An overeager ToS is a good way to scare people who are unwilling to risk a legal dispute. In practice a lot of the more preposterous clauses are nonsense.
An overeager ToS is a good way to scare people who are unwilling to risk a legal dispute. In practice a lot of the more preposterous clauses are nonsense.
In the US, courts enabling wealthy corporations to smash individual citizens into meat paste are working as intended. It is "justice for sale", albeit indirectly -- you don't pay the judge, you pay for enough lawyering to destroy the opponent, win or lose.
Also, consider that you and I are free to agree to anything we want, enforceable or not. All that enforceability tells you is whether a court will be willing to intervene. For example, we can agree that you will donate a million dollars to my foundation, but a court will likely not enforce that because I didn't give you anything in exchange (the doctrine of consideration).
Since my country is in the EU it pretty much means that in my country law agrees with practice of ignoring all ToS by deefault.
That said, under German consumer protection laws a ToS may also not contain anything that could be considered "surprising" (which is generally interpreted in favor of consumers) so most ToSes are fairly pointless as soon as they go beyond the basics.
What bothers me most is the price David has to pay to slay the ToS of the Goliath. It is prohibitive, to say the least. Thus, there is nothing to stop this trend of ridiculous ToSs.
Such violation of human rights should attract swift and exemplary punishment. Also, the small guy should not pay for this community service he is performing.
That's easy right here. Let's just tax corporations 1¢ per user per word in their ToS.