
When ‘Liking’ a Brand Online Voids the Right to Sue - 001sky
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/business/when-liking-a-brand-online-voids-the-right-to-sue.html?hp
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fiatmoney
Similarly, I have a sticky note attached to my monitor which states that
anyone who runs their code on my machine (via Javascript, for instance) in
exchange for any benefit (tracking data or ad impressions, for instance) must
submit any claims against me to my chosen artbitrator (hi, mom!). I also plan
on stealing a lot of cereal.

When I am effectively the server's server via running code on my machine, it
seems like I have exactly the same right to declare unilateral terms-and-
conditions for the use of my resources.

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pdkl95
Given how "easy" these "agreements" are for most people to discover, I've
always liked the idea of a client-side HTTP header:

    
    
        X-Client-ToS-Policy: TOS_ACCEPT=NONE,"By providing me a web page, you agree that our relationship has no additional terms or agreements beyond those already established in law."
    

It's machine readable and provided before the page is delivered, so it should
be at _least_ as enforcible as the nonsense "terms" businesses seem to like
these days.

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mcv
Isn't this basically a company unilaterally declaring: "The law does not apply
to us for all practical purposes"?

Customer protection laws are meaningless if the only way to become a customer
is to give up your rights protected in those laws. Of course smart, well-
informed consumers will automatically avoid becoming customers of those
companies, but who the hell visits a webpage to read a boring policy before
picking a box of cereal from the shelf?

These kind of attempts to take away consumer rights shouldn't just be void,
they should be illegal. Simply suggesting that consumers might have given up
their rights, should by itself be worthy of a fine.

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tim333
Sounds like General Mills are trying it on a bit. I mean they can write in
their terms that anyone who likes them on Facebook is not allowed to sue but
it doesn't mean a court will enforce that.

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rhizome
Whatever the result, it will be tried, and probably by a huge company with the
resources to push a verdict (or verdict-delaying settlement) through, to the
degree that's possible. Worse things have persisted, but I don't remember this
kind of cowboy tort-reform ever making headlines upon successful application.
There are at least as many lawyers who depend on these suing rights to exist
that can provide better pushback than any layman. General Mills has to listen
to nobody except the courts.

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bittermang
One of the most amazing quarks of the American legal system is how you can
rescind, revoke, and give away your rights which are protected by that very
same legal system, and it's all perfectly legal to do so.

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brianchu
IANAL, but a company _claiming_ that you give up your rights is not the same
thing as you actually giving up your rights.

All these companies are essentially doing is _claiming_ that you are giving up
your rights. It remains to be seen whether these provisions will actually hold
up with legal force in court (I doubt most of them will).

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jamesbrownuhh
There is a phrase in the UK which you see a lot in small print - "Your
statutory rights are not affected."

Because, after all, your statutory rights are the law, and small print can't
take that away from you, no matter how much "even thinking about buying our
cereal creates a binding legal contract between us" or other such horseshit.

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vacri
I'm told that in my state (Victoria) prenuptial agreements carry no legal
weight. There are laws to divide up the estate in the case of a divorce, and
private contracts cannot override laws. A prenup can of course be voluntarily
honoured, just not legally enforced.

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malka
I'm not sure if I really want to eat the food of a brand that is that much
afraid to be sued. Says a lot about the confidence they have in their
products.

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thaumasiotes
Actually, I don't think it says anything about their products, or General
Mills' confidence in the same, except that those products are so common that
they grow lawsuits the same way bread grows mold. Being afraid of lawsuits
isn't necessarily related to believing that anyone anywhere might have any
reasonable grounds to sue you; crazy nutcases won't make you whole after you
defend yourself and win.

