In other news today...
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@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
@topspin I agree that it's scummy if done intentionally.
But then you have the fact that (in the US at least) the enforceability varies by jurisdiction (not even state, but sometimes locality) and most of the forms (employment and rental at least) are stock forms drawn up nationwide rather than customized per individual.
If they're big enough to be nationwide and big enough to have 50-page fine print in their contracts, they are big enough to make customized contract template for each jurisdiction they operate in. Standardization is no excuse for screwing over customers.
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@Gąska most of them are downloaded from internet sites that provide templates. The big ones user standard contracts because vetting the contracts for all possible jurisdictions and keeping them updated and making sure that the right store gets the right one (boundaries shift, after all) is a non starter compared to having vestigial terms that just don't matter.
Plus you have lots of contracts that started while the clauses were thought enforceable. Or where they've never really been tested. As I said, it's a mess.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
@Gąska most of them are downloaded from internet sites that provide templates.
In my personal limited experience, the ready-made downloadable templates from the internet don't have much fine print so it's not that much effort (as a consumer) to check which clauses are enforceable and which aren't.
The big ones user standard contracts because vetting the contracts for all possible jurisdictions and keeping them updated and making sure that the right store gets the right one (boundaries shift, after all) is a non starter compared to having vestigial terms that just don't matter.
Sorry, but I have zero sympathy for megacorporations with humongous legal departments that nevertheless outsource checking whether the contract is legally valid to individual consumers. If you don't have money to check whether some part of your contract is enforceable, remove that part. It's that simple. If you don't have money to check whether your contracts are valid in some jurisdiction, don't do business there. It's that simple.
Plus you have lots of contracts that started while the clauses were thought enforceable. Or where they've never really been tested.
That's a completely different situation and it's absolutely understandable why it's not being updated every
weekdayhour to keep in line with current law. But when a new contract is signed, or updated ToS is published - there's no excuse.As I said, it's a mess.
A mess that could easily be made much smaller but won't be.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
compared to having vestigial terms that just don't matter.
If they don’t matter, then don’t have them. Stop putting in ridiculous demands “just in case”, like anything the user uploads we get an exclusive, perpetual, non-revocable license to use in any way we see fit. (“What, you complain about taking your family picture and photoshopping some porn into it for our adult partner site? Should’ve thought twice about accepting the terms of our cloud storage.”)
How can they expect every single one of their users to read, understand and accept their terms and conditions if they don’t have anyone who understands it themselves?
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
compared to having vestigial terms that just don't matter.
If they don’t matter, then don’t have them. Stop putting in ridiculous demands “just in case”, like anything the user uploads we get an exclusive, perpetual, non-revocable license to use in any way we see fit. (“What, you complain about taking your family picture and photoshopping some porn into it for our adult partner site? Should’ve thought twice about accepting the terms of our cloud storage.”)
How can they expect every single one of their users to read, understand and accept their terms and conditions if they don’t have anyone who understands it themselves?Oh I basically agree.
But the changes to the legal environments are highly non-transparent. The manpower needed to comb through all TOS and contracts on every update...well...it would keep all lawyers at full employment for the rest of eternity and would still leak.
Especially since a lot of the decisions whether something is enforceable or not are highly fact and situation dependent. Take, for instance, non-compete clauses. They're not enforceable in California...except when they are. Other states apply them on a case-by-case basis.
And then you have rental agreements, where Renter's Rights laws differ between municipalities, let alone counties or states. And are subject to frequent addendums and changes.
Plus, any change to a contract requires at minimum several hours of legal time (billed at $500+/hour) to validate. Even for a small wording change. And there are laws saying that having different tenants bound to different contracts (with allowances for naturally-varying terms such as price and duration) is a breach of contract for all existing tenants. So you'd have to re-sign every existing contract everywhere anytime any of them changes.
Basically, the law (in the US) strongly prioritizes stability. As long as no one tries to actually enforce any of the contract elements that may (or may not) be struck down, it just ends up bloating the contracts.
