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Have Terms of Service Become Totalitarian Tools?

posted by Dopefish on Monday February 24 2014, @09:00PM   
from the don't-click-ok-to-accept-the-eula dept.

andrew writes:

"Alternet.org reports recent updates to terms of conditions for Bank of Americas cell phone app and Capital Ones new credit card contract have given banks unsettling new abilities. These privileges include the authority to access to your phone microphone and camera or even showing up at your workplace and home unannounced at any time.

From the the article:

We're witnessing a new era of fascism, where corporations are creating intrusive and over-bearing terms and conditions that customers click to agree to without even reading.

As a result, corporations in America have acquired king-like power, while we're the poor serfs that must abide by their every rule or else."

• Problem with 2nd hyperlink Problem with 2nd hyperlink (Score: 2) by Open4D on Tuesday February 25 2014, @03:10PM

  by Open4D (371) on Tuesday February 25 2014, @03:10PM (#6645) Journal

  ... when TCP/IP and SMTP were starting to spread in the 1990s, the existing Online Service players fought openness tooth and nail [google.co.nz] ...

  For me, the linked page says "You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book." I'm accessing it from Europe.

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• Re:Problem with 2nd hyperlink Re:Problem with 2nd hyperlink (Score: 1) by lennier on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:44PM

  by lennier (2199) on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:44PM (#6924)

  Ah, sorry about that. It was a random Google books link that seemed to summarise the 1980s online services world: the relevant paragraphs were:

  The other major development of the 1980s was the rise of online services, beginning with simple text terminals that business could use to search expensive proprietary databases of legal, medical, technical, financial and marketing information. Despite crude technology, by the late 1980s online services had become a $10 billion industry. Then, with the spread of home computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, consumer online services became available, through CompuServe (the oldest vendor), AOL, Prodigy, and the early versions of MSN, among others. Both the business and consumer online services relied on slow modem connections between personal computers and their host services.

  The early online services industry was based on the traditional mainframe/minicomputer model, consisting of mutually incompatible, closed-architecture systems in which each vendor provided its own proprietary software and user interfaces. These services neither communicated with each other nor permitted independent (unaffiliated) content providers to transmit information to each other or to end-users. Thus, for example, a CompuServe subscriber could not send e-mail to a Prodigy subscriber, and the software required to use CompuServe (or Prodigy, or America Online, or Sierra Online, or Lockheed's Dialog System) could not be used to view or use any of the other services. Similarly, the process of developing content was specific to each service. All of these services used their own closed, mutually incompatible development tools and server software.

  (Not sure about 'Sierra Online'. That was Ken and Roberta Williams' game company, though they probably also ran a BBS like all tech companies of the era did; I doubt it was a major online service though.)

  --
  Delenda est Beta

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  • Re:Problem with 2nd hyperlink (Score: 1) by Open4D on Wednesday February 26 2014, @03:12PM

    by Open4D (371) on Wednesday February 26 2014, @03:12PM (#7323) Journal

    I admit I was secretly hoping for some juicy story about legal attacks (perhaps using patents) on the new interoperable technologies. Or corporate lobbying of politicians on the matter.

    But anyway, thanks for the extract.

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