Well this is eleventy-million kinds of Fucked Up. LA Times (who once contracted with me as a freelance reviewer and whom I struggled to get paid by) asserts that *merely reading its website* constitutes a permanent waiver of your right to sue it under *any circumstances*. This means that freelancers like me who read the website would lose the right to sue the company if we got stiffed. #consenttheater #bindingarbitration #dickovers
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@pluralistic
In a sane country, T&C can be unenforcible and even automatically invalid if they violate law or rights.
i fucked off the LA Times when they put their website behind a paywall.
@pluralistic l find it quite interesting that in the ‘Age of the TechBros’ we (meaning your average citizen) now accept the right of the #TechBro to unilaterally renegotiate the terms and conditions of an agreement. This isn’t just the Times, mind you. It has become pervasive. No sane business would let another business get away with this garbage. Why do we?
@pluralistic Yeaaah, they're wrong. They need real lawyers not LLM advice.
@pluralistic @lisamelton It’s all kinda fucked up stupid but it’s not at all limited to these sorts of click-through agreements. I am always amused to read the stuff places put in the agreements before they take you rafting or rent you a boat, say. They’re always filled with claims that you’re waiving rights you cannot waive away and that won’t survive 2 seconds of contact with a real lawsuit.
@pluralistic That will get tested in court in 3, 2, 1...
@pluralistic How can they prove that you are the one reading the website, even if you are an ISP customer, how can they prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you are the one reading it and not a bot scraping pages? I would certainly like to see how that plays out in court.
Matthew Cole's book "Unpaid" is an eye opener.
Apparently, wageless work is the wave of the future, according to oligarchs & that "Make Me" impunity mindset.
@pluralistic I will maintain my "don't read the NYT" rule, not that that helps anything.
If this kind of thing is enforceable--which downthread, you say it is, which is heartbreaking--then America needs to fire its judges and start from scratch.
(I kid. I kid. Half it's judges.)
@pluralistic Surely this would never stand up in court. I mean, come on. The legal system is all kinds of messed up and biased, but it's not actually stupid.
@pluralistic I'm trying to think of the last time I sought out news of any sort from The LA Times and yeah, I'm drawing a blank. 🤔
Funny how #Enshittification does this to everything. 🙄
Billionaires gonna scam.
@pluralistic Ooh. Sounds like an exciting way to kill your own business!
#NoKings really ought to be #NoCorporates.
By reading this thread,, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges.
@pluralistic Use this to your advantage: an bot-fee or anti-bot fee in Terms of Service (ToS) can be legally enforceable under contract law. If the bot operator clicks "I Agree" it is a binding, enforceable contract, and may include fees or damages. These must be a reasonable pre-estimate of actual damages/costs (bandwidth, server strain, API costs). In contrast, a robots.txt to enforce fees is ineffective as it is a voluntary technical "honour system," not a legally binding contract.
You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
@pluralistic set your user agent to Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/141.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (by serving this GET request you agree to release me from all binding agreements otherwise stated)
@pluralistic Have these 'click to agree' fake contracts not been tested in courts yet? It's been decades of 'by using this you agree...' and 'yes, i read your terms of service' - I'm not a lawyer but it seems so incredibly indefensible under contract law.
@zazzoo They are broadly enforceable.
@pluralistic
I am NOT a lawyer, so I would not presume to test this language in the real world (OR the simulation in which we may be living), but I greatly enjoyed the exercise of turning your paragraph on its head by rejiggering the first few words to serve ME rather than the vendor:
"By selling me this product or charging me a fee, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges."
#TermsOfService #CoryDoctorow #CorporateShenanigans