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 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 obligatory xkcd incoming. It's particuarly sad/disturbing that this was published almost 18 years ago... https://xkcd.com/501/
Time to pull out this classic. Gotta be really cautious going into the EULA Hotel
@elithebearded @lenotaire That's around the corner from the old EFF offices at 19th and Van Ness (and very close to my old place next to the Elbo Room) and I used to chuckle every time I walked by it.
@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 @zazzoo
Where?
Countries with more protection of corporations than regular people?
@pluralistic
Throw in some nonsense about admiralty flags and this would basically be some sovereign citizen bullshit.