- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- technology@beehaw.org
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These companies should be fined just for having the audacity to make people sign ridiculous end user agreements like this.
It’s like the olden times where illiterate people were asked to sign a contract that waived their rights and possessions while they were being told something else entirely.
That’s just modern day Russia whereby asylum seekers were sent to the Finnish border, not let in, then when turning back round were given documents to sign by Russia which they were told meant they would be allowed to stay, but actually meant they were being shipped off to Ukraine to fight.
O.O
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It’s like a potentially abusive spouse, asking their future spouse to waive all rights to seek legal recourse if they beat them in the future. This crap shouldn’t be legal.
Yes that will hold up in court, surely.
Everyone knows EULAs are legally binding.
Maybe I’ve missed the /s, but yes, they’re binding, as long as they’re not in contradiction with the laws.
Where I live, they’re almost always in contradiction with the laws.
They don’t meet the terms necessary for the definition of a legal agreement.
- They do not contain a signature.
- They don’t explicitly identify you as an individual (again they can’t because no signature)
- They are not open to arbitration
- They also don’t bind the company to any legal requirements. A contract is between two, or more people. EULAs just define what you’re not allowed to do. They put no restrictions on the company at all.
They exist to scare people and nothing more they’re worth not as much as the paper they never written on.
They’re also often signed by minors who cannot be legally bound to a contract
None of these are (speaking generally) legal requirements of an agreement in the US.
Source: Am lawyer who writes EULAs for a living.
There are plenty of good arguments for why a particular EULA might be legally problematic, but “no signature, no contract!” isn’t one.
Yup, my understanding of contract law is that there must be a mutual agreement accompanied by a exchange of any thing of value.
I would argue that since you typically pay for and receive the software before being asked to agree to the EULA, there is no exchange accompanying the agreement and thus it is not a contract.
I have also heard of laws that explicitly limit what EULAs can accomplish because it’s common knowledge that nobody reads them.
The minimum requirement for something to be a legal contract is a signature. You can’t just write something on a piece of paper and say “oh this is legally enforceable, no I don’t have any evidence, go away”.
And you’d have an extraordinarily hard time proving that someone clicked “I agree”. Just because companies are prepared to pay to have EULAs written doesn’t mean they’re actually legally enforceable.
Nope. You’re still wrong, but it’s not worth the trouble. I hope you never have to learn the hard way. Take it easy.
It would depend on the jurisdiction obviously, but I believe most of those points are irrelevant.
- An arbitration clause is just a preference, it doesn’t mean you can’t resolve a disagreement in some way.
- Just because a contract typically binds both people to some requirements doesn’t mean it always has to be that way. An agreement can be one-sided. In the case of EULAs though, there is the requirement on the company to provide you with the software and allow you to use it for as long as the EULA is in effect.
- I doubt an agreement has to identify both individuals in the actual text. The key aspect is whether both parties agree to the terms and whether it can be shown that the individuals agreed to them after the fact.
As far as signing goes, I know that in my country (Sweden) a verbal agreement is legally just as good as a written signature - it’s just harder to prove in court. Contract law typically recognizes the ability to agree electronically, and in EULAs the agreement is made by using the software. Again, YMMV by country. My original claim that they’re typically illegal was about the actual terms of the agreement, which often conflict with written law. For example in the EU you have a right to reverse engineer products for the sake of interoperability, and no EULA can override that right.
In Sweden there’s also a law to allow you to make personal backups of media and software, and you’re permitted to give copies to your friends and family. In fact, there’s a state-regulated “private copying levy” designed to compensate content owners for their monetary loss caused by this copying. Which really infuriates me considering the lengths they go to to prevent me from doing the copying that I’m paying them for the right to do.
There’s no consideration. So yeah, not a contract.
They are usually defining the specifics of whatever contract the company offers to their users, be it the sales or whatever services the company is providing. I don’t know which legal system you’re living under, but such additional clauses added to the base contract can very much be explicitly or implicitly agreed upon.
Edit: Of course this particular rendition of “We’re allowed to break the law - no take-backsies” won’t stand anywhere consumers have like any rights at all.
Wait… the Chinese Intelligence-collecting app might not be trustworthy?
Oh, how my world crumbles around me!
This should be a glaring warning for anyone. The translation for this statement is only ever "WE ARE DOING OR PLAN TO DO SHADY, LIKELY ILLEGAL THINGS WITH YOUR INFORMATION! #plsdontsuekthx“
So these things keep appearing in contracts but everyone seems to say they’re totally unenforceable so… Why do they keep appearing in contracts?
If it’s not illegal to add, the only risk is bad press coverage, and it might prevent someone from suing in the first place because they don’t know their rights.
Except in several states if any of the contract is invalid it all is.
In the United States where TikTok is based, contracts can include “severability clauses” that state that in the event any part of the contract is deemed unenforceable, the other parts are still good
Uhhh tiktok is based in China
it’s owned by a Chinese company, but TikTok itself is based in the US
Wasn’t there a big hoohar about that a couple of years ago which meant they had to move?
Corporate:‘I’m sorry you were looking for an issue with tik tok. the problem is. tik tok is not the issue.’
due to dividends untold tik tok just money guns politicians in the cooter till they spazzin…
What
That’s not a common thing in American contracts. Severability clauses take care of that.
Is that true? I can’t find any source for it, except very specific cases where the language and contents of the contract matter.
