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by amarkov 2986 days ago
Again, it'd definitely be possible to write a document more narrowly describing what they need a license to do. But that doesn't solve the problem. The updated version would be more readable for network engineers, less readable for lawyers, and still incomprehensible to the average person who just wants to upload a meme.
2 comments
Jasper_ 2986 days ago
"Hi. When you upload an image to imgur, we need the legal right to distribute it to other people. We also process your image to look right on different devices, which requires the legal right to modify your image. We promise not to distribute or modify your image beyond what we do here at imgur.com, and won't sell it to other people"

Seems easy enough to write.

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some_guy_there 2986 days ago
I agree with you. Though I do think that this is not an unsolvable problem with the right incentives. As I noted, the people at company X might be the best people at heart, but the current legal system does not encourages drafting of a contract that precisely (and easily) describes the terms being agreed between the two parties. This is not even a unique feature of contract law, the same to true to various extend for all branches of the law.

My gut feeling (of which I have no proof) is that the current legal system is costing more money to the society than is necessary. For one thing, it is decreasing the trust in the legal system, since people now (correctly) assume that in many facets of modern life, they are agreeing to things they don't understand, that they are giving up more rights than they should, and that there is no reasonable solution to this problem yet.

Some complication in the law is necessary since the world is a complex creature, but I think that the common person (say at least half of the population) should have reasonable understanding of the legal language. One way to approach it is to have a requirement for simpler contract, but I don't know if it is _the_ way to deal with this problem. I am not a lawyer after all. All I know is that something is broken, and if not fixed, will lead to more problem down the line. A system like this where no-one trusts nobody is clearly not sustainable. It's just not a good way to organize as a society.

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