As a note, the same applies to US laws--when a court strikes down a law, it doesn't actually get removed from the text, even virtually. It's just marked as deleted for future court decisions. It takes an affirmative act of the legislature to remove "dead" text. And it happens...but only when they're going to amend that statute anyway. And even then, there's lots of dead text in the laws. And executive orders and regulations are orders-of-magnitude worse. Heck, the Mormon Extermination Order was only rescinded in 1975, almost 140 years later. Despite being unenforceable/unenforced since about 2 years after it was enacted.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
Especially since a lot of the decisions whether something is enforceable or not are highly fact and situation dependent.
Maybe, but remember that we were talking about something where a (French) court decided the terms were illegal (or unenforceable or whatever) and they still kept it in years later. There is simply no excuse for that.
Also, this has lead us to a situation where not only does nobody read the T&C because they don't understand them anyway, but worse, where corporations basically put in everything they can think of. So there's no need to read up what, say (merely for the sake of argument), Gmail's terms of service say about what they can do with your data. What they actually do say is that they can do basically anything they like, even things that are completely unreasonable, but you think "well, of course they wouldn't do that."
But then they do something you actually assumed they wouldn't be allowed to (but of course their terms allow unless explicitly struck down by court) and then the smug nerds come along and say "I told you so". In effect the terms you agree to don't tell you anything about what they will actually do, and everybody just agrees and hopes for the best. There is zero "informed consent" in these agreements.
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@topspin I was only talking about the US. If France is better about that (more clear-cut and more individually-focused), sure. Those TOS terms should change or they're in contempt.
But at least in the US, a decision binding on one set of parties isn't binding on a different set. So even though
tos_element_2isn't enforceable for XYZ Corp under PDQ conditions, that doesn't affect QWERTY Corp. QWERTY Corp isn't "on notice" (to use legal jargon), and can very well argue that it's conditions (including all the facts) are different from those of XYZ Corp.So basically, unless there's a flat out legislative change, no body's going to update anything until they get direct notice from a court decision with them as a party.
Good lawyers will recommend not including terms that they are pretty sure will be struck down, and most custom-written contracts are pretty good about such things. It's the boilerplate ones (including shrink-wrap TOS) that are bad. Not because they intend to be (other than some exceptions), but because they're just throwing it all at the wall as doing a custom contract for each jurisdiction is impossible. Especially for online service TOS, where the number of jurisdictions is unbounded and you don't know which one the customer's in at any instant.
So you end up with a few broad categories where updates just aren't feasible.
- The little guy, who gets one of the cheap templates off a service. Having a custom contract written and vetted is cost prohibitive, and changing it when the legal conditions change is messy. But the number of people affected is minimal and the terms are unlikely to be offensive.
- Shrink-wrap TOS. Which aren't even known to be enforceable at all, except for access to online services. And even then, customizing them per small-jurisdiction is painful-to-impossible. Maybe 1 per state, but even then you've got people who accepted it in one state and moved to another. And the variation in what's enforceable is pretty big between jurisdictions.
Basically, forcing everyone to proactively remove unenforceable terms means that only the big companies can do business--it's cost prohibitive for anyone else.
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@Gąska said in In other news today...:
Sorry, but I have zero sympathy for megacorporations with humongous legal departments that nevertheless outsource checking whether the contract is legally valid to individual consumers. If you don't have money to check whether some part of your contract is enforceable, remove that part. It's that simple. If you don't have money to check whether your contracts are valid in some jurisdiction, don't do business there. It's that simple.
The problem is that the US has microjurisdictions.
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@dkf you want microjurisdictions then you deal with microjurisdictions. What kind of argument is this? "We made such a fucking mess out of the legal system that the only path forward is to screw people even more"?
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@Gąska said in In other news today...:
@boomzilla said in In other news today...:
Australian airline Qantas' 'flight to nowhere' sells out in 10 minutes, report says
Australian air carrier Qantas announced that a seven-hour scenic "flight to nowhere," which will take off and land at the same airport amid interstate travel restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic, sold out in 10 minutes, according to a report.
People are that desperate to be confined in small enclosed space with no ability to step outside?
A chair, a table, no phones, no children...
