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 Firefox there is an Addon called uBlacklist. It allows you to delete a website from appearing in your search results.
LA Times just got added to my list. Not that I was reading them before that.
@pluralistic does this even hold up in court?
@pluralistic There are some controversial things going on in the EU, and the GDPR mess isn't exactly a walk in the park either, but a pop-up like that can't stop anyone here from suing the company into the ground.
I top no one can tell me how to consume content on websites, so I either use uBlock or an ASCII browser, and ta-daaa—no pop-ups, completely legal.
(I'm no lawyer!)
All more reason to read LA Times through sites like archive.ph ...
@pluralistic That LA times "read this article and you are bound to our terms of service" thing violates an informal, but important aspect:
This is *not* a clearly accepted-by-you license. This is kind of a half-way station on the way between the LA times not saying anything (but asserting you are bound to the license) and a full click through license (which is a much stronger argument that you actually mentally understood and agreed.)
A click-through license has the "accept" trigger next to the actual license text - that's why a lot of 'em put the button at the end and you have to scroll through the whole thing.
Eric Goldman at Univ Santa Clara has articulated this stuff far better than I could.
@pluralistic have an agent read it for you:-) But I will raise your, twelvety-million ways this is f'd.
@pluralistic Now , that’s some kind of magnificent self serving Trumpish kind of logic… 🤔
@pluralistic Someone seriously needs to challenge that in court, otherwise drawing breath on this planet will be acceptance of some corporate POS TOS.
@pluralistic Perhaps this can be circumvented by a JS blocker...
Later, in court: "Uh, I didn't read it. My AI agent did. You didn't mention agents in your waiver notice."
@pluralistic Have any lawyers outside the LA Time provided a take on this?
Oh For Fuck Sake! Yet Even More Enshittification...
@pluralistic Should we call it RPDG? Seems fitting.
@pluralistic This uBlock Origin filter (provided one understands enough to enable trusted user-defined filters without exposing oneself to risk from copy/pasting a malicious filter) skips the check without necessitating setting the c_tos cookie to 1:
latimes.com##+js(trusted-set, window.ctUser, { "loggedIn": true, "ready": true, "subStatus": "1" })
#adblocking #uBlockOrigin #gotchaClause #adhesionContract #onerousTerms
@pluralistic It is really nice to live in a country that have established laws that not only prohibits companies from inventing their own laws, but also makes it unnecessary to sue to get ones rights.