[matheusmoreira]

There is absolutely no point in reading any user agreements or terms of service. The following statements effectively summarize all such documents:

> you own nothing

> you have no rights

> you promise not to try and exercise any right you think you have

> you agree to binding arbitration with the firm we pay, just in case you ever get it in your silly little head that you do have rights

> you cannot do anything the company doesn't like

> the company can do anything it wants whether you like it or not

> the company is not responsible for anything ever

> the company makes absolutely no guarantees about anything

> the company owns everything

[kevin_thibedeau]

I have a local ISP that lets you opt out of binding arbitration provided you notify them within 30 days from the start of service. The only customers who would know that are the ones who read the terms.

[maccard]

I downvoted you because this is HN, not reddit. It's absolutely not true, and doubly so in the situation where you're dealing with b2b agreements. Most service agreements for enterprise agreements are negotiable, and certainly don't contain the above clauses.

[matheusmoreira]

> Most service agreements for enterprise agreements are negotiable, and certainly don't contain the above clauses.

If you're a corporation, you have leverage which you can use to negotiate. Normal people don't, they are offered a take it or leave it deal and it's pretty much always what I described above.

[Vespasian]

That is right.

For normal people the leverage comes mostly through market forces, consumer protection laws and regulations because then you are leveraging with your whole economy and sovereign power of your country.

Not as good as individual leverage but better than nothing by a million miles.

[matheusmoreira]

Yes. It turns out consumer protection and market regulation forces are already making corporations change those terms. For example, I'm not seeing "no refunds" in terms anymore, I'm seeing "no refunds except for cases defined by law". Why not outline those cases so that consumers can understand their rights? Because they obviously don't want to have to refund anyone and would rather consumers remain ignorant of their rights.

I still see most if not all of the clauses I mentioned though in pretty much every terms of service I ever cared to check. We write "buy" on the website but you're not really buying anything, you're licensing it and therefore you own nothing and we can even retroactively take away that license for any reason. Warranty? There is none, products and services are offered as-is and we're not responsible if it's buggy beyond belief or if it gets breached and your personal data get leaked. Thinking about going to court against us? Oh look, you waived all rights to do so individually or as class action, and there's even a huge arbitration section detailing exactly how much of an uphill battle it will be for you should you try to exercise any consumer rights. We don't like it when you tinker with stuff you're not supposed to, so we've prohibited reverse engineering, scraping and everything related no matter how benign. We can totally take any measures we deem necessary in order to ensure your compliance though, like invading your privacy, scanning your system and exfiltrating data like malware but it's not really malware because technically you agreed to it.

In any real justice system, judges would take one look at these abusive clauses and invalidate them on the spot without even giving the corporation chance for recourse. Things are already changing though. Europe is passing laws designed to correct these power imbalances. My country is following their lead.

[stuaxo]

Those market forces don't mean much when everyone offering a comparable service has those same conditions - there simply isn't a market for that part of the offering.