
Terms and conditions word by word - jonespen
http://www.forbrukerradet.no/terms-and-conditions-word-by-word
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danso
Given that there's often a lot of boilerplate for TOS, would it be fairly easy
to come up with a few heuristics for a tool that when fed the text of a TOS,
could deemphasize the boilerplate and perhaps flag known problematic (or, at
least, esoteric) language? Not a sophisticated AI thing, mind you, just
something that cuts a little more to the chase.

edit: I mean that the tool should be a dumb high-pass filter that would work
in addition to what tosdr provides through user reviews and manual
classification via its plugin:
[https://tosdr.org/classification.html](https://tosdr.org/classification.html)

~~~
nihonde
I'm a lawyer, and not an expert in AI. I once gathered a ton of Terms of
Service, cleaned them up as text files, and began training a classifier. By
the time I was done, it was pretty good at telling me which section heading in
the typical ToS table of contents any random text belonged to.

It was an interesting thought experiment, so I expanded it to my large body of
private contracts that I've collected after many years of law practice. The
results were less accurate (because ToS tend to follow a pretty rigid pattern,
mostly), but still pretty good.

The big question is: does anyone really care about it? For example, I never
look at tosdr.org because what are you going to do? negotiate a ToS? It's not
as if there's any meaningful freedom of choice in this space. My personal view
(not legal advice!) is that most browse-wrap ToS aren't enforceable as
contracts.

~~~
reitanqild
Not a lawyer but used to read EULAs etc carefully.

At some point I gave in and decided a better approach would be to just point
out that no sane consumer can read all that.

~~~
pluma
In Germany at least (and thus maybe most of the EU?) no customer actually has
to read any of it. Anything in a ToS/EULA that could be considered
"surprising" is unenforceable and therefore void.

Of course that means the exact enforceable contents of every ToS ultimately
boil down to case law but for customers this is a much better solution than
"you may have accidentally sold your soul".

~~~
nihonde
That's more or less true in America, too. Consumer contracts are generally
subject to the "unconscionability" test:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability#United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability#United_States).
It's not the same as "surprising", but the sentiment is roughly the same.

~~~
ghayes
See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_wrap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_wrap)

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mordechai9000
Anytime I install software or sign up for a service on my work laptop, I am
entering my company into a (perhaps) binding legal agreement that I haven't
done more than skim at best, and has not been reviewed by our corporate legal
team.

It's fairly common to see clauses that state the terms may change at any time
without notice, and continued use of the service means you agree to any
changes made. That seems completely unenforceable to me, but I am not a
lawyer.

I've often fantasized about a legal framework similar to Creative Commons, but
for TOS, that would protect the interests of both users and service providers.

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egjerlow
This seems like a nice resource for swashing through the terms and conditions
jungle: [https://tosdr.org/](https://tosdr.org/)

~~~
INTPenis
Came here to say that tosdr is much simpler because that video stream is like
listening to a text2speech version of a large and complex legal text. Combined
with a crackly norwegian accent that's even hard for me as a swede to accept.

~~~
egjerlow
The way it is titled on the Norwegian version of the page ("We read app terms
and conditions minute by minute") they're probably partly spoofing the
successful NRK 'slow TV shows'[1] that were all titled thus. Example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7VYVjR_nwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7VYVjR_nwE)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_television#Norwegian_Broa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_television#Norwegian_Broadcasting_Corporation)

~~~
yxlx
This is correct, as can be seen from the following tweet retweeted by
Forbrukerrådet and therefore currently on display on the OP link:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/PRlinjen/status/73507293647489024...](https://mobile.twitter.com/PRlinjen/status/735072936474890240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

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barkbro
>1\. Cut back on the obvious

Would this work when there are different laws for different jurisdictions and
there is no way to tell for sure where the user acutally is located? I thought
the reason behind the obviousness was to cover everything.

>2\. Write so that people understand

>3\. Keep it short and concise

That probably wouldn't be beneficial for all the companies using the user-as-
the-product model. "Terms of Service: We retain the right to track your
location, read your text messages, listen to the microphone and read your
thoughts"

~~~
belorn
The problem with trying to cover everything, is that it has eroded the
definition of _informed consent_. Expecting a person to do a informed decision
on everything is difficult for even a certified expert on law, and much of
"everything" is only relevant in context of local law and local contract law
which dictate what is and isn't acceptable in a contract.

We are thus in a rather odd situation where most contracts and agreements are
signed without the signer having a clue what they agree to.

~~~
rlpb
Various jurisdictions have consumer protection laws that try to help here.
What I think would help is if, for consumer contracts:

1\. The weight of individual terms diminished in law as the contract length
increases. A reasonable length would be judged by the nature of the contract
(a reasonable length for the simple sale of goods would be short, a complex
arrangement like a mortgage would be expected to be longer).

2\. If for a particular term in favour of party A, party A cannot reasonably
believe that party B read and understood it at the time of forming the
contract, then the term is void. For example, if a contract is presented to me
as a consumer, I clearly have never seen it before and sign it immediately
without reading it, the signature should mean nothing and the only contract
that exists should be an implied contract around what we are doing.

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chirau
I'd really love to see an app which monitors changes in terms and conditions
for different apps and services so that I am notified whenever something
changes.

~~~
bballer
Wouldn't it be pretty easy to create a git repo that you seed with the a bunch
of ToS, have a cron fetch them everyday or so, run `git diff` to see if there
are changes, push them, tag a new release and boom anyone subscribed will be
notified.

~~~
philippnagel
Sounds good. Another way could be to feed the ToS URL into a visual web
scraper (e.g
[https://github.com/scrapinghub/portia](https://github.com/scrapinghub/portia),
scrape, then compare and notify via email.

~~~
bballer
Yeah but then you need infrastructure to send all the emails etc. Hooking into
git would allow complete version history diffs, emails, a platform to discuss
the changes on and so on.

Idea was to just keep it as light as possible while off loading all the heavy
lifting.

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TorKlingberg
It's ridiculous that I have to constantly lie and say that I have read and
agreed to long legal texts unless I want to go live in cave.

~~~
xufi
Thats ok about 99 percent of us do that as well. Youre not alone freind.

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macintux
Speaking as someone who used to read newspapers and books on air for people
with reading difficulties: if you think it's boring to listen to this, you
should try being on the other end!

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tobr
My Norwegian isn't great, does the scrolling text at the bottom of the video
say that iTunes asks you to read the TOS together with your children? That
seems crazy.

~~~
maaaats
Yeah, that's what it said.

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sakri
This is so much more fun than watching paint dry

