Venereus said:
SinisterGehe said:
Venereus said:
SinisterGehe said:
Jabberwock xeno said:
fealubryne said:
ddq5 said:
Funny how the comment that got him suspended is given credence by Bioware's response.
Heh, for real.
Yep.
I wish the guy would sue EA.
Of what, being denied of service after breaking rules of the service?
Precisely that. You see, denial of service is actually illegal.
So you saying:
If you agree to ToS in which I state that if you break these set rules, to which I have secured right to change, I can ban you from my service and deny service from you in future if you get caught of breaking the rules.
I can not do that?
Sounds kinda fishy... Talk about my freedom to act... But ToS is an contract, if you break it, I am not allowed to "punish" you in agreed fashion? And if it changed you need to sign it again in order to keep using my service... SO I am not allowed to change the terms of the contract between us, even if it is stated on the contract?
Or is this one of those "Because hes THE VICTIM, being pushed around by big evil corporation. Ofc he is right, he couldn't have broken the rules!" fights going on in here.... Because I think it is, I also think it is pointless. If it is said you don't talk of the Onions you don't talk of the onions and if we state you shall not talk of carrots either, you don't talk about the damn carrots.
If he would go to court with them, he would lose, I am willing to bet money on that.
The law protects you from slavery, if I write a ToS that says you become my slave and you agree to it, do you think the law is going to protect me instead of you if we go to court? ToS agreements that go against consumer rights only thrive because they remain unchallenged most of the time.
A user at the Bioware forum said it best: "EA just hopes that their consumers are stupid enough to believe it is legal. And if they don't buy it the second barrier is hoping their consumers are too lazy to sue. This system works most of the time."
It's been a long time since I was in school where I studied criminal justice, and the focus of what I learned about the legal system wasn't on civil law or specialized areas like contract law, but I did learn some things related to it, and interest has caused me to look into it occasionally over the years, and I think your both wrong or somewhat off base.
Right now one of the big problems with things like EULAs and the like is that the gaming industry has hired or contracted most of the people who are experts in this kind of area. On the rare occasions when it seems someone challenges this kind of thing, the guys running the other side of it seem to be taking the wrong approach. Most judgements defending ToS agreements or EULAs seem to be made based on the idea of the existance of such things in general, rather than the terms and what they can or cannot do, or how the entire situation is presented.
It's fundementally correct that a person cannot sell themselves into slavery directly HOWEVER it should be noted that a person can do the equivilent indirectly by signing a very limiting contract if it can be proven they did it knowingly. Someone can wind up being forced to work for very little or no payoff due to harsh penelties if they don't. An example would be someone who agrees to render a service like painting a piece of artwork, performing maitnence, or constructing something, the situation changes and they wind up having no choice but having to perform the service at a personal loss or face jail time or insane fines. It's not slavery per se, but in a lot of cases it can come close. Entertainment contracts for musicians, actors, and similar kinds of people have been legendary in this respect, the classic "I'll make you an offer I can't refuse" bit from "The Godfather" was based around this (and actually fairly realistic in it's set up), as is the situation with bands like "Grand Funk Railroad". If you look into it you'll also find that groups like "The Spice Girls" had to engage in borderline criminal behavior to get control of their own Discographies.
At any rate, in connection to the EULA and TOS type agreements, understand that a big part of the problem that hasn't been challenged is that your forced to make these agreements to use a product you already paid for, and can't return. One area that has not really been challenged is that technically these agreements would have to be agreed to in a store before money changed hands, especially seeing as products like video games are pretty much unreturnable.
Another issue that applies is protections against fine print and misleading language in contracts. While such things can be used for intimidation value, the bottom line is that a contract has to be both concise and easily understandable. What's more making referances to other documents that aren't readily availible right then and there also doesn't work when challenged. Nor does saying "in accordance with this" or simply including an asterix or whatever that links to something that's easily missable.
The point here being that EULA and TOS agreements can also be challenged on the grounds that they are so long, oftentimes involve legalese, and referance headings and other documents that aren't readily availible as part of the contract.
When dealing with very complicated documents between businesses and the like, exceptions exist due to the number of lawyers and experts availible who act as notaries, witnessesing that everyone involved understands all aspects of the contract. That can change things substantially in the face of the law, as opposed to a contract stirctly between two people, or where only one side has a "notary" in their employ (as opposed to a true neutral party).
This is at the root of a lot of other nasty battles we've seen over the years in Hollywood where there have been contracts "sealing with a handshake" or more specifically backed by documents presented 1 on 1. A good example of this would be the movie "Boxing Helena" where there was a dispute over whether or not the actress (Kim Basinger I believe) knowingly and bindingly agreed to be in the movie in exchange for gifts that she received as payment, I believe a TV was involved or something like that, it's been a while. The point is it got nasty and was news for a while, and was hardly a unique situation.
The gaming industry has been challenged, but so far hasn't been challenged properly especially when you consider other cases, despite what they might claim. So far I don't think I've ever seen a case based around the point at which payment was received, or the length and complexity of the EULA itself without any confirmation that both parties actually understood what was written there.
EA backed down, and did the right thing, however if this had been challenged I think it could have gotten interesting and if the lawyer was competent gotten into a lot of the territory you don't see too often.
While unrelated, when it comes to slavery, one interesting thing you might want to look into is cases of voluntary sexual bondage. There have been cases where people have agreed to be someone else's sex slave for a long period of time in exchange for money. The very existance of the contract being a turn on for a lot of the submissives involved at the time. While this counts as prostitution in most states, it can become an interesting case when it's presented as a contract to act in "art films" which implicitly involve sex (ie the whole mess with the porn industry) or more commonly the state of Nevada. Even so, in cases where rape, or kidnapping comes up when a submissive changes their mind, questions of a contract reducing it to "soliciting a prostitute" can get interesting, with the contract proving that the person consented to some rather extreme sexual activity even if the compensation aspects were illegal. In the guise of simple sex games where no money or services or provided, and the person just wanted to be a slave (or thought so) even that doesn't apply.
There haven't been a lot of cases that have broken into the mainstream media, and typically it only appears as a "wierd news", but this kind of thing has been part of what has made things like Craigslist so infamous as that's one place where people look to make connections. You know like "I just won the lottery and moved to Nevada, I'm looking for a gorgeous 18 year old to be my sex slave and submit to incredible pain and indignity for a period of five years in exchange for a million dollars. Please send photo, and we'll discuss the details". You'd be surprised how many people would be into that, especially if they get to be a millionaire at the age of 23, and let's just say with the range of sexual and sadistic wierdness people engage in, you could easily see how someone might change their mind pretty quickly but ooops, their already locked in the guy's torture dungeon. If they escape and go to the police and the guy provides the contract and shows that the person on the receiving end agreed to that... well kidnapping and rape become much harder to make stick, especially if the details of consent are fairly conclusive.
