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There is a browser add-on which summarizes terms of service warnings for web sites requiring an all-or-nothing click-through to use their services. The add-on tosdr uses crowd-sourcing to digest scores of pages into short, concise sentences or paragraphs warning what is hidden behind excessively verbose legalese. The database has been around for years but has recently been converted into a wiki.
What if, before you consented, you could at least read the SparkNotes? That's the goal of ToSDR—short for Terms of Service; Didn't Read—a website that turns lengthy terms of service agreements into bulleted summaries, and then rates those terms from Class A (very good) to Class F (very bad). It functions as a sort of Wikipedia for terms of service agreements. Anyone can submit a bullet point and share their analysis of a service's terms, which get turned into a rating of a site's overall policy. The site, which has existed since 2012 but is relaunching next month on a new platform, hopes to create a broad network of shared knowledge.
Unlike written contracts where it is easy to cross out offending paragraphs and clauses before both parties sign, these online forms are all-or-nothing. In some of the sites with larger network effects, such as Facebook, it might be that such a forced agreement could be construed as extortion.
Sources:
Wired: Welcome to the Wikipedia for Terms of Service Agreements
Boing Boing: Terms of Service; Didn't Read: a browser add-on that warns you about the terrible fine-print you're about to "agree" to
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday April 20 2018, @10:46AM
It depends a bit on how the submission works. I'm aware of a couple of cases. In one, someone edited the ToS in a text field in the installer that had been left editable. The judge ruled that since the edited version was provided to software under the control of the company that the software was acting on their behalf and was treated as accepting it. You could argue that editing it on their web site on a form that will send information to them is the same thing: it's not your fault if the thing asking for agreement sends back the fact that you agreed but not the contents of the text that you agreed to - they chose not to read the contract.
My favourite case like this, which I came across quite recently, was someone who got fed up with credit card postal offers and amended the T&Cs on one to say that the company owed him $20K if they ever imposed fees, then copied it and mailed it back. The company didn't bother checking that the document that he'd signed was the one that they expected and so sent him a card, then imposed the fees a few months later. He got his $20K.
sudo mod me up