Fuck that with a chainsaw. Burn it. Burn it with fire.
I'm thankful, but also genuinely curious, why they put this explicitly in their TOS.
It just kind of seems to be like the kind of person/org who would implement this shady stuff in the first place, would also actively hide that they're doing it.
Is there a legal reason that protects NightOwl by explicitly putting it in the TOS? E.g. does this prevent them from being sued for any of it, where they could have been successfully sued otherwise? Like it's technically do to all this shady stuff but only as long as it's in your TOS?
You really don't want the government interfering with the implementation details and business models of software products. That's a really bad road to go down.
The problem is really a lack of inspiration for both the dev and user. In this case someone made a trivial tool and didn't know how else to monetize it than being a scumbag and exploiting social norms and good will. The user also decided to use something that's dumb and not worth risking making any agreement with any entity at all.
Situations like this are where free software excels. Things that are inconsequential in premise should stay that way in practice.
If they didn't disclose "this shady stuff" then the user can try to resolve their dispute via remedies stipulated elsewhere.
Really there are several ways they could have gone about writing this agreement. This is probably the simplest for everyone. This is also how the bigger orgs write their agreements. They state their intent and you have to agree or fuck off.
The badly written agreements (what you were expecting) are less honest and try to explicitly have the user waive some rights entirely including any remedies in or out of court, but those can usually be deemed unenforceable because they violate established rights and precedent rulings.
Sadly this isn't the case anymore. The layperson is distrustful by default and can only rely on the more astute to blow a whistle. Even a judge would just say to not install apps that aren't critical to your everyday life and be done with it. Nobody has the time to swat at flies.
This sounds like it was written from an alternate reality. It doesn’t match my experience at all
The guy's in the US, not China or Cyprus, so there's actually a chance he could get in trouble.
"I bought the Superman Halloween costume and on the side of the box it said 'do not attempt to fly'.
I always wondered about the kid who was:
- dumb enough to think they could fly
BUT
- thought to themselves 'wait, let me check the box first. Oh! Good thing I checked!'
The TOS sounds a little bit like the "do not attempt to fly" warning.
As I understand it, anyone can sue anyone for anything. What matters is convincing a judge/jury that you have been wrongfully harmed by the defendant. So if someone can make a good enough case for damages stemming from this data collection, then they can successfully sue.
This doesn't prevent them from suing, but it makes their case significantly weaker if the defendant can argue that the user agreed to have their data collected.
Look at the amount of Start Menu modifiers there are out there for Windows. All because Microsoft keeps on changing the start menu. Why? I don't know. I just want to get rid of the Recommended section, but I'm not allowed to.
For now “Suggested” is turned off and I disabled all notifications for good measure, but I don’t know how much longer Windows will allow that. I don’t intend to find out.
it's not a violation of your freedoms and privacy, it's an opportunity!
/s