Re: [projectvrm] Which TOS do you recommend?

[Jay Gairson < >]

Mark:

It had not quite range all the way through with me here, but you brought up 
the commingling of the TOS with the Privacy Policy.  As an attorney, I always 
advise my clients to not put or integrate their Privacy Policy with their TOS 
in any way.  The reason for this is purely CYA - in that once the PP is in 
the TOS you can expect the FTC to knock on your door if you ever violate your 
own PP.  That is the PP because a contract with the user.  If the PP is 
separate, it does not become a contract (unless your use of language 
indicates otherwise) and thus is not always regulated by the FTC.  Thus, I am 
very careful to keep the PP out of the TOS to avoid the FTC.

However, the TOS still implicates VRM to me as it is a document that 
explicitly defines the relationship between the user and the vendor.  While a 
large part of VRM is about user data, the bigger part to me is the 
relationship between the vendor and the user.  Of course, I could be adding 
too much scope to the VRM idea.

- Jay


On Jun 5, 2011, at 2:11 PM, Mark Lizar wrote:

> A TOS - with a list of contractual details delivered to the user with  
> an opt-in notice attached (to signify consent) at the bottom is really  
> for a Vendor to indemnify themselves as it is not an effective tool  
> for managing consent on behalf of the user taking part of the  
> contract.  To me Everybody knows this when they provide consent, or if  
> they don;t one soon learns that this is the case.  Data is not  
> portable, neither is consent, .
> 
> People don't read them, people can't use them to find information in  
> context and people don't record and re-use their own consent once  
> given (in this context).  There is as Joe describes a problem with  
> context and privacy.  Plus your information is already gone raw and  
> wholesale to many different sources once given on the Internet to say  
> anything less is a clear lie.  VRM explicitly provides a context in  
> this regard, providing an avenue for data flow into an individuals  
> data bank,  which is why I think we all are having this discussion.
> 
> Providing a list of contractual obligations to a service User upon  
> first interaction with the Customer definitely cause a lot of  
> friction.   Adding more unnecessary consent steps as Johannes mentions  
> will loose half the business.   If the Customer had a default usage  
> state of control (dare I say ownership) over data, would there be such  
> a need for all of these contracts to protect the vendor from the  
> liability?  Consents to data arrangements or attribute usage can be  
> made and controlled on a much more convenient level for the  
> individual.  VRM offers an incredible solution to this TOS problem,  
> VRM offers a different information sharing model where the individual  
> has their own official copy of data, their own ways to aggregate and  
> make value.   This is what Iain (Mydex and Co) have been talking about  
> and working on for years.
> 
>  Privacy is necessary for when your information is shared and it  
> needs to be managed by a vendor.  VRM is less about privacy and more  
> about controlling your own information, which by the way will easily  
> be a more valuable source of info then the current sources for  
> advertising.   Bottom line in VRM the Customer manages and can make  
> their own data which then has more value to the Vendor in little bits  
> and the Vendor does not need to worry as much about privacy (if at all  
> in VRM).    For this we need fine grained control over our own data  
> before it is provided on the internet.  Now this I think is a  
> pandora's box.  The whole TOS situation seems to be a bit redundant in  
> VRM, but then again we are evolving from a TOS world :-)
> 
> - M
> 
> On 5 Jun 2011, at 20:48, Don Marti wrote:
> 
>> begin Mark Lizar quotation of Sun, Jun 05, 2011 at 08:13:15PM +0100:
>> 
>>> Agreed, a contract is a good mechanism and efforts are not wasted
>>> understanding this mechanism.  ALthough the previous way of
>>> delivering contracts is not acceptable for as you say Exponential
>>> growth based on people controlling their own communication).
>> 
>> Why not?
>> 
>> Put link rel="tos" on the home page, and on
>> your own ToS page, put link rel="canonical"
>> href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/tos/1.0";
>> 
>> Then search engines and browsers have a chance to
>> help you with the ToS maze, the way that you can
>> optionally search for CC-licensed pages.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Don Marti
>> http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
>> 
 
>