Re:Legalese – Computational Law
by bsedlm on Monday May 17, 2021 @06:44PM
(#27189303)
And you're missing the point that these things exist for humans
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Re:Legalese – Computational Law
by divyekapoor on Monday May 17, 2021 @06:57PM
(#27189399)
+1 Law is human-to-human agreement about a lot of vague soft stuff. Code APIs are computer-computer agreement.
Some exceptions to the above are: 1. Financial contracts (see ISDA derivatives). They're written with a big "human" document upfront and then there's a "notification addendum" attached to each use of that contract. 2. Master Sales Agreements (MSAs): The first MSA is a human-to-human agreement. Everything after that is order-forms. And negotiating the MSA requirements is very very human (risk, trust, effort, cost, benefit & promises). Order forms are pricing decisions that can be "automated" (especially around annual renewals if within budget without red flags).
Yeah, the more black-and-white domains tend to be financial and commercial – and in those domains, there have been some pretty cool illustrations: http://complaw.stanford.edu/complaw/readings/sla.pdf
As do all laws. You have a point about contracts though, assuming we admit contracts between non-moral parties to actually be a legally enforceable thing.
If your would-be law/contract/??? can't get both sides in front of a court, one ought to disregard its terms.