At $575 it's a bit steep... I'd get a better mileage from a hotel room. But having the tickets in hand gives extra credibility to the "work trip" claim....
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@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
I was only talking about the US. If France is better about that (more clear-cut and more individually-focused), sure. Those TOS terms should change or they're in contempt.
I don't think it's any different in France. But I do agree with @topspin that the ruling should include some sort of clause that forces the company (Twitter in this case) to update their ToS. I think the judge would have the power to do that, if they wanted to (possibly through some sort of injunction where they have to pay a fine for each day until it's done).
It's not done, either because of some legal subtlety, or because it's not customary, but from a moral standpoint, I cannot see any justification for not doing it. That specific ToS, under that specific jurisdiction, has been ruled unlawful, so the company shouldn't be allowed to keep using it under the pretext that it doesn't matter as it's been voided.
But at least in the US, a decision binding on one set of parties isn't binding on a different set.
For other parties than those directly involved in the ruling, I agree with you. As much as we'd like things to be simple and to be able to just handwave "big companies have enough resources to update their ToS every day" there are too many edge cases and complications to make it feasible (reading the actual full ruling in the case we're discussing here is actually quite enlightening in that respect, as it shows how a ruling on one specific clause is only attained after considering many peripheral arguments that are not the clause itself but impacts how it's interpreted by the court!). But at least if a company was actually forced to update their ToS when they loose a case, that might give them an incentive to be slightly more proactive (a trial has a cost, both in money and PR, even for big companies!).
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@remi said in In other news today...:
But I do agree with @topspin that the ruling should include some sort of clause that forces the company (Twitter in this case) to update their ToS.
At the very least, the ToS could be updated to say “This clause does not apply to users normally resident in France, Montenegro, Guatemala, Sikkim, the state of West Virginia, and the city of Boise, Idaho.”
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@dkf Trust a lawyer to turn such an easy thing as removing a clause into an hard-to-read and interpret list...
Also, I noted while looking up this story that Twitter only seem to have one ToS page per language (
https://twitter.com/[language code]/tos), not per country (of course they could use some geolocalisation stuff to filter what they show me, but if they were to do that then why would they allow me to see languages that don't apply to my jurisdiction?).Which means they are presenting e.g. the same ToS to French and Quebecois, or to American and Australians, or to Mexicans and Spanish etc. For something as specialised as a legal contract (which ToS is), this is also something that shouldn't be allowed IMO.
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@remi said in In other news today...:
of course they could use some geolocalisation stuff to filter what they show me
That'd be actually quite dangerous. In my earlier job we connected outside through a proxy in our parent division in Vienna, so while we were actually in Czechia, all geolocations thought we are in Austria. Probably unlikely for home connections, but I would expect it to be fairly common in multi-national corporations.
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@remi said in In other news today...:
@dkf Trust a lawyer to turn such an easy thing as removing a clause into an hard-to-read and interpret list...
Also, I noted while looking up this story that Twitter only seem to have one ToS page per language (
https://twitter.com/[language code]/tos), not per country (of course they could use some geolocalisation stuff to filter what they show me, but if they were to do that then why would they allow me to see languages that don't apply to my jurisdiction?).Which means they are presenting e.g. the same ToS to French and Quebecois, or to American and Australians, or to Mexicans and Spanish etc. For something as specialised as a legal contract (which ToS is), this is also something that shouldn't be allowed IMO.
That part is probably just
:doing_it_wrong:. If the contents of the different language ToS actually differ to (try to) adapt to different jurisdictions, then you should get the one that applies to your jurisdiction. Otherwise you end up accepting one thing and them arguing that you actually accepted another. "No, you didn't read language X, you're in country Y so obviously you read language Z."
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@remi said in In other news today...:
Also, I noted while looking up this story that Twitter only seem to have one ToS page per language (https://twitter.com/[language code]/tos), not per country (of course they could use some geolocalisation stuff to filter what they show me, but if they were to do that then why would they allow me to see languages that don't apply to my jurisdiction?).
But language and country are in a many to many map that's extremely complex (i.e., reality says “Hi!”). Much better to have everything in each language and, where clauses only apply in some jurisdictions, state that that's the case.
