The point is that writing the rules should to a large extent be taken out of these organization's hands, because they control vital infrastructure. The new, regulated rules will probably look pretty similar to the existing ToS except without the "the company is allowed to do whatever it wants" clauses, and with actual appeals processes.
it is in their interest to make the permissions in the TOS they grant themselves as broad as possible, since it's free to them (at least, they assume people don't care).
It's good that this is getting attention, because the change supposedly already have been put in since Feb 2024! It's only recently that the UI exposed it with the accept screen!
I say that the laws should be changed such that TOS cannot actually be changed from the time the contract was signed, unless a new commercial contract be signed for the new TOS.
Can you point me to where I said that TOS can not be criticised or where I said that private entities can apply any rules they want? No? Can you then explain how what you wrote applies to what I wrote?
In this world, service providers should create TOS that are as complicated as possible so that practically every company is violating them. The terms can then be applied "as needed".
Not true. If they had previously adopted my suggestion in the old ToS, that itself would either be a breach of that ToS (leading to liability for prohibitively large contractual damages) or would be an invalid change. I suggested that they explicitly remove their right to make this kind of change unilaterally. Terms of Service don't have to allow their authors an unfettered unilateral right of amendment.
Point 3 seems the most restrictive to the applicability of this ruling - it sounds like everyone's TOS is likely going to be updated with a clause prohibiting packet capture and scraping.
Can’t they be sued for breach of contract if they aren’t following their own tos? Having a rule like this gives them leeway to remove what they consider harmful.
Now, that is separate from the argument that because they didn't strictly enforce their ToS, that people now feel entitled to something and may drive some people away from the service.
But having the company update a TOS that automatically removes rights from the consumer, after the consumer already agreed to a TOS that didn't previously restrict those rights is likely not going to hold up in court, either. Especially when the TOS changes were made after an event likely to trigger litigation.
This isn't a case of a minor change to consumer rights in the TOS like changing who would arbitrate a case. It's a significant restrictive change to the rights of the customer in favor of the company. And it was made after a security breach that affected a huge portion of the companies clients which is likely to trigger lawsuits of the form that the TOS now seeks to restrict.
This is clearly a case of attempting to close the barn door after the horse was spotted in the next county over.
>>I'm not sure why you think this is a compelling argument. In the unlikely event that CL's TOS was found unenforceable, CL would simply adjust them to comply with the courts.
Such changes would not be enforceable retroactively, meaning they could not be used in the current lawsuit. CL would essentially need to file a brand new lawsuit, which is both costly and time-consuming.
It is the responsibility of someone in the company (not necessarily a lawyer) to think about how those legalistic terms would look before they were unleashed on the public. The company is now big enough to know better. The changes to the TOS that are promised in the blog post should have been made up front, not in response to a PR disaster.
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