Uber Can’t Force Arbitration Over Pricing Antitrust Claim

Re:Uber Can’t Force Arbitration Over Pricing Antitrust Claim by carbocation on Saturday July 30, 2016 @09:49AM (#12192947)

When I enter into a business contract, I have a lawyer review the documents before I sign them. When I download an app or signup for a web service, I don't–but the legal documents that I'm signing are no less complex in those cases. It's unreasonable to expect a serious understanding of these contracts on the part of the user, and it's unreasonable to expect them to hire a lawyer to be sure they're OK with what they're agreeing to. The costs, multiplied across all customers, would be prohibitive. For mass market services like this, there should be a better way.

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Re:Uber Can’t Force Arbitration Over Pricing Antitrust Claim by ceejayoz on Saturday July 30, 2016 @10:13AM (#12193048)

> For mass market services like this, there should be a better way.

I think we're starting to see it via cases like this. A convoluted, lengthy, requires-a-law-degree contract like Uber's may start to carry a risk (via judges treating it as malicious and unenforceable) versus a simpler, more fair and balanced one.

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Re:Uber Can’t Force Arbitration Over Pricing Antitrust Claim by rpgmaker on Saturday July 30, 2016 @03:40PM (#12194373)

> I think we're starting to see it via cases like this.

Not really. This is just one case where you happen to agree with a judge's decision, it hardly means that software companies are going to start including one-page EULA's into their software. For decades these huge EULAs have worked quite well for most companies and this case won't change that.

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Re:Uber Can’t Force Arbitration Over Pricing Antitrust Claim by logn on Saturday July 30, 2016 @02:24PM (#12194071)

I'd like to see a standardization of EULAs along the lines of Creative Commons licensing. They have a human readable version of their licensing, logos/icons for each, and you create one by answering a few basic questions.

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Re:Uber Can’t Force Arbitration Over Pricing Antitrust Claim by fragsworth on Saturday July 30, 2016 @04:19PM (#12194523)

I imagine this would end up in a situation where most companies ask for everything, just like the privacy / permissions requests we see when installing mobile apps.

It seems like it would be a lot better than what we currently have, though. At least there would be a market for companies that aren't shitty about it.

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Re:Uber Can’t Force Arbitration Over Pricing Antitrust Claim by Silhouette on Saturday July 30, 2016 @04:01PM (#12194453)

This is a laudable goal, but sadly not a realistic one. The potential search space is infinite, and unlike CC, you couldn't have "Use another licence if none of these works for you" as an option without undermining the entire system.

I'd definitely be in favour of standardising some basic assumptions that all suppliers and all customers of some common types of product or service could rely on unless they explicitly and prominently agreed otherwise, though. It doesn't take a 10 page legalese monster to buy a loaf of bread from my local store, but there are still rules to protect both the store and me in that transaction.

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