Slack's New Arbitration Policy

Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by anonbanker on Monday November 24, 2014 @02:53PM (#8654380)

What's the problem? Send these guys a private offer to arbitrate, according to your terms. Put your concerns on an affidavit concluded with your offer, and give them an opportunity to respond within 10-15 days. If they go silent (they will), send a notice of default next, and then file your lawsuit in civil court. You will have satisfied the private arbitration clause (arbitration went nowhere), and with your options exhausted, you now must file in court.

Source: I'm an ex aequo et bono arbitrator.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by tinco on Monday November 24, 2014 @03:37PM (#8654605)

The problem is that they have suspended their service until we agree to their terms. Their service enables much of our company communication, so basically they've maimed our internal communication until our lawyer has had a chance to review these new terms, which could take any amount of time.

You as a jurist might look at this and go "meh, it's fine", but if you're the CEO of a small company this sort of thing really fucks with you.

their CEO gave his ideas on this situation:

https://twitter.com/stewart/status/537007282811195392?t=1&cn...

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by anonbanker on Monday November 24, 2014 @03:43PM (#8654629)

Then agree under duress. You have 72 hours to modify any contract you enter (which becomes 10 days by snail mail), so agree quickly with your adversary, so as to get out of his way. Once you have access to your account, immediately begin arbitration whilst looking for another safe place.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by Kesseki on Monday November 24, 2014 @06:18PM (#8655291)

That only applies to certain types of contracts and/or in certain states. Please don't dispense legal advice when you're not qualified, you're not certain, or your advice is about specific facts and could be misconstrued as more general. You could lead people into making expensive mistakes.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by anonbanker on Tuesday November 25, 2014 @02:41PM (#8659307)

The onus on you is to provide evidence that I am unqualified to provide legal advice now. You didn't disprove anything I said, merely asterisk'ed it, as if that somehow made it irrelevant.

I'm curious as to what types of contracts it doesn't apply to, and what states it doesn't apply in. As you mentioned they exist, perhaps you can let me know which contracts and which states you were talking about?

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by mark212 on Monday November 24, 2014 @06:08PM (#8655240)

don't know what you're smoking, but this is not the law in California -- which is what Slack chose (unilaterally) as the governing law of this document.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by anonbanker on Tuesday November 25, 2014 @02:34PM (#8659269)

  > don't know what you're smoking,

Silver Skunk, actually. :)

As to the law in California, which Slack chose, I'll just take from page 12 of Contracts: Examples And Explanations (Fourth Edition), a book I got in first-year:

"It would be remiss not to at least draw to your attention that courts do not mechanically apply rules of law. Judges and juries are sensitive to the equities of individual cases and the circumstance of the parties, and where a mechanical application of rules achieves a result that seems to be unjust, there is likely to be some adjustment or even manipulation of the rule to avoid it."

So, with the above in mind, let's say that, while they really want the governing law to be based in California, if one party decides to keep this contract squarely governed within Article 33 of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law's Arbitration Rules (after all, isn't California law in harmony with international law?), then the court would necessarily understand why filing in California, or even only recognizing the limited rights that exist in California law, might not be prudent in all circumstances.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by kordless on Monday November 24, 2014 @06:13PM (#8655261)

I believe that's a federal rule governed by the FTC, not the state.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by mark212 on Monday November 24, 2014 @06:28PM (#8655344)

the FTC does not have plenary power over all contracts. There are certain "cooling off" periods for specific purchases (cell phone service and automobiles come to mind) but as a general rule? No way. And really really no way in this context.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by anonbanker on Tuesday November 25, 2014 @02:48PM (#8659335)

The funniest part about the downvotes, is that a bunch of people uneducated in law decided to make a judgement based on something they are in fact ignorant of. They merely liked the replies better.

I wish I could send this thread to dang, as an example of the hivemind that HN metamoderation needs to address.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by function_seven on Monday November 24, 2014 @03:19PM (#8654512)

I may be a bit dense, but your comment doesn't seem to relate to the article I just read. Is this the wrong thread or am I missing something?

EDIT: I have to be missing something. Half the comments here talk about arbitration, but that word doesn't appear once in the blog post. Was it edited?

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by mbreese on Monday November 24, 2014 @03:31PM (#8654576)

You're not missing anything. Two posts were merged. This is the Privacy policy blog post by Slack. There was another blog post (third-party) that talked about changes in their TOS to include arbitration.

https://konklone.com/post/slack-is-now-forcing-users-into-ar...

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by thetrumanshow on Monday November 24, 2014 @03:26PM (#8654557)

Yes. If you Google "slack ycombinator", you'll see the original title in the results (as of 12:26 PST). Edit: also, as another commenter said, it was merged.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by slig on Monday November 24, 2014 @03:26PM (#8654551)

Looks like another thread was merged here.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by etjossem on Monday November 24, 2014 @03:22PM (#8654530)

The changes to the Terms of Service (linked from the blog post) include a new binding arbitration clause.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by mark212 on Monday November 24, 2014 @06:11PM (#8655249)

First, this isn't "exhaustion" of remedies. Second, there is no recourse to court in the event of a default. The TOS (did you read them before offering legal advice?) requires a claimant to first try informal resolution then open a claim with JAMS. There is no ability to go to court, unless it's small claims court (under $7,500 in California).

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by amalcon on Monday November 24, 2014 @09:19PM (#8655974)

Well, you could try to dispute the arbitration clause in court. That would almost definitely be unproductive, but you could go to court.

I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, don't take legal advice from unknown Internet people, and all that.

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Re:Slack's New Arbitration Policy by lanstein on Monday November 24, 2014 @02:59PM (#8654415)

To say nothing of the fact that large companies are not agreeing to these terms, they will have custom MSAs which dictate jurisdiction, etc.

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