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Posts Tagged ‘TOS’

IIW XIII: Sneaky Bastards

October 18th, 2011
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Renée Lloyd’s talk on how VRM disrupts and liberates legal practice. VRM challenges how legal practice is executed.  What if new businesses had to negotiate with her? What messages are people giving us? Agreement making in a human style: sharing thoughts, contextual, ceremonies and expressions vary. Contrast: agreement corporate style (hand cuffs, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” -Goethe)

Clickwrap “agreements” are what we call Contracts of Adhesion: no negotiations, take it or leave it. Should not be assumed that we always want a fast track. Look especially in employment contracts, very restrictive. Makes sense in certain contexts but should not be a universal solution. Even if you’re the 800 pound gorilla, you don’t always have to act like one. The processes are insidious, things start small but quickly spread into areas where it’s impossible to right any wrongs.

Lawyers use existing terms from contracts to create new, limit liability. Nothing new: no innovation is allowed (social media prohibited). Caveat emptor: problematic because consumers can’t “be aware.” FTC expects that markets create innovation, expected that it will help protect. But no plain english rules, effective regulation that’s reactive (because bad things happen) produces unworkable constraints and rules.  System is out of balance. “No number of legal victories, tech tools or whitepapers–however well-intended or important–are going to convince people to take ownership of agreement-making back from lawyers and companies.” It’s about people, not lawyers. We need to bring the balance back, help people to take ownership.

Time for a change of attitude! What do you do when the most economic solution is a data exploiter for the big companies? What if there was a trusted voice? For example, what if the Terms of Use on a site, instead of the pages you see now, told you this (video) [x] Cede your rights? No site has fair terms right now. Or what if you had a “sneaky bastards” prompt that took your selected text, marked it up, turned it into a visual games? (Sue for emotional distress: Amazon’s terms at 80 pages and Renée didn’t have it all, PLUS they can change those terms anytime. Outrageous.) Activities to bind parties, even if they don’t understand, includes individual initialing every page. New advice in legal community is to make it clearer that they knew. Relaxed formality standards.

 ThoseSneakyBastard.org – starter site with Renée’s rants, hall of shame, hall of fame, etc. Learning, doing, kicking butt, giving props, pure ferocious fun! Data on collaborative law shows less law suits in case where people/individuals are consulted about change. Innovation: minimum viable contracts, curate, track and assess new contract models, etc. Check the site for things to develop.

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Data Ownership

February 17th, 2009
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Several people have asked about Facebook’s recent changes to their Terms of Service. The controversy was sparked by a post in The Consumerist entitled We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever! That was followed by a comparison by Amanda French, and an analysis by Jacobson Attorneys. Of course, in the fray Facebook’s Zuckerberg also weighed in.

What people were asking about is why they should care. They have ALL of their friends on the service and it has become The Only Way to keep up with their network. So what if Facebook uses a picture; that helps the photographer or artist, doesn’t it? (It’s doubtful that Facebook would give the artists credit for their work because that might distract from the mission of its use.)

A moment from history might be appropriate. Back in 1954, George Orwell wrote a book called 1984. Wikipedia says about this book that “the novel has become famous for its portrayal of pervasive government surveillance and control, and government’s increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual.”

Of note: these days it’s more about the influential power of the 10,000 little brothers to do the same work, like death by a thousand paper cuts. The issue remains as one of self-determination.

For your entertainment, here is the BBC version of Orwell’s book.

Coaching moment: Remember when you were a young teen and wanted to do a lot of exciting things, but your parents wouldn’t let you? They claimed that you didn’t yet have wisdom to act appropriately and might do harm to yourself or others. You probably viewed that as a matter of self determination: you know what’s best for yourself. As you get older, you’re often treated in a similar (and occasionally condescending) way by the marketing and advertising industry: they know what’s best for us. Advertisers make or contract with online services (like Facebook) in order to attract you to their advertisements. The advertisers want nothing more than to sell you stuff–because isn’t that the bottom line of their business, to sell more stuff?

What are your options? Would you rather be part of a system in which you can declare your interests? Let’s say you love looking at new car ads, but don’t want to see truck commercials. Or let’s say you want to know what natural soaps or facial products are available these days. Wouldn’t it be nicer to see the ads for goods and services that are of interest? That would also be a benefit to the advertisers who want you to see things you’re interested in buying.

What do you think? I welcome your comments.

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On Connecting with Friends

December 5th, 2008
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Yesterday Google announced Friend Connect, and Facebook announced Facebook Connect. These are two different ways of opening the social network. John (The Real) McCrea has a great article on these two services. ReadWriteWeb also has a great article (thanks Alex K for this link).

With some mixed* feelings, I’m implementing Google’s Friend Connect on this blog. In the right column, you’ll see a box… Read more…

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