Despite their importance, a majority of internet users just breeze through terms of service (TOS) agreements and click the accept button. For those that do read through them, the amount of legal jargon contained in them could be enough to make a non-lawyer's head spin. Unfortunately for us, accepting an application's TOS could mean giving up some rights we thought we had without even knowing.
Thanks to a new project called TOS;DR, whose name comes from the popular phrase TL;DR (too long;didn't read), the internet may finally become a little more clearer. The project hopes to empower users by giving them summaries of terms of service, highlighting potential issues and giving applications an overall rating from a scale of A to E.
Currently the worst rated app on the website, TwitPic, is rated with an E. TOS;DR states potential issues such as: "Deleted images are not really deleted", "You indemnify Twitpic from any claim related to your content" and "Twitpic takes credit for your content". This essentially means that TwitPic may take claim and credit for your uploaded photos at any point in time, without your permission or compensation. It could even mean selling a user's photos to the media without giving the photographer anything.
According to the TOS;DR project lead Hugo Roy, Wikipedia's short and concise summary of its TOS and its practice of soliciting feedback in regards to its terms should be the standard when it comes to TOS agreements. The TOS;DR project is still ongoing, but a number of widely used applications' TOS have already been summarized and rated. Head on over to tos-dr.info to see the ratings for yourself.
How thoroughly do you read TOS agreements before checking the accept box? Let us know in the comments below!
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ricdiculus Apple reserves the right to connect your mouth to somones anus, and your anus to someones mouth. "Why wont it read!?!"Reply -
samkl That is very useful. What if the added an option for people to leave their comments. This way others will judge about TOS by the comments others left. Did anyone ever read Apple's 58 page TOS?Reply
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How come Apple's ToS is 58 actual pages anyway? We know the device is perfectly capable of displaying something 58 pages long in a contiguous block of text, so why did Apple make it so that users have to click to get to the next page? It's like they deliberately don't want people to read it or something.Reply
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dalethepcman ToS and EULA are all garbage and do not hold up in a court of law. If a company like TwitPic were to use a picture of mine or of me without compensation, I would just go get the last 12 months of my work group copyrighted and sue the crap out of them for rights of publicity and invasion of privacy.Reply
That being said, its much better to know before hand that the company you are dealing with is shady, than to find out after they stole all your personal data and sold it. I wonder how facebook and sony rate... -
reprotected Tom's Hardware news in a nutshell: New post about a new product or device completely unrelated to Apple? "F*ck Apple, patent system is crap, Facebook needs to be shut down, America is corrupt" and some other unrelated topic discussing about something about anything else but about the topic.Reply -
Kami3k dalethepcmanToS and EULA are all garbage and do not hold up in a court of law. If a company like TwitPic were to use a picture of mine or of me without compensation, I would just go get the last 12 months of my work group copyrighted and sue the crap out of them for rights of publicity and invasion of privacy.That being said, its much better to know before hand that the company you are dealing with is shady, than to find out after they stole all your personal data and sold it. I wonder how facebook and sony rate...Reply
They only don't hold up in court if a part of it is illegal. Which is kinda obvious.
And LOL at suing for invasion of your privacy, the courts would laugh at that. -
freggo BelthesarHow come Apple's ToS is 58 actual pages anyway? We know the device is perfectly capable of displaying something 58 pages long in a contiguous block of text, so why did Apple make it so that users have to click to get to the next page? It's like they deliberately don't want people to read it or something.Reply
Kinda like some of the product reviews on THG; click...page...click...page...repeat 30 times :-)
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d_kuhn I think if these documents were actually readable (or had cliff notes like this tool) then we'd see a lot less sleazy language buried in the fine print. Way to go guys!Reply
Now I want an applet that detects TOS documents when they pop up and automatically analyzes them... I wouldn't even mind if it returned results to a database so others can see how good/evil the companies we're all doing business with are. -
To be fair a lot of the stuff in a TOS is just to cover their ass. For example Valve does offer refunds through their Steam service though it would have to be a fairly special circumstance and not "I dont like the game I just bought".Reply
For example I purchased Borderlands when the GOTY edition was on sale, but I wasn't paying attention and bought the non-GOTY instead. I opened a support ticket as soon as I realized what I did (hadn't even downloaded at that point), explained that I had meant to purchase the GOTY edition because it was only a few bucks more and if the difference could just be billed to my card. They said they couldn't bill the difference so instead they removed the game and issued a full refund so I could get the GOTY edition.
100% my fault, and they could've easily just said "too bad so sad deal with it" but instead they helped me out. This is why Valve is an awesome company, a retail store like BestBuy probably wouldn't have even let me exchange it.