Hacker News Reader

Comment by dingo_bat | Hacker News Reader

But the thing is, I didn't read or agree to the ToS at all. It was never presented to me and content was presented on my screen when I visited twiiter.com, or followed a link. I am not bound by terms I did not agree to.

At least that is my layman logic. But we live in a world where ~50 page long EULAs exist, so layman logic may not be applicable in this case.

View on HN

True. Consider also whether adding something like "Each request to this server constitutes agreement to a $50 fee which is selectively enforced at our discretion" would make a scraper liable when they didn't agree to the terms.

If the law truly agrees that acceptance of undisclosed terms is granted simply by virtue of access, it opens the door to rampant abuse.

Though, if you want to try the protecting yourself in a similar approach, add a header to every request in your browser that says "By responding to this request, you accept that I do NOT agree to your terms and you are willing to serve me anyway." At least in this case they would actually receive your terms with the request. I wish there was an RFC for this.

The way this works isn't that you do something against the TOS and then they try to sue you out of existence. The way it will work is that Twitter will notify you "Hey what you're doing is against our TOS". At which point you'll be aware and if you continue your actions you're now liable.

I'm guessing the word to pay attention to is "accessing". So I guess as long as you are accessing the site you are under ToS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com