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New 'TLDR' Bill Requires Companies Provide Synopsis Of Overlong, Predatory Terms Of Service

from the good-luck-with-that dept

This week saw the introduction of the The Terms-of-service Labeling, Design and Readability Act, or “TLDR Act,” for short. The bill, which, for now, has bipartisan support, would require the FTC to create rules mandating that websites must offer a truncated version of obnoxiously long and predatory terms of service (TOS) nobody actually reads. The “summary statement” websites would be obligated to provide would not only lay out the legal requirements in terms normal humans could understand, it would also require a website disclose any major data breaches that have occurred in the last three years.

A breakdown (pdf) of the bill also states it will require websites to disclose what data is collected upon a user’s visit, and what kind of control a user has over that data. Any violation of the new law would be declared to be within the realm of “unfair and deceptive” under the FTC Act, giving the agency the authority to act on it. Rep. Lori Trahan had this to say about the need for such a law:

“For far too long, blanket terms of service agreements have forced consumers to either ?agree? to all of a company?s conditions or lose access to a website or app entirely. No negotiation, no alternative, and no real choice,? said Congresswoman Trahan, a member of the House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce. ?To further slant the decision in their favor, many companies design unnecessarily long and complicated contracts, knowing that users don?t have the bandwidth to read lengthy legal documents when they?re simply trying to message a loved one or make a quick purchase.”

Yes, most TOS are overlong and that length is often used to obscure bad behavior or quietly erode consumer rights (see: binding arbitration). But many TOS are also overlong because U.S. law and compliance are complicated as hell. The idea that you can always simplify everything a company needs to get across to a user to comply with the law and reasonably cover your ass in a sentence or too is probably a little simplistic. At the same time, I’m not sure the American consumer, many with the attention span of a goldfish, would even read the truncated version of a TOS anyway.

While “more transparency” is certainly good, it also only goes so far if you’re not willing to tackle the deeper problem(s). For example the FCC is pondering a transparency label on broadband connections outlining all the sneaky ways you’re getting ripped off by your internet service provider. And while knowing the precise parameters how you’re getting ripped off is nice, users in monopolized markets can’t switch ISPs anyway because the FCC generally isn’t willing or able to combat monopolization and limited competition. So transparency only accomplishes so much.

Here too, websites, apps, and services use overlong TOS to obfuscate all manner of behaviors U.S. regulators either don’t have the resources to police (the FTC has 8% of the staff dedicated to privacy issues as the UK, despite the UK having one-fifth the consumers to protect) or are apathetic to because of revolving door corruption (see: telecom, banking, adtech, etc.). Expecting the FTC to do a whole lot more stuff without notably expanding funding seems a bit short sighted. And this is all assuming the bill is actually well written and doesn’t cause new, unforeseen problems via sloppy language.

So while well intentioned, this feels like a bit of a band aid on problems policymakers can’t or won’t tackle head on. Like limited competition. Or the complete and total lack of anything even vaguely resembling accountability in telecom, adtech, or the data broker space. Or privacy reform. Or antitrust reform. All of these problems lead to bad behaviors companies are hiding in their TOS, and making those bad behaviors clearer to the end user is only part of a process. Knowing you’re getting screwed or spied on is only helpful if you have the recourse to do something about it, and regulators willing to stand up for you when push comes to shove.

Filed Under: congress, ftc, terms of service, tldr, tldr act

The Importance Of Anonymity And The Wonders Of YouTube's Saddest Comments

First off, while I’ve linked to a few of its stories lately, if you’re not listening to the TLDR podcast you are seriously missing out on some really fantastic stories concerning fascinating and amazing things happening online. The story of Vile Rat, for one, is incredible (in short: one of the guys killed in the attack on Benghazi, an IT manager there, was also a huge presence in the virtual world Eve Online). But I wanted to focus on another recent episode that touches on some concepts we’ve discussed before. It’s about a guy named Mark Slutsky who has created SadYouTube.com, a site that highlights incredible comments found on YouTube videos.

Yes, you’re saying, but YouTube comments are the absolute worst on the whole internet. But, even in all that crap, there are moments of poignant interest, and Slutsky finds a bunch of them — often involving someone writing detailed, interesting and (yes) sad comments about an emotional memory connected to a song. Some of them are really fascinating glimpses into someone’s life — and in many cases, those glimpses are the kind of things that people are willing to post anonymously, rather than associated with their real name.

But, of course, YouTube has recently changed its system to push people to use their real names with the comments. We’ve been pointing out for years that “real names” proposals aren’t such a great idea, often stifling important and interesting conversations, and this seems like yet another example. Yes, YouTube comments are notoriously terrible, though it’s arguable if they’ve really improved at all since pushing people to put their names on them. But this new policy almost certainly means fewer people will be willing to share such random, poignant memories when they can easily be traced back to who wrote them.

As we’ve noted plenty of times ourselves, while having a rather open comment policy can encourage some crazy comments, it also leads to plenty of fantastic comments. Each week, when we look at our best comments of the week as voted on by the community here, there are plenty from completely anonymous users. I recognize the temptation to “fix” bad comments, but there’s a real risk to throwing out plenty of good stuff when you don’t let people post anonymously.

Filed Under: anonymity, comments, free speech, mark slutsky, real names, sad youtube, tldr, youtube, youtube comments
Companies: google, youtube

Unexpected Things: Guy Capitalizing On The Concept Of Music SEO By Recording 100 Songs A Day

from the this-modern-world dept

There’s an incredible story that recently played on On the Media’s awesome off-shoot TLDR podcast, talking about a guy who basically spends all of his free time writing and recording songs on pretty much every topic imaginable, and then uploading them to Spotify and iTunes, just in case someone is magically looking for a song about any particular topic. He’s already recorded 14,000 songs, and says last year he made about $23,000 from royalties. Many of the songs seem quirky, and I’m not sure many people would consider them to be any good, but that’s not really the point. The point is to have some music on pretty much any topic.

The more I thought about this, I realized this is yet another unique outcome of the modern digital era. In our Sky is Rising report from a few years ago, one of things we noted was the massive explosion in books (mostly ebooks), but we carefully noted that many of them were these odd automated productions, pulling feeds of information and releasing them in book form. That kind of thing is designed to be created cheaply and never sell many copies, but still might be incredibly useful for the 2 or 3 people who need exactly what’s in that book. If you can produce enough things like that, perhaps it’s worthwhile.

And, with digital music becoming so common, it’s not such a crazy idea to basically try to thrive on search engine optimizing (SEO’ing) music searches. I say this as someone who has created Spotify playlists about trains, bananas and (just last week) “the ABCs” for my son. As I was setting those up, I thought about just how incredibly different the world my son will grow up in is than what everyone else has experienced. When he says, “I want to hear songs about trains!” it’s actually not that difficult to do exactly that. This goes beyond just what many people thought the rise of digital music would bring about, which is the breakdown of the need for “albums” as people move to singles, but the opportunity to create songs on a theme or topic for those people who are looking for it. There may not be that many people actually searching for any such particular song, but if you can make enough of them, covering enough topics that when someone needs just any song on a particular topic, there’s now an opportunity to do that.

This isn’t “the future of music” or anything of that sort. It’s just one of those wonderful, tangential things enabled by our digital world, filling a need that is actually quite useful for some, in a way that really wasn’t possible not too long ago.

Filed Under: itunes, music, new things, search, seo, songwriting, tldr
Companies: spotify