Assume nothing: lawyer's advice on website terms
Posted 24 September 2007 at 8:22AM by Simon Dickson in Managing your website
Excellent legal website Out-Law reports on a US ruling which suggests you can read a lot into a single click - but advises you not to follow suit. (Pardon the pun.)
A man is suing a US dating website for gender discrimination because it offered free membership to women, but not to men. Nothing you haven't seen in countless nightclubs round the country. But as part of the case, he complained that the site's registration form included a line of text which said:
By clicking CONTINUE, I affirm that I am at least 18 years old, and I have read and agree to the (site's) Terms of Use and Code of Ethics.
Significantly, both 'Terms of Use' and 'Code of Ethics' were active hyperlinks; but the man wasn't forced by the process to look at them. He argued that he hadn't pressed a button that explicitly said 'I agree', and couldn't therefore be bound by them. But the Californian Court of Appeal confirmed an earlier ruling that there was nothing inherently unfair.
Technology lawyer Struan Robertson advises you to avoid ever letting the problem arise. 'If the users' goal is signing up to a site, they'll complete compulsory fields and hit the continue button. They won't read all the text on the screen or examine all the links and there's a good chance that a court in the UK will recognise that,' he advises.
Disappointingly for usability people perhaps, Struan's recommendation is clear. 'The solution is to use a compulsory check box. Put that next to a line that says 'I agree to the terms and conditions' and make the words 'terms and conditions' a clear link. That's the only safe way, unless you display the conditions in full as a compulsory part of the sign-up process.'
Tags: consent, contract, laws, out-law, terms and conditions
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Comments
2. At September 24, 2007 1:38 PM, Big Boss Man wrote:
Yet another great American money-for-nothing article.
How many people read a terms and conditions anyway? im pretty sure no one signed up to an ISP anyway as there is great articles such as the length of time a repair may take...
3. At September 24, 2007 4:20 PM, Chris Paton wrote:
A lot of sites have an "I agree" button, and people who don't read the terms and conditions to anything that they sign up to deserve what they get. If the site said in it's terms and agreements something like "You will turn over your property to us" or something like that, in certain court systems especially in America it would be held true, probably not in the UK though as it's pretty silly.
But as a rule of thought, you should make a rule to at least skim over all the terms, mostly they are quite short.
PS. The guy complaining to the US goverment has a point, just look at "Shielas Wheels!"
4. At September 24, 2007 11:31 PM, kim wrote:
well who really reads every box you click to accept conditions - ie buying software/shareware/freeware - do u read all the conditions?
well even if you did would you understand them
thank fully we are still a little bit in favour of the common sense approach in this country
5. At September 26, 2007 1:33 PM, Irwin. R. Scheister wrote:
In respsone to kim, i do read all terms and conditions because i have had problems previously and made the mistake of not reading them.
This mistake cost my business £100,000 due to my incomptence at the time. Luckily i own it so i wasn't sacked.
But as B.B.M said i wonder how many people would join ISP's if they read the small print!
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1. At September 24, 2007 1:12 PM, Irwin. R. Scheister wrote: