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Comment by objclxt | Hacker News Reader

> You can't give up your civil rights with single click.

Of course you can. Contracts can and do override a right enshrined in law. I can sign an agreement that gags me from talking about something, in which case I've given up my right to free speech (if you're in a country where such a right exists).

You seem to be referring to the EU's Data Protection and privacy policies - there are explicit exemptions under the EU/US Safe Habor (which applies here) that allow contractual opt-out from certain rights. I am not saying this is the case with Facebook: merely that it is naive to assume just because a right is enshrined in law doesn't mean you cannot give it up through a contract.

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EULAs are "contracts of adhesion":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_form_contract#Contract...

While they are not worthless, they are not nearly as binding or enforceable as your normal commercial contract. Standards vary and the jurisprudence is not clear, but indeed you "can't give up your civil rights with single click."

No, the fact that it is a contract of adhesion only goes to show that there was procedural unconscionability, you still need to prove that there is substantive unconscionability in order to show that the contract is unfair and therefore unenforceable. So yes, you can "give up your civil rights with single click." (At least as far as American law is concerned)

vavb: you appear to be hellbanned

I am from the US, and that is certainly not the case here. Contracts of adhesion are relatively weak here.

Let's have a bit of common sense here. 'Contracts override rights in law' is as wrong as 'Rights in law override contracts' (note that I'm not saying your comment said or implied that). Clearly, there are some regulations that you can contract out of. Equally clearly, there are some regulations that you can't. It's usually pretty clear which category any particular provision is in.

Example from the first category: "Unless a different intention appears from the terms of the contract, stipulations as to time of payment are not of the essence of a contract of sale" - s.10(1) SOGA1979.

Example from the second category: "A person cannot by reference to any contract term ... exclude or restrict his liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence." - s.2(1) UCTA1979

A common pattern is to allow you to contract out of a provision in general, but not when you're dealing with a consumer, e.g. "In a case where the buyer deals as consumer ... subsections (1) to (3) above [which lay out default rules for the passing of risk, but can usually be overridden in the contract] must be ignored and the goods remain at the seller’s risk until they are delivered to the consumer" - SOGA1979 s.20(4). See also: the UTCCR1999, which applies only to consumer contracts and can't be contracted out of.

All examples from UK law. IANYAL.

For those of us who are not yet even studying law, SOGA1979 is the Sales of Goods Act 1979 and UCTA1979 is the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1979. There are also several ammendments that have been made to them more recently (if anyone else had heard of Sale of Goods Act 1995).

In most cases free speech is referring to the government attempting to restrict your speech, not a private entity.

But even then, if you sign a NDA (of which US federal employees often do) then you are not giving up your rights to free speech. You are promising to withhold information about a certain topic if someone not authorized to know such information asks. You can certainly exercise your right to free speech and tell that person what you know, but then you may face consequences for doing so.

> You can certainly exercise your right to free speech and tell that person what you know, but then you may face consequences for doing so.

I know what you meant, but the above statement is almost always true. An example of an abridgment of free speech would be: You say you hate the King, then you're put in jail. It's not free speech if there are consequences: the 1st amendment does not mean, "the government must refrain from cutting your tongues out," nor does it mean "you cannot willingly sign an agreement to withhold information with a private party", but it does mean "the government doesn't get to punish you for saying things it dislikes."

I suppose I did word that rather badly.

I would rather say that you can say whatever you wish, but you may face consequences based on what you said and the topic covered. I'm just trying to get across that too many people use "free speech", in US terms, incorrectly.

The government punishes people all the time for speech it "dislikes". Many people are in prison right now for that reason, usually because it involved people signing NDAs. Seems you have free speech in terms of unpopular speech aimed at the government as long as you didn't promise not to speak in the first place. Well, also as long as you don't say something the government doesn't want public; you know, national security and all that.

I would say that there are possible consequences to the concept that people label as "free speech", it's just that not all of them involve the government. Many people say things like "this forum mod deletes my posts, that violates my free speech" which in fact it does no such thing. You can criticize the government all you want but private entities can react to that as they please.

In other words, "free speech" is a very tricky thing.

Unless if the courts find the contract non binding.

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