#occupytheweb with us: Change the Terms of Online Contracts

2 weeks ago, the #occupywallst protestors were been kicked out of zuccotti park in Manhattan. It’s time to move the protest to the web. It’s time to #occupytheweb

I am announcing today the relaunch of TOSAmend with Law Professor, Zev Eigen. We’ve ironed out the kinks and now we think TOSAmend will hold up in court – at least for some contracts .

What is TOSAmend?

TOSAmend is a free & easy way to sign up to your favorite web-service while REJECTING their erroneous, overbearing, unreadable, terms of service. TOS stands for Terms of Service.

Click here to to download it.

Wait, that’s legal?

After TOSAmend v1, launched, we had some debate about it’s legal viability. The consensus for v1 was “Neat thought expiriment – but doubt it would hold up in court.”

Since that time, I teamed up with law professor Zev Eigen of Northwestern University School of Law, who specializes in research on online form-contracts, to improve the functionality of the applet to increase its legal viability

Click here to read the blog post on the legal nitty gritty, by two law professors (Zev Eigen and Florencia Marotta-Wurgler from Northwestern and NYU Law Schools respectively)

Who cares?

Take a look at any Terms of Service document. They’re completely one-sided. When you check that ‘I Agree’ button, you sign away even your most basic of rights.  They’re in legalise. They’re unreadable.  Even if you could read them, it would take you all day. And you’d have to spend countless more hours just trying to understand the lawyer-talk in them.  And yet, they are REALLY important – Should any discrepancy between yourself and the other party be brought into a court of law, they will could potentially have a HUGE effect (monetary, or otherwise) on your life!

The #occupywallst protestors have been kicked out of zuccotti park in Manhattan. It’s time to support the plight of average consumers everywhere by standing up to one-sided, non-negotiable terms of service documents. It’s time to #occupytheweb

I want to download TOSAmend

I thought you’d never ask.

1. Check out the terms of your use of this bookmarklet
2. pause to note the irony of TOS for TOSAmend, and continue only if you accept these terms.
3. Drag this link into your browser bookmark bar: TOSAmend
4. Visit the signup form of your favorite websites and TOSAmend it.
5. TOSAmend will auto-generate an email that will be sent to the company on the your behalf.

I’ve tested in Chrome and Firefox. IE version forthcoming.

When you use the TOSAmend bookmarklet, it will modify the TOS on the page, and pass the amended terms back to the site (via the ‘TOSAmended’ GET or POST parameter), where the web-service can either accept or reject them.

Here’s a 15 second demo of this bookmarklet in action:

Get Involved

1. Follow @TOSAmend on twitter.
2. Join our google group.
3. Check out facebook.com/TOSAmend.
4. Contribute to the codebase
5. Oh, and I’m @owocki on twitter. Happy to answer your questions there.

#OccupyTheWeb with us. Spread The Word

1. Tweet about @TOSAmend
2. Like TOSAmend on Facebook

Read the Blog Post

Many thanks to Zev Eigen and collaborator Florencia Marotta-Wurgler, who have authored a short piece about the legal issues relating to using TOSAmend.

Download the paper in .pdf or .doc format, or read the full text below.

Click HERE to download Professor Eigen’s research about form-contracts. link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=370999

Click HERE to download Professor Marotta-Wurgler’s research about form-contracts. link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=352742

What if Consumers Could Change the Terms of Online Contracts?

What do you think?

Leave a comment below or @reply me on twitter

TOSAmend: The easy way to modify web service Terms of Service agreements

Have you ever read any of the terms of service documents you agree to when you sign up to your favorite web apps?

Of course you don’t.  Those documents are tens, sometimes hundreds, of pages long. You sign away even your most basic of rights.  They’re in legalise.  Even if you could read them, it would take you all day! And you’d have to spend countless more hours just trying to understand the lawyer-talk in them!.  And yet, they are REALLY important! Should any discrepancy between yourself and the other party be brought into a court of law, they will could potentially have a HUGE effect (monetary, or otherwise) on your life!

What if, instead of just blindly agreeing to a TOS document you haven’t read, you could just amend the TOS right there on the spot? Right there on the sign-up form.

Did you know that, when you’re signing a legal contract in the United States, you have the right to strikeout any clause that you do not understand or do not agree to? [source] With the TOSAmend bookmarklet, you can also easily do this with web-based contracts and terms of services.

With this handy little javascript bookmarklet I’ve developed, you can. Drag and drop this bookmarklet into your browser bookmark bar to use TOSAmend. I’ve tested in Chrome and Firefox. IE version forthcoming.

TOSAmend

When you use the TOSAmend bookmarklet, it will modify the TOS on the page, and pass the amended terms back to the site (via the ‘TOSAmended’ GET or POST parameter), where the web-service can either accept or reject them.

Here’s a 30 second demo of this bookmarklet in action:

Full Disclaimer: I am an web app builder, not a lawyer, so I am unsure where using TOSAmend to amend terms of services would (or would not) hold up in court as a legally-permissible way of modifying a contract. I intend this as an experiment, proof of concept, and as a conversation starter about the relationship between and rights of applications and their users. I assume no responsibility for your use of this bookmarklet in the wild. Use at your own risk.

Here is the bookmarklet one more time. Drag it into your browser bar to use TOSAmend:

TOSAmend

Cheers and have fun!  For updates on this project, follow @TOSAmend on twitter, join our google group, or check out facebook.com/TOSAmend. Oh, and I’m @owocki on twitter. Happy to answer your questions there.

EDIT: This project is now hosted on a github public repo. Feel free to contribute.

EDIT 2: A debate has broken out on reddit about TOSAmend’s legal viability (in its current form) in the United States.

UPDATE 12/3/2011: I’ve released a legally viable version of TOSAmend. More details @ http://owocki.com/2011/12/03/occupytheweb-change-the-terms-of-online-agreements/

Hey Google, Gmail is Awfully Slow!

For a company that makes a lot of noise about how the web should be blazing fast, Google has been awfully slow to address performance concerns in one of their flagship apps, Gmail.

Sometimes conversations can take up to 20 seconds to load.   Searches too.  Sometimes they will not load at all and a vague “This conversation could not be loaded” message will appear in your browser.

I’ve tried posting on their support forums, contacting Google Apps for Business support, tweeting @google and @dondoge.  No one seems to care.  Either that, or no one seems to be able to diagnose the issue.

I’ve spoken to many folks, and the problems aren’t just limited to me.  I’d love it for someone at Google to at least acknowledge that there are scaling issues in GMail.  Please leave a comment below if your GMail or Google Mail for Business account is slow.  Hopefully someone at google will listen!

For the record, I love Gmail and it is centric to my workflow day-to-day, which is why it’s so frustrating that no one at Google can help. If you’re reading this post from inside the GooglePlex, shoot me an email. kevin [at] ignighter [dot] com/  I’d love to help you diagnose the issue.

EDIT:  Since there’s been questions about whether or not the problem is at my end, here are my system and connection specs: I’m on a state of the art macbook air, and the problems described occur on every modern browser (chrome, firefox, safari)), and they occur on every wifi network I connect to (Cable, DSL).  No firewall.  250K conversations in my inbox using 20G of space,