Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Terms of Service; Didn't Read (tos-dr.info)
138 points by ryanio on Aug 12, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 14 comments



Posted 5 days ago, comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4350907


Strange. Does HN allow posting same link twice?


No. A common method to defeat it is adding useless parameters to the URL (like "?1"). I think this case was a genuine mistake, though. This submission has no "www." but the one from five days ago does. (Edit: ludwigvan beat me to the punch by a few seconds.)


The other link had "www."


I welcome this and I hope more people use it.

Unfortunately, companies pay lawyers to come up with incomprehensible AUP/TOS/etc, and those lawyers are unlikely to want to allow the company to use a "generic" document, even if it is very high quality.

There are some ridiculous terms and conditions in some documents, and I'm not sure if any of them have ever been tested in courts.

I'm keen to see how this team can overcome international differences in law to create a simple but effective ToS.


As far as I can tell, the plan isn't to create a standardised document but rather to provide greater transparency over existing TOS.

In terms of court testing, one example is the OFT in the UK requesting that Apple make changes to its terms which were considered to be in breach of UK legislation.

http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2009/136-09

I don't think the objective is to create incomprehensible terms. In fact I am confident that if most people had the time/inclination to read the TOS, they would understand them. The problem is that their length obviously puts people off, which is where the project comes in.


All the ones I really care about--Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google--don't have a class yet (what does that even mean?).

Regardless, this is great for a quick summary of what you're agreeing to (or already agreed to).


TOSSOS.com has been doing this for a while. It also has a Chrome plugin. Check it out and if you know anyone who wants to help, email hello@tossos.com


There's a Chrome app for tos;dr as well:

  https://github.com/shybyte/tos-checker
(You have to install it by hand, so remember you need to be in Chrome's developer mode).


I don't think it used to. I could be wrong, though. Or maybe they're getting some pushback?


There's a Swedish project called CommonTerms that also tackles user agreements from a usability POV http://www.commonterms.net/


Great initiative, but at a glance the results seem biased towards Google (no mention of issues around the new unified accounts, complaints about youtube realnames etc.).


Do any of the ToS websites use http://hypothes.is/ for annotation?


I don't think hypothes.is have rolled out any system yet.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: