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Marvels Rivals requires creators to sign a contract that removes your right to give a negative review in order to access the playtest
(files.catbox.moe)
On today's episode of "This shouldn't be legal"...
Source: https://twitter.com/A_Seagull/status/1789468582281400792
Fucking bonkers. Between this an McD's changing their ToS to say using their app waives any right to non-arbitration dispute, something needs to be done about companies trying to effectively write new laws into their ToS. This shit is beyond egregious
Number three combo, hold the freedom please
Sincere thank you for providing what I was referencing 👍
They can write anything they want in a TOS, doesn't mean it's legally enforceable.
even then, it's essentially paywalling your rights. you need to go to court, wait for the matter to be adjudicated, hope it works out in your favor, run out any potential appeals, all while paying attorneys and not being able to do something you're legally entitled to do. If you can't do all that, then your rights are moot.
That's what they want you to think, just start a class action lawsuit. Lawyer love those. Force the companies to respond to the class actions.
Collective mass arbitration is my favorite counter to this tactic, and is dramatically more costly for the company than a class action lawsuit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-overload.html
A lot of companies got spooked a few years back and walked back their arbitration agreements. I wonder what changed for companies to decide it's worth it again. Maybe the lack of discovery in the arbitration process even with higher costs?
You can't "just start" a class action suit. You need to sue, get other people to sue, coordinate, and apply for class action status. That's more time and effort than an individual suit.
Yeah, it's time to nip this on the front end though. ToS are such a part of daily life now. They should be regulated to be concise, use standardized consumer-friendly language, and have bounds against non-arbitration and other nonsense like this. This sort of legislation is well overdue.
Bingo! It's written in a "cover my ass" but that ass can get kicked by the courts.
Exactly. Anyone can put anything they want into a terms of service/contract. Doesn't mean it'll hold up in court.
Having unenforceable or illegal clauses in a legal contract means the contract wasn't written in good faith, which should void the whole thing. Regardless of any "if parts of this contract are deemed illegal, the rest still stands".
It would be nice to see more proactive involvement of the legal system with this, like have some people whose job it is to challenge these consumer contracts and standardize them kinda like how some open source licenses are standardized. Modularize it, so instead of writing out the whole "limited liability" section, they could refer to an established one by name. Then each module can be the subject of study and challenge, like if a more limiting one should come with other compromises elsewhere.
I think at that point, most honest companies would just pick a standard license or contract, plus maybe a few modifications and shady ones will have more trouble hiding shit like this in the middle of pages and pages of the same boring shit you've read hundreds of times before if you actually do read these things before signing or clicking agree.
At this point, most contracts should probably be unenforceable because few people actually do understand what they are agreeing to, which is supposed to be one of the essential parts of a contract. So many parts should probably have an "initial here to show you agreed to this" at the very least. But I'm no fool, this is likely considered a feature rather than a bug for most of the people involved in making and enforcing these things.
If enough people believe that it is, they're not going to be as likely to fight things that they should be.
Good luck getting it thrown out, that’ll be an expensive legal battle even if you do win.
It's already been decided in Europe. Terms of service have about as much legal weight as toilet paper. Usually what's true in Europe is true in California as well so I assume something similar has happened over there.
which tv manufacturer was it that updated their eula and if you didn't agree it bricked your tv?
Roku had a new agreement that if you didn't agree you couldn't access the TV
What a wonderful and poignant aside that adds absolutely nothing to the discussion at hand.
Yeah I don't know why I thought my pseudointellectual comment was relevant here.
All good; I wasn't trying to be offensive in my reply and was sincere in calling it poignant. Sometimes I get worked up and make tangents that feel vaguely related too. We're cool if you're cool ✌
I really don't understand the point of a McD's app anyways. They have a drive thru