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US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/memoranda/2026/03/03/25-403.pdf
Reminds me of the Sony bash.org joke

> <DmncAtrny> I will write on a huge cement block "BY ACCEPTING THIS BRICK THROUGH YOUR WINDOW, YOU ACCEPT IT AS IS AND AGREE TO MY DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS WELL AS DISCLAIMERS OF ALL LIABILITY, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL, THAT MAY ARISE FROM THE INSTALLATION OF THIS BRICK INTO YOUR BUILDING."

<DmncAtrny> And then hurl it through the window of a Sony officer

<DmncAtrny> and run like hell

Naturally, for this to work, one would need to incorporate first so that claim of free speech to be taken at face value.
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There are so many advantages to turning off and disconnecting these days. Avoiding TOS is just a small part.

There are too many demands on our attention and our wallets and most of us aren't getting more money or time. I cancelled all the family's streaming services in 2025. Everyone adapted. It turns out a lot of things we are told we need, we really don't. People lived without them as recently as a few years ago. A lot of the novelty of mobile, streaming, social media and weird tech nobody needs has worn off and the value has been eroded. There are so many better things to do and experience and you don't need to hand over your privacy or sign your soul away.

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The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd. There are probably a handful of terms everyone agrees are reasonable (no attempted hacking, rate limits, do not break laws) and everything else should be unenforceable. Especially garbage like what you're allowed to do with the stuff you get from the service even while not using the service, or about setting up competing products. It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it.
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> It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it.

and you are not allowed to criticize it or write about the size of it or how much meat there is in it or how filling it is to eat the burger.

and you are definitely not allowed to compare it to burgers from other companies.

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Not allowing to criticize is practically a law in some European countries

https://ppc.land/german-businesses-systematically-delete-cri...

A system being abused by mass-false-reports =/= "practically a law".
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> The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd. There are probably a handful of terms everyone agrees are reasonable (no attempted hacking, rate limits, do not break laws) and everything else should be unenforceable.

Why? Why should a government prohibit private parties from agreeing to anything other than those 3 things?

> Especially garbage like what you're allowed to do with the stuff you get from the service even while not using the service, or about setting up competing products. It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it.

It is vaguely like that, but but I'm not sure the analogy facilitates understanding of this subject. McDonalds shouldn't tell you how you can eat your burger, therefore... companies must not enforce any terms on their services aside from those things. Why?

I'm not saying any term should be enforceable. Contract law has a long history against that. I just wonder how and where you draw the line and what existing law is insufficient.

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This is one of these cases like gun crime where:

USA: There is no solution!

Rest of world: slightly embarrassed look

There are legal terms and concepts like good faith, expected and unexpected terms, reasonable expectations, abuse of a legally unsophisticated party and so on. In other countries, neither the fiction that everyone reads or is expected to read the 10-page "dining contract" of a restaurant exists nor is it allowed (enforceable) to put any unrelated or unreasonable crap in there.

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During friendly discussions and arguments my lawyer friends like to make the same kind of thought terminating cliche filed arguments that you just replied to.

I think that your response really hit the nail on the head and it raises the question my mind of how do we most effectively eliminate these kinds of malformed American-system brained thoughts from disrupting real and possibly even productive conversations about these kinds of topics?

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