Jennifer Granick, at Wired, discusses two important rulings this week. One of them was the same one, Douglas v. Talk America, that I discussed in my post about requiring notification of changes to terms of service.
The other is perhaps a bit more broad. In Gatton v. T-Mobile, the ruling seems predicated on the inherent inequity in EULAs, that unlike a normal contract, the potential customer has limited choice and even more limited recourse for addressing complaints. Still, the ruling just struck down a couple of provisions, requiring arbitration for questions of fees and forbidding class actions suits, so is fairly narrow in scope. Most court rulings are.
The cause for optimism comes, I guess, from the fact that two rulings against EULAs came in such a short time. In the absence of legislative reform, perhaps this signals an increased willingness of the courts to enhance consumer protections, even if it is by one ruling at a time.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.