

Apple iTunes Contract Fail - dsc
http://annoyingui.posterous.com/apple-itunes-contract-fail

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tibbon
Just as bad, if not worse, is the agreement that you're asked to do for
purchasing via the iTMS on the iPhone.

I recently had to update my billing information and it asked that I re-agree
to the EULA (on my iPhone itself). It was 92 'pages' long on the iPhone.
Completely unreadable. I took a screen shot just to remind myself, but I
thought it was completely absurd. I know there's a lot of lawyering just to
make the iTMS happen, but 92 tiny pages is absurd, unneeded and not something
a consumer can understand. Yet- I can lease an apartment in a simple 2 page
contract (or less!). Why is a song more complex than a house? (I know the
answer, but it still shouldn't be this way)

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huhtenberg
I wonder if the fact that noone reads Licensing Agreements anymore means that
they have become less (or even un-) enforceable in courts.

In Canada, for example, there is an "average person" test, which deals with
evaluating the reasonableness of one's action by comparing it what an average
person would've done in the same circumstances. If on average noone reads T&C
before accepting, then perhaps this may invalidate this T&C agreement model.

~~~
semanticist
The FSA (Financial Services Authority - UK financial industry watchdog) ruled
that simply checking a box that says you've read and understood a contract
doesn't protect the financial services company from your later complaint that
the contract was unfair or not explained to you properly.

([http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/21/fsa_contract_guidanc...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/21/fsa_contract_guidance/))

I found the OFT guidance really interesting:

"The purpose of declarations of this kind is clearly to bind consumers to
wording regardless of whether they have any real awareness of it. Such
statements are thus open to the same objections as provisions binding
consumers to terms they have not seen at all."

That implies that in the UK situations where you have 50 screens of unreadable
guff with an 'I agree' checkbox at the bottom may not be enforceable.

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MichaelApproved
Does it even matter? Most people just click "I Agree" even when it's in their
language.

It would be an interesting experiment to have people perform another action
that's described in the TOS to see what percentage of people have actually
read it.

~~~
alexkiwi
the guys from creative commons talked about this at sxsw last year.
unsurprisingly no one reads the tos of any page, there are different ways to
TRY to get a user to read them, timers, several smaller pages, etc.

for business law class we read through the iTunes TOS, it's amazing what you
have to agree to just to buy a song.

~~~
ErrantX
To prove this I "borrowed" a busy but insignificant site belonging to a friend
and changed everything below the scroll bar in the TOS box to the text from a
Postman Pat story :)

I think over 6 months we only ever got one person querying it....

~~~
tibbon
I remember hearing about a story from some large software company putting, "It
you read this, call this number for $1,000". It took 6 months for anyone to
call them about it. Probably completely anachronistic, but similar and
potentially real.

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mkramlich
any Terms of Service that's longer than a paragraph I just treat as Arabic and
click on the Agree button

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tomwans
Someone commented "You obviously logged into the Qatar iTunes store. If you
log into the US store you will get the US agreement, or the French store for
French agreement." -- If he's not shopping in the US, he shouldn't be logging
into the US iTunes, should he?

~~~
josh33
To shop the US store, you just need a US credit card. He must have a card
specific to that region.

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mkramlich
The problem with ToS is that by the time you reach the point where they show
you a ToS you were already otherwise sure you wanted to do the desired action
in question. Then they show the ToS, and while yes you have the option of not
agreeing to it, the dilemma is that by declining you would then not get the
bright shiny thing you've _already_ clearly indicated you wanted by the fact
that you reached that point.

Also, they are incentivized to make a ToS long and use a small font precisely
because the user is less likely to read it and just hit Agree anyway. So they
can bury whatever evil things they want in there. Therefore, the whole thing
is a sort of pox or anti-pattern.

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tlrobinson
I wonder if this affects the enforceability of the EULA?

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kqueue
Useless post

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hackermom
Meh... This geolocating is standard procedure, like with much other software
that doesn't have readily available locale info. Also Bing, Altavista and
Google perform geolocating to serve you the "appropriate language", all
depending on where you browse from (they don't check the browser's language
setting). If he just logs on to the US iTunes Megastore he gets the contract
in English.

~~~
zaphar

        If he just logs on to the US iTunes Megastore he gets the contract in English.
    

This may be true and all but where on that page does it indicate he should do
that?

~~~
mkramlich
They say it quite clearly in the ToS in paragraph 37. In Arabic.

