Re:The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse
by dredmorbius on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @08:52PM
(#12449364)
There was an attempt to come up with a UCC for services, within the US, though it failed to garner sufficient support: UCITA.
It's not clear to me how some breadth of interests couldn't be addressed. The usual T&C generally address limits on liability of the site's owners, occasionally try to impose binding arbitration or limits on class action suits (among my complaints against the so-called "Kinder, gentler Reddit", Imzy), jurisdiction, reverse-engineering clauses, etc.
Allowing users to specify licenses for submitted works would address much of your concerns. A standard set of merchandise clauses, including, say, escrow, liability, and chargeback terms, might be among the boilerplate additions to a standard contract which might be made.
But the point is to make the contracts themselves standard and modular. There might be a base services contract, a base merchant contract, and a base rights-for-sale contract, but not infinite variations on each. Also limits on what sites or users might carve out as grantable or transferable rights.
My point in noting that ordinary commerce is limited to a single sale transaction is just that: that these are simple transactions and hence the associated legal binding is also simple. Ongoing relationships are inherently more complex.
There are alternatives to advertising and subscriptions, including non-market constructs.
In the example I posed, the value of the drivers license as a hire surity is that the hirer is quitely likely to return for it. The disadvantage, today, is that the license has not only the attributes of "valuable to the owner", but "hive of data which can be used to draw additional relations".
Some years ago I discovered that the purchase of certain over-the-counter medications required, by store policy though not by local law, presentation of a drivers license. I held up my license for the clerk to visually examine. He tried to take it from my hand, which I refused. He wouldn't close the sale without scanning the card. I walked off without paying and without product.
I've been insisting on respecting my privacy rights for some time, and am not above forgoing business, taking my business elsewhere, or making others pointedly uncomfortable for asking questions I won't answer. Sadly, I am an exception.
It's not clear to me how some breadth of interests couldn't be addressed. The usual T&C generally address limits on liability of the site's owners, occasionally try to impose binding arbitration or limits on class action suits (among my complaints against the so-called "Kinder, gentler Reddit", Imzy), jurisdiction, reverse-engineering clauses, etc.
Allowing users to specify licenses for submitted works would address much of your concerns. A standard set of merchandise clauses, including, say, escrow, liability, and chargeback terms, might be among the boilerplate additions to a standard contract which might be made.
But the point is to make the contracts themselves standard and modular. There might be a base services contract, a base merchant contract, and a base rights-for-sale contract, but not infinite variations on each. Also limits on what sites or users might carve out as grantable or transferable rights.
My point in noting that ordinary commerce is limited to a single sale transaction is just that: that these are simple transactions and hence the associated legal binding is also simple. Ongoing relationships are inherently more complex.
There are alternatives to advertising and subscriptions, including non-market constructs.
In the example I posed, the value of the drivers license as a hire surity is that the hirer is quitely likely to return for it. The disadvantage, today, is that the license has not only the attributes of "valuable to the owner", but "hive of data which can be used to draw additional relations".
Some years ago I discovered that the purchase of certain over-the-counter medications required, by store policy though not by local law, presentation of a drivers license. I held up my license for the clerk to visually examine. He tried to take it from my hand, which I refused. He wouldn't close the sale without scanning the card. I walked off without paying and without product.
I've been insisting on respecting my privacy rights for some time, and am not above forgoing business, taking my business elsewhere, or making others pointedly uncomfortable for asking questions I won't answer. Sadly, I am an exception.