New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
"We've updated out Terms of Service"
"We've updated out Terms of Service. Please read them here [ link to ToS ]."
This is what I get from a lot of companies. But how should I know what has changed? Dropbox recently spent a blog post on trying to explain what they changed, but it didn't say what actually changed. How hard is it for a company to just post a diff of the changes? Be transparent about it?
Shouldn't there be laws that dictate that changes should be announced in advance and clearly indicate the changes before the ToS are actually changed?
How do you handle this, as a provider? How do you experience this, as a consumer? Is it just me that is annoyed by this?
Comments
We need scripts to automatically achieve and compare different versions of ToSs
A ToS falls under standard contract law.
It's really up to the parties involved regarding how much change is allowed, and what the procedures are in order to affect them. When you agreed to the initial ToS there most likely was a clause for it. Whether you as a consumer want more notice or didn't agree with the procedure is facilitated by you NOT AGREEing to the ToS.
Ugh, does everything need a special law to protect us from ourselves?
I can understand Dropbox's desire to spell it out in laymen's terms considering their consumer-oriented market. But hosting, which is heavy mix of B2B and B2C, I'd think you'd want customers who read the *** ToS and keep a hard copy of it themselves.
You know, that's not a bad idea. Although you could do it easy and drop a copy of it into git/github.
At first when I saw title before opened thread, thought for LEB guidelines. xD
Tell them to use git :P
Doesn't seem to hard:
http://www.phpclasses.org/package/8242-PHP-Compare-two-files-and-show-differences-in-Web-page.html
Just edit it so it has a nice look and you're done.
But then you have to have a copy of the old TOS. Who saves a copy of a TOS signing up for hosting?
Everyone should, it's in our ToS that keeping a copy of the ToS is up to the client; and (as industry standard) it may update at any time, with or without notice.
A ToS is a contract after all.
Not a single one of your customers has ever done this and you know it.
In the EU there are. Any company dealing with private customers has to show clearly what has changed (indicated by red color, or bold font or whatever), when this change is applicable (only in the future) and it has to give the customer a cancellation-possibility because of the change.
In the US maybe. In the EU ToS fall under a special civil-law scheme. You can't simply change them if you're dealing with private customers.
Nope. In the UK all that is required is to give at least 30 days (or longer depending on the contract) of a change to the ToS, they can but are not obliged to point out the changes. It;s up to the customer to be satisfied with the terms and even if the provider points out the changes they can't be held responsible for mis-representation unless a deliberate act.
In other words, you are responsible for reading the whole document and satisfying yourself it's acceptable.
@skagerrak are you talking about Unfair contract terms (Directive 93/13/EEC)? I can't find the red color/bold thing unless it's a specific implementation of Article 5.
As for US civil law, there are a few state-level ones. But mostly aimed at deceptive practices and nothing as blanket wide as the above.
I always think of TOS APU what ever you wanna call it away to express terms on both sides. I know there are some legal loop holes since cusomers cant say what they agree to or dont agree to and when TOS change. I beleive that you should always email your users telling them there is a change. Do the standered side by side what changed why it changed and so on. Also its good to force users to login again after the change and ask them to agree to the TOS again.
Guilty here.
However, changes are only cosmetic, to make it more clear what abuse is and what applications are considered abusive beforehand. We have a chapter forbidding abuse and illegal stuff, but you cannot point out all applications which are abusive by nature, therefore, we add to the list as we see the abuse increase. For example, you cannot mine without locking the core, even if you put it to 98%, especially not on OVZ, therefore we expressly mentioned mining as forbidden, as well as other abusive "grid computing", such as seti@home and the like.
Well if they would send you a copy of the old TOS and a copy of the new TOS then you could use something like Hex Workshop in Windows and compare the two.
Something like "hex workshop" and the above-mentioned PHP solution are completely unnecessary for comparing two textual documents (even textual documents containing some markup.)
A few seconds on Google's Homepage thinking up exactly what to search for led me to type in "Online DIFF" and found the following as the first result: Quick Diff ( http://www.quickdiff.com/ )
@HardCloud cool find, thx!
Is there a real need for this? If so I can knock up something quite quickly to achieve it. It would work something like this.
1) Maintains a list of providers ToS URL (Can be added to by users and verified)
2) Stores a copy of the ToS
3) Checks each ToS daily and compares for changes
4) Provides a user browsable archive of versions
5) Highlights changes between revisions
Or diff, assuming they just send me the text. I'll to give it a shot and ask them to send them both to me.
Well, I personally think it's useful. I also feel it's up to each company to do this, as a courtesy to their customers.
I think Tumblr changed their TOS some time ago, and when I logged in, I had to agree to the new one. But they had highlighted the changes and what's different now (if I'm remembering correctly).
The color and style was just an example given by me. Right now I have just access to German legislature. § 305 BGB obliges --concerning B2C-contracts-- the seller to provide the private buyer with the new terms and give him/her a special cancellation possibility. Additionally, the seller has to point out/make clear how the ToS have changed. The commentary says by using "emphasis in print" (a rough layman-translation by me).
However, this legislation is based on EU-law. The commentary I have on my desk, however, does not clarify on which specific EU-act this is based. As soon as I've more time I'll check that out.
I didn't have time to read through the whole ECJ judgements C-472/10 and C‑92/11, but maybe the reason is based therein.
Maybe the UK opted-out of that specific EU-act, as Denmark does quite often. I'll have a look as soon as I've more time to get my hands on the EU commentary and see what I can find.
This is why it is nice to have a "changelog" under your TOS document.
Edit: Please do not flame me, I do not have one.
That is a good one, might consider it for our new panel :-)
Lol i like all the "its in the tos" putting that you can change anything without any notication at all. Doest make it legal. As i agreed to the old Tos and you need me to agree to the new one first. Otherwose the old one is still valid.
Had this conflict with a provider who changed its tos and therrby making an ircd server that i'm running prohibited.. he didnt notify me of the change and expects me to look at the tos every day. No that simply not how it should work.. in short he suspended my service for breaking the tos. He got sued (wasnt a leb priced item and also depended more on it as there was some semi critical service on the server) Eu/NL law and he burnt his ass.
So in short, you as a provider should honor good customerd as they are paying for your lifelyhood.
Inform customers of changes, and tell them what has changed. No matter where you are located.
And in Eu you are obligated to offer customers a special way to discontinue the service at no cost and possible refund