Canada accidentally helped crack computer translation

Re:Canada accidentally helped crack computer translation by yboris on Tuesday March 08, 2022 @12:18PM (#30602537)

I'm baffled that dense contracts with so much money on the line do not have better clarification of the terms. It would take one or two extra sentences to make intentions clear for both parties (e.g. "For example, if neither party notifies the other by the end of the 4th year that they do not intend to cancel the renewal, the contract will automatically renew for the subsequent 5 years").

I'm not a lawyer, but when I was helping write agreements for my dad with tenants he had - it seemed like a no-brainer to include "this means, if X does not happen by 11:59pm of Y date, Z will apply".

ps - I'm angry at any contract agreement where the date can be interpreted as "end of day, 11:59pm" or "the day, which starts at 0:01am"

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Re:Canada accidentally helped crack computer translation by xxpor on Tuesday March 08, 2022 @12:57PM (#30603175)

How many bugs in software result from forgetting to handle an edge case?

Not surprising the same thing can happen in contracts; they're both written by humans. And you can't unit test a contract! (ignoring smart contracts for now)

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Re:Canada accidentally helped crack computer translation by yboris on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @10:34AM (#30615571)

I took a philosophy course in my university focusing on law, covering contracts. The professor gave an example "a band wants to play at a venue, they make a contract; what happens if the venue burns down, who owes who money?"

There are definitely edge cases, but it doesn't feel too hard to specify a "catch all", and if the other party doesn't like it, they should clarify those terms too. Feels easy enough. Reminds me of "burden of proof tennis" - if the catch-all isn't satisfactory to you, carve out an exception the other party accepts.

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