My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveillants

Re:My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveill... by ska on Thursday December 03, 2020 @12:31PM (#25291643)

severability is actually a really important and broad legal concept (IANAL). I can where you get to [the view you espouse above] but if you think a bit about it you'll realize that contract law would become pretty unworkable without it. If every clause and statement has to be perfect or the whole thing evaporates, it would be hard to get anything done. And even if it were ok today, legislative changes tomorrow could inadvertently nuke a bunch of contracts.

This is separable from the abusive nature of ToS of course.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveill... by CamJN on Friday December 04, 2020 @03:18PM (#25307242)

> legislative changes tomorrow could inadvertently nuke a bunch of contracts

That sounds like a good thing? Why should abusive illegal contracts be allowed to continue after the law has found them to be unacceptable?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveill... by ska on Friday December 04, 2020 @05:00PM (#25308743)

I think you missed "inadvertently".

It's one thing if the legislation is specifically targeting those contracts, quite another if the unintended consequence is much broader than you intend. It's easy enough to imagine legislators unintentionally invalidating basically all of a states employment contracts this way, for example.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:My Phone Was Spying on Me, So I Tracked Down the Surveill... by bigwavedave on Thursday December 03, 2020 @07:01PM (#25297245)

This is a fair point; it makes good sense and I'm glad you delineated ToS abuse and the spirit of the law!

[ Parent | on HN ]