An additional point about privacy policies, which haven't been on the table yet in this thread, but usually go hand-in-hand with TOSes: they are policies and not terms, and (like terms) they can change. In fact nearly all of them have a rider saying "we can change these any time we want." Another rider to both TOSes and privacy policies is language that moots most or all obligations in the event of the company's sale to another company.
Both these came up a few years back when Foursquare started, and some corner of Harvard did something cooperative with Foursquare that I flagged on a backchannel there. It was all harmless (mostly, as I recall, it was about Harvard getting straight on Foursquare what the names of locations were), but it led a number of us Berkman folk to dig deep into Foursquare's terms, which, typically, featured the riders in the paragraph above.
As Renee (a former legal eagle for Harvard) has often taught me (and us) , all the defaults in our (still) Industrial Age marketplace have long put responsibility for terms, conditions and policies on the service provider's or seller's side. This is also how the calf-cow client-server system works on the Web. We individuals are not equals. Coming into a relationship with our own terms, policies, preferences — or anything — isn't unthinkable by legal folk, but rather something they've hardly ever though of, at all. Nor have their law school professors.
But we are getting help on the policy side now, with laws and regulations coming down in the EU and Australia. We also have something close to a critical mass of fourth parties (including one by that name) in Australia and New Zealand. These are companies whose job is to side with the customer, or with both the customer and the seller — but with a moral anchor, if you will, on the customer's (or the user's) side.
I don't think this has to be as hard as it seems on the surface. (Creating a whole new legal regime out of whole cloth that hasn't been woven, from threads not yet made, of fibers not yet harvested.) The Respect Network tour was a terrific learning experience in this regard. The promises around permissions in the Respect Trust Framework, for example, require new mechanisms for expressing preferences, terms, policies and agreements on both sides. And these don't need to be hard or complicated. To mix metaphors, there are low-hanging fruit there.
Doc
On Jul 24, 2014, at 11:22 AM, Sean Bohan <
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> wrote: "Has the ProjectVRM Forum lost its moral compass? I hope not. "
No, it hasn't, and you are not it.
Your point about TOS and Privacy policies is well-taken and something a lot of us look at frequently. But there is a problem with your comment - that there needs to be some kind of fundamentalist litmus test for participation in this community and we need to police it by some standard of yours.
VRM is a "big tent" with participants from across the spectrum of business and life. There are no bosses and there are, like 2 mods. We are here because we think there is something to this idea Doc has been working on for years, and as a community we need lots of voices (including yours) and more importantly, work. Since 2007 we have discussed the idea that VRM is a framework and set of principles, not a black-white determination. There will be "shades of VRM", and as a community we need to recognize that, accept it and be focused on helping participants (including very big organizations) to get better.
This list existed long before you got here, Graham. As a community we have called each other out numerous times, and will continue to do so. When we call out data brokers or politicians it's because those are learning moments for everyone, and they are usually TERRIBLE. Additionally, most of us have jobs and we are not all DataCoup users - we all don't fine-tooth-comb every TOS from every VRMish startup on the web. If you have that kind of time, good on ya.
There is no "VRM Good Housekeeping Seal" and there might never be.
Matt has a startup. He is actually doing something. DataCoup might not be 100% VRM, and may have a crappy TOS, and that's ok. Everyone, including you Graham, has room for improvement. Let us work with him. Matt is here, he is engaging. We can learn from him and hopefully help him.
Hey DataCoup: - You might want to talk to legal about the arbitration clause and see if there is a better way - it limits your risk but screws the user
- You might want to look at putting together a TL:DR sidebar on your Privacy page and spelling out, (in bullets, written at a 8th grade reading level) what the policy actually says
- You might want to look at your termination policy in the TOS and properly spell out what happens to the User's data on DataCoup if and when they terminate the relationship (see Doc's "I want a NUKE button for my data on any given service" comment from a couple years ago) and what regulatory requirements might prevent the ability to have a NUKE button (IRS reporting and retention policies, etc.).
- Sean
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