[Sophira]

> Yeah, we include it in our terms and condition and privacy page

Please be honest with yourself. People don't read terms and conditions. There's a good chance you don't read terms and conditions. And even if you do, odds are better than even that you don't fully understand all the legal implications.

Terms and conditions pages nowadays are there mostly to provide legal protection under the guise of "the user told us that they read these by ticking a box on our signup page; it's hardly our fault if they didn't."

[dheera]

I'm also of the opinion that at lot of T&C are basically signing under duress and I consider them invalid. Like if I have to sign a T&C with Google Play and a T&C with your city's sanctioned parking app in order to park on the street, I consider both of those T&C's invalid. As a legal resident of the country with a legally owned car and legal driving license, I should be able to park and pay, I shouldn't have to agree to anything else.

[somewhatgoated]

By reading this website, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

[taneq]

Especially clickthrough license for software on devices that you've already bought. You turn on your new phone and it shows 300 pages of legalese. You cannot use your new phone until you press 'I accept.' If you don't like it, return the phone. All the other phones have their own equivalent T&C.

[komali2]

Your city doesn't have a way to pay for parking with cash on public roads? It's not a private lot? That should simply be illegal.

[dheera]

As an example, most of Boston's public street parking meters use a collection of various parking apps. A large number have broken quarter slots and broken card readers but you're still expected to make payment via app or you can get towed.

This is also why I wish we could make anti-towing (anti-car-theft) devices that physically resist and fight the tow people to make their lives uncomfortable and miserable, because predatory jobs like that should just not exist. But any time I suggest this, 5000 people come out of the woods and say "pay your bill" and "don't park where you're not supposed to" whereas my point is really "you shouldn't have to accept a T&C in order to pay for parking" and "you should still have a right to park even if the cash/card reader is broken".

[j2j8]

Cash for parking on streets has gone in many parts of Australia

[bruce511]

Look, I understand the hate against terms and conditions. They're not a lot of fun. But the alternative is worse. Let's imagine a world where terms and conditions don't apply;

Firstly, businesses can do whatever they like. There are no terms to agree to. They simply function in whatever way they "consider to be valid". If a customer disagrees with what is valid or not, hey, that's what courts are for. And given there's no agreement between business and customer, who's to say who is right?

The business can equally terminate you as a customer, with no notice, for no reason, at any time. They can delete all your data. They can spam your contact list. (Ok, they do all that already, but you know what I mean.)

Secondly, customers can do whatever they like. They payed their $9.95. They can do whatever they like. Sure, sharing logins is fine (if they "consider that valid".) They can abuse the system, scrape data out and resell it, anything goes. And of course the only recourse is back to the courts. Which is ultimately no recourse at all.

Even your analogy to parking breaks down. Should you have to prove legal residency to park? Should I be able to park a car on the street (unmoved) for a year? Should I be allowed to park next to a fire-hydrant? Can I park it in the middle of the road? Can my neighbor "reserve" his parking space using an orange cone? Clearly there's a lot more to parking a car than "I should be able to park".

T&C might not be fun, and you may not agree with them (hint: if you don't, then don't use the service) but they at least set out the business behavior that you can expect. Read them, don't read them, that's up to you. But don't complain that the fault is on them when they do something that are in the T&Cs.

And yes, I get they're one sided. customers never bother to submit their own T&C's so they're not fairly represented. Again, that's on you for using that service.

[ezwoodland]

> imagine a world where ...

It already works like that.

> customers never bother to submit their own T&C's so they're not fairly represented

You can't. Not a question of bother.

> if you don't, then don't use the service

The problem is that this is mostly not an option. The service doesn't have competition or competitors don't have better T&C. Sometimes, like in the original commenter's example, there is a legally enforced monopoly.

At least the government has to enforce certain rights when using government provided services.

[matheusmoreira]

> Firstly, businesses can do whatever they like.

Already the case.

Every single terms and conditions document is just legal boilerplate that boils down to "we can do whatever we want, while you can do nothing we don't want".

[Sophira]

The problem with this line of thinking is that businesses don't expect you to read T&Cs.

This site itself is, funnily enough, a good example of this (and, to be fair, an outlier). When you sign up to an account here, you're not asked to agree to any terms. There's nothing that forces you to agree to any terms of service. The site does have them[0], but you can only access them by clicking the "Legal" link in the footer, and you're never required to do so. Yet people here are, by and large, behaving themselves, largely due to good moderation on the part of dang and others.

But if there were to be a lawsuit, for whatever reason, it's potentially possible that someone could successfully argue that they never had to agree to any terms. It's a technicality, of course - again, very few people read terms of service, and if they did, you'd think somebody would have noticed this omission by now - but an arguably legally actionable one.

Which leads me back to my point - the only reason that businesses make you agree to terms of service is because if they didn't, they could get lawsuits that might be found in favour of the plaintiff. Businesses don't want that, so they include the checkbox.

[0] https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou

[radlad]

> They simply function in whatever way they "consider to be valid".

No, they would function in the manner courts deem to be valid.

[klausa]

>Should you have to prove legal residency to park?

...what? How is residency tied to parking now?

[account42]

We really need to update all relevant laws to the same standard as GDPR's "informed consent" where hiding something in a wall of legalese doesn't cut it.