IANAL; However Usually the contracts have a severability clause, meaning even if some parts of that contract are null and void the rest of it stands minus the parts that are illegal. Does that mean those clauses are also null and void depending on locality? Again IANAL, but I believe it’s pretty settled contract law at least in the US.
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It’s a pretty common clause in most contracts, so I’m not sure why you’re so confident that they aren’t used in EULAs
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We need legislation to fix this. Something like “should a contract drafted by a lawyer include clauses that they knew or should have known to be unenforceable or void, the entire contract shall be unenforceable by the drafting party”
Because sooner or later, some judge will decide it is enforceable.
Plus it serves as a deterrent for some from even filing a suit with the risk of it getting thrown out and them out thousands of dollars in legal fees.
to cover their asses. It’s like seizure warnings on video games. it should go without saying but. sadly…it has to be said. if a case does arise, judges usually create a ‘quasi’ contract that’s usually modified to be fairer for both parties…usually…😬
I’m guessing this might be a pre-emptive response to all the Snapchat lawsuits. Basically, parents are suing Snapchat because their kids talked to drug dealers using it.
Because enough people will read it without consulting a lawyer and never do so that pays for itself before the inks dry.
Oh good. Tiktok destroyed its own contract validity with that one. This means it’s vulnerable.
Are those user agreements even legally binding in most countries? They aren’t in my country since you aren’t signing them, pressing agree doesn’t count.
As far as I know it’s not legally binding pretty much anywhere. They’re not legal contracts because they don’t fulfill the requirements of one.
They are not a contract by themselves but they can absolutely be used to specify the details of the main contract the customer is about to enter, for example by buying something in an online shop, etc. and that contract is then in its entirety binding (assuming no laws are broken etc).
A contract can even be entered by nodding - if your baker and you know that you come for one loaf of bread every day and both you and they nod when you enter the store, that can be a legal agreement. Pressing agree to agree to the additional clauses of the base contract offered by the company can be as binding as pressing the button to buy stuff from amazon, which is to say potentially very much binding, unless any laws are broken.
However, if Amazon included in their standard legalese a paragraph saying that they own my firstborn child that’d be considered null and void over here even if I click “agree”, pay the purchase price for my order and everything, for the simple reason that it’s not a thing you generally find in contracts about the sale of a bottle of fish sauce and a pair of hiking socks, and courts long since realised that noone actually reads fineprint. What they can and do put in the fineprint are things such as payment and shipment procedure details, that (in the case of buying on credit) the delivered items remain their property until paid, such stuff. Also on top of that the newborn child thing is against good mores which is another reason why it’s null and void.
And Germany is a funny case when it comes to contracts, anyway. Say there’s a shop advertising bubble gum for a euro a pack. That’s a binding contract: Unless there’s an obvious mistake (period in the wrong place or something like that), if I am an upstanding member of the general public and want to buy their bubble gum and they don’t want to sell it I could go to court and force them to. Then, upon entering I take a pack of gum off the shelf and put it on the counter. That now spawns a sales contract, which spawns two other contracts: One obligating me, the buyer, to transfer property of money to the seller, and another obligating the seller to transfer property of the bubble gum to me. However, as I put an Euro right next to the bubble gum and unlike e.g. houses bubble gum packets don’t come with registered ownership titles the two sub-contracts are fulfilled on the spot, which fulfils the sales contract, and nobody cares, except jurists and people making fun of jurists.
Non-verbal contracts very much are enforcable over here, the key factor is konkludentes Verhalten: Conduct implying intent. Long story short if you show up for work and the boss gives you tasks to do and you fulfil them you have an employment contract even though nobody signed anything.
Depends on your local laws. Verbal contracts exist here but they are unenforcable without a 3th party witness and even then very limited and only used for the simplest and most immediate exchanges. Buying and selling is kind of a contract but only handled in courts if it’s between individuals, if a company is involved then it’s the consumer protection laws and agency that handles that. Most obligations and privileges from buying and selling are handled by local law instead of a contract. But contracts on the Internet are only legally binding if you digitally sign it here, an agree button or even a normal signature isn’t binding here for that. Our government IDs allow for online signatures with cryptographic keys unique to each person, that’s the only legally binding online signature here.
A TOS can only be used to enforce your behaviour on that platform, anything beyond that is not enforceable here.
How the fuck is this even legal? How can a company put itself above or beyond all legal scrutiny.
It’s probably not legal, but do you have the financial means to take on a large company like Tiktok in a protracted legal battle?
i’ll need that NDA signed before i can comment on your video
There’s no way that’s enforceable
I’m sure they have absolutely nothing to be afraid of. They’re just defending themselves. /s
This is the best summary I could come up with:
According to The New York Times, changes that TikTok “quietly” made to its terms suggest that the popular app has spent the back half of 2023 preparing for a wave of legal battles.
Perhaps most significantly, TikTok also added a section to its terms that mandates that all legal complaints be filed within one year of any alleged harm caused by using the app.
Then, in 2022, TikTok defeated a Pennsylvania lawsuit alleging that the app was liable for a child’s death because its algorithm promoted a deadly “Blackout Challenge.”
The same year, a bipartisan coalition of 44 state attorneys general announced an investigation to determine whether TikTok violated consumer laws by allegedly putting young users at risk.
As new information becomes available to consumers through investigations and lawsuits, there are concerns that users may become aware of harms that occurred before TikTok’s one-year window to file complaints and have no path to seek remedies.
One lawyer representing more than 1,000 guardians and minors claiming TikTok-related harms, Kyle Roche, told the Times that he is challenging TikTok’s updated terms.
The original article contains 748 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