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@remi said in In other news today...:
of course they could use some geolocalisation stuff to filter what they show me
That'd be actually quite dangerous.
And complicator's-glove retarded, too. What's wrong with presenting a list of jurisdictions (possibly giving some geo-localized default) and having them link to the appropriate ToS? Not web 3.0 enough?
@dkf said in In other news today...:
Much better to have everything in each language and, where clauses only apply in some jurisdictions, state that that's the case.
That's another possibility.
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@Bulb Well since they clearly don't care about showing a legal agreement that's actually binding to the user, that probably wouldn't be worse than what they're doing.
I mean, by default when I'm browsing to
https://twitter.frI'm redirected tohttps://twitter.com(I'm not sure why since my IP is in France, but maybe they're basing that on my browser's language?) and the "Terms" link redirects me tohttps://twitter.com/en/tos. It's in English, which isn't an official language in France (
), so that contract isn't legally binding on me.At that point, using botched geolocalisation and showing me the Russian (or whatever) version wouldn't be any worse, legally speaking.
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@topspin said in In other news today...:
What's wrong with presenting a list of jurisdictions (possibly giving some geo-localized default) and having them link to the appropriate ToS? Not web 3.0 enough?
They'd have to care about the jurisdiction. As I said above, they have translated versions in different languages, but that's (almost) all. Clearly tribunals in at least one country has looked at it without this specific part being an issue, so why would they bother with anything more?
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@remi said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
What's wrong with presenting a list of jurisdictions (possibly giving some geo-localized default) and having them link to the appropriate ToS? Not web 3.0 enough?
They'd have to care about the jurisdiction. As I said above, they have translated versions in different languages, but that's (almost) all. Clearly tribunals in at least one country has looked at it without this specific part being an issue, so why would they bother with anything more?
Yes, that wasn't my point. I meant that if they cared about jurisdictions and actually had different versions, then it'd both be easier and saner to let the user pick from a list of available jurisdictions (that you can default if you want to) than to use geolocalization for it. Because that is guaranteed to be wrong.
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Microsoft apparently bought Fallout 76 (and some other stuff).
Welcoming the Talented Teams and Beloved Game Franchises of Bethesda to Xbox - Xbox Wire
Critically acclaimed creators of The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein, DOOM, Dishonored, Quake, Starfield and more join Team Xbox Today is a special day, as we welcome some of the most accomplished studios in the games industry to Xbox. We are thrilled to announce Microsoft has entered into an...
Edited: In accordance with @dkf's suggestion below.
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@cvi The key bit that the snippet omits? MS is acquiring ZeniMax (owner of the makers of the named franchises).
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Bethesda’s games have always had a special place on Xbox and in the hearts of millions of gamers around the world.
Because we love seeing characters get stuck in terrain and being able get through locked doors by pushing wooden plates against them.
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@dkf Hmm, yeah, that seems to be missing somewhat, isn't it? I've subtly edited that into my post now.
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In this case, "news" should probably be in scare quotes:
Lady leads cops on high-speed chase after telling them "I have to poop so bad"
When you gotta go ...
Turns out there was also an outstanding warrant for her.
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OFFS!
Call Of Duty Accounts Hacked? Activision Denies Any Compromise
Rumors of a massive Call of Duty account hack continue, but Activision denies any compromise.
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@cvi said in In other news today...:
Microsoft apparently bought Fallout 76 (and some other stuff).
Welcoming the Talented Teams and Beloved Game Franchises of Bethesda to Xbox - Xbox Wire
Critically acclaimed creators of The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein, DOOM, Dishonored, Quake, Starfield and more join Team Xbox Today is a special day, as we welcome some of the most accomplished studios in the games industry to Xbox. We are thrilled to announce Microsoft has entered into an...
Edited: In accordance with @dkf's suggestion below.
Oooooohhh console wars just got interesting.
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Meanwhile...
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
@remi said in In other news today...:
Also, I noted while looking up this story that Twitter only seem to have one ToS page per language (https://twitter.com/[language code]/tos), not per country (of course they could use some geolocalisation stuff to filter what they show me, but if they were to do that then why would they allow me to see languages that don't apply to my jurisdiction?).
