Court says Uber can’t hold users to terms they probably didn’t read
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
This is a nice step in the right direction, and I hope this ruling applies even when users are forced to "read" a twenty page contract just to call a cab.
This is effectively “legal theatre” from the perspective of the user. Companies can and do hide whatever they want in lengthy legalese which can have no limit in size. There should be the equivalent of a plain English abstract which is customised for the use case and target audience.
What we have now is a small percentage people who actually read those terms and conditions and of those people a handful of them write about it and that’s how we learn about dodgy terms and conditions. It’s very haphazard.
There could even be a short bullet point summary that gives the information in short english and then a longer version that covers all the edge cases and defining common sense.
Does anyone believe that'd make any difference? Even if you showed the agreement and forced them to scroll down to activate the "I agree" button, I'm pretty sure nearly everyone that wouldn't click the links to read the agreements would also just scroll down and hit "I agree" without reading.
If the standard is "well nobody reads those things anyway", then a lot of mortgages and credit card agreements could be invalid. Frankly most propositions on the ballot should be invalid, as those aren't even linked in any way to the ballot where you vote. This December's bill in the US congress that was like 5,000 pages long and they only had 2 hours until the vote to read it, that should be invalid.
If there was a plausible alternative agreement they might have agreed to, then I could understand the ruling. But as a matter of law, this seems like a bad call.
Courts should prevent companies from banning AI assistants, that is where they could help.
Nonnegotiated contracts of adhesion with consumers can and should be limited in their scope, what clauses are permissible there and what are not.
I consider this evidence against Uber's case. For example, I recently set up a new smart TV and Google Home sound system for my parents. There had to have been 8 separate legal agreements, each very long, just to get to the point where we had a picture and sound came out the speakers. They are sense blobs of legalese, and most people assume they know what they say, but they don't.
It is ridiculous to ask people to either retain a personal lawyer or pursue their own education in law, just so they can understand and agree to the Terms and Conditions, EULA, and privacy agreements for all their apps.
Is it specifically Uber's fault the vast majority of users don't actually understand what they've agreed to? No. But it's reality, and we can't just ignore it.
It's awfully hard to get the TOS/EULA etc, before purchasing a product which essentially coerces the end user into agreeing under duress. I don't need to sign a eula to take a taxi or train, why should I expect the uber eula to be anything except:
-if I damage the car I pay for repairs
-i agree to pay for the trip
-i agree to follow the laws of the land
?
When I signed a mortgage contract, I had to separately initial every single page and the closing attorney summarized the contents of each section of the contract. That should be the experience they replicate if they want their TOS to be legally binding.
"You agree that you cannot sue Uber but must instead take any disputes through arbitration"
A bit of boilerplate describing the exact nature
of the arbitration, but nothing unrelated
to arbitration...
...
...
...
| Agree | | Disagree |
And really, what if you switched the marketing copy and the terms of service? The marketing says how the app works, the terms of service does too, why not pay to advertise the terms of service, and when you sign up, you get to read their beautiful marketing copy.
I disagree because I think it's important that the rule of law is intelligible to ordinary people. It doesn't just apply to Uber's TOS but almost everyone's. We've moved way past the point where someone can be expected to actually have an understanding of the legal ramifications of what they sign. Even if you were to read all of it, hardly anyone can even decipher what rights they actually have if they made it to a court given how counter-intuitive much of it is even to educated people.
>If the standard is "well nobody reads those things anyway", then a lot of mortgages and credit card agreements could be invalid.
I think that's actually a completely legitimate argument and it's why a lot of behaviour in the loan industry can be predatory and why arguments towards "rational consumers" hold little merit. The world has gotten so complex, it's left a lot of people behind.
I'm more worried that if people did understand, they wouldn't sign, but that would essentially opt them out of modern society, so there's a coercive element to tapping "agree."
That's all I want from life, to be left alone, far removed from all the vapid bullshit of "modern society". I want to stop worrying how the game show host in chief is killing my countrymen today. I want to stop doomscrolling the news without it hurting my ability to survive. I want to live an existence where my greatest worries are will my flock and crop perform this year, and will I be a good parent, spouse, and neighbor. Period. Full stop. This world is so needlessly cruel, dehumanizing, and, irrational that I want out. My dreams of escaping to a mundane life on the land is what gets me out of bed each day and then stops me from making worse choices than demeaning myself for money.
If we hold peoples hands and show them just how utterly fucked they are then maybe we can finally have cogent discussions on how to solve the deep systemic problems that lead to inane situations like this, without it taking generations.
It's well past the point of no return. Law failed as an institution.
Now when you want to buy something on an online store, every single store has its own terms.
Worse, they are being produced as such a rate no human can keep up.
Law failed.
What users are presented with aren't terms and services, it's oodles of legalese gibberish. The language is obtuse on purpose and not comprehensible unless you are a corporate lawyer yourself. To put it in programming terms: they have no accessibility and UX to speak of.
That is fine for contracts between corporations, as they are negotiated and vetted by both parties' legal teams, resulting in a document that represents a give and take. If nothing else, it ensures endless work for the people that consider this stuff interesting.
I don't believe regular consumers should be subjected to that nonsense, because there's an inherent imbalance in legal representation between the corporate "person" and the consumer's person, for one. That imbalance is in theory compensated for in consumer protection laws, which wouldn't need to be repeated in these T&Cs or EULAs.
These types of agreements should be condensed to short paragraphs or even bullet points detailing what special agreements you enter into when using the service. If nothing else, to make it easier to filter the text for sections where it expects you to waive basic protections - which is at least unenforceable as far as I understand.
We live in times where corporate compliance departments, the corporate lawyers they work with and corporate "rights" are taken way too seriously, with little to no regard for corporate responsibility or sociability. At the same time, there are a lot of talking heads claiming "the economy servers consumers' interests" and "the free market benefits all".
De facto, these agreements aren't meant to be a bi-lateral agreement protecting both parties to the contract's interests. They're more often than not exclusively meant to cover corporate asses. Is that really a net benefit to society as a whole?
> We also conclude that Uber's terms and conditions did not constitute a contract with the plaintiffs. The app's registration process did not provide users with reasonable notice of the terms and conditions and did not obtain a clear manifestation of assent to the terms, both of which could have been easily achieved. Indeed, a review of the case law reveals that Uber has no trouble providing such reasonable notice and requiring express affirmation from it sown drivers.Here,in remarkable contrast,both the notice and the assent are obscured in the registration process.As a result, Uber cannot enforce the terms and conditions against the plaintiffs, including the arbitration agreement at issue here.