if we ever tried to enforce them, while if certain terms that are reasonable but not necessarily obvious are emphasized then this can strengthen their enforceability. Also, there are some basic legal standards that any such contract would have to meet, e.g., where consumer protection laws say that certain kinds of term are completely prohibited. This seems a reasonable fundamental policy: whoever is writing the terms can't rely on unreasonable conditions, and if there's something reasonable but possibly unexpected then it's in their interests to draw attention to it explicitly, but assuming they do those things their terms should be expected to stand up in court if necessary.

knome 13y ago

Null and void seems extreme to me. These sorts of agreements do serve a perfectly good purpose. While I would not agree that users should be held liable by terms as either criminal or civil infractions of any sort, they certainly work well to advise the user of what services they will be provided, under what circumstances the provider will be justified in removing service, whether or not the customer will be refunded in those situations, etc. As a declaration of intent of service, potentially usable defensively by the company should a user take umbrage against the service, they are excellent. As anything else, they're pretty worthless.

Silhouette 13y ago

So we should just make such agreements null and void until the technology community (us) and the lawyers can come up with a way of breaking these user agreements down into digestible, understandable units. Which unfortunately destroys the Internet until that happens. Businesses typically don't enjoy the benefit of the doubt and consumer protection laws that their customers usually do when those customers sign up with a standard form contract where they have little if any power to negotiate. If a business offering a product or service isn't able to define reasonable terms to clarify what the deal is then that business can't transact with customers without accepting an absurd amount of risk or without negotiating individually with each customer at prohibitive cost. When we did the terms for a UK business not so long ago, we were advised that things like hiding potentially unexpected terms away could weaken those terms if we ever tried to enforce them, while if certain terms that are reasonable but not necessarily obvious are emphasized then this can strengthen their enforceability. Also, there are some basic legal standards that any such contract would have to meet, e.g., where consumer protection laws say that certain kinds of term are completely prohibited. This seems a reasonable fundamental policy: whoever is writing the terms can't rely on unreasonable conditions, and if there's something reasonable but possibly unexpected then it's in their interests to draw attention to it explicitly, but assuming they do those things their terms should be expected to stand up in court if necessary.