But language and country are in a many to many map that's extremely complex (i.e., reality says “Hi!”). Much better to have everything in each language and, where clauses only apply in some jurisdictions, state that that's the case.
I am also beginning to wonder how many jurisdictions would shoot down jurisdiction-specific terms of service on the grounds of discrimination. Some might…
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@acrow said in In other news today...:
A chair, a table, no phones,
no childrenscreaming babies...
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Russia wants to ban the use of secure protocols such as TLS 1.3, DoH, DoT, ESNI
Amendment to IT law would make it illegal to use encryption protocols that fully hide the traffic's destination.
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Click-bait is click-baity.
Moscow officials aren't looking to ban HTTPS and encrypted communications as a whole, as these are essential to modern-day financial transactions, communications, military, and critical infrastructure.
Instead, the government wants to ban the use of internet protocols that hide "the name (identifier) of a web page" [ed: I think they mean domain name] inside HTTPS traffic.
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@Zecc That's still HTTPS, unless they're talking of forbidding DNS Over HTTPS because they want to control DNS...
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@JBert
Yeah, they're banning DNS over HTTPS, DNS over TLS, and the TLS1.3/ESNI spec that allows for SNI to occur in an encrypted form.
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This happened last week but I just now noticed it:
https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/the-30th-first-annual-ig-nobel-prize-ceremony/
For an easier to read rundown of the winners:
Here are the winners of the 2020 Ig Nobel Prizes to make you laugh, then think
This year's ceremony was held virtually (thanks, coronavirus), but the fun remained.
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PHYSICS
Citation: "Ivan Maksymov and Andriy Pototsky, for determining, experimentally, what happens to the shape of a living earthworm when one vibrates the earthworm at high frequency."
...
The paper also includes this gem of an observation: "Large vibrations were also avoided because they additionally lead to ejection of a sticky fluid from the worm."
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@PJH said in In other news today...:
Meanwhile...
Even more mysterious
Richmond School teacher Dave Clark killed by cows
Dave Clark was an "enormous character" and "the heart and soul" of Richmond School.
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@DogsB Cows can be dangerous. They are big animals and if they decide they don't like you, your best way of staying alive is to be elsewhere. Failing that, up a sturdy tree.
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
they decide they don't like you
That's why you should always give them a good tip
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
@DogsB Cows can be dangerous. They are big animals and if they decide they don't like you, your best way of staying alive is to be elsewhere. Failing that, up a sturdy tree.
And adult bulls will totally destroy you.
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@DogsB said in In other news today...:
Even more mysterious
Richmond School teacher Dave Clark killed by cows
Dave Clark was an "enormous character" and "the heart and soul" of Richmond School.
TFA:
He was reportedly walking his dogs at the time.
That's a known risk factor around cows. Dogs can be dumb enough to bark at them and provoke them and a pissed off cow can pick up rather unexpected speed.
There are often cows grazing freely on alpine meadows and I've walked around them many times. They are used to people and normally let you walk up to them and even pet them, but I did see them start after a bit too brash dog. Definitely not the clumsy animals they look like.
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So long, gay bowser!
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Internet: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months
Every morning at 7am when the second hand TV was switched on, the village internet went down.
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If we realised the true cost of homelessness, we'd fix it overnight
Australia's six-month moratorium on evictions is due to end soon. Some states have extended the moratorium, but when it ends that's likely to force even more Australians into housing insecurity and outright ...
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@Dragoon
by @Zerosquare at... hmm... lemme find it... arrows.
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Well of course, I didn't check that thread, so clearly it must be there.
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It's Alive! 25-Ton Gundam Robot Moves for First Time in Yokohama
A 25-ton robot, inspired by the popular 1970s anime series Mobile Suit Gundam, has made its first moves in Yokohama, Japan.Footage tweeted on September 21 shows the giant Gundam robot moving its arms and legs before lunging into an impressive squat at Yamashita Pier.The robot is set to become the...
Men find very long fork on Bristol street
Internet pours one out for Super Mario 64’s ‘Gay Bowser,’ who is dead now
