Forbrukerrådet, the Norwegian Consumer Council, has studied extensively how the privacy policies and terms of service for various social networking services mesh with their local consumer rights and privacy laws. Apparently not very well as The Register notes they are preparing a legal challenge to Facebook over its terms of service.
I am glad to see at least somewhere push back against the private law making that takes places under these specious contracts of adhesion, like terms of service and EULAs. Its not surprising that it is in Norway as the council was the body that brought similar complaints against Apple’s iTunes store. And continuing the trend, the article notes that are already looking at Amazon and the Kindle over similar concerns.
This also makes me think of Glyn Moody’s recent discussion of the one way ratchet of copyright terms as driven through normalization. I know it is probably profoundly naive, but I have to wonder if an unwinding of policies that corral consumer rights could also be achieved through initiating some sort of normalization, specifically to a standard approaching that in Norway.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.