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 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
Throw in some nonsense about admiralty flags and this would basically be some sovereign citizen bullshit.
@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 That will get tested in court in 3, 2